`` We must live before we can learn , '' said the Mugger , `` and there is this to say : Little jackals are very common , child , but such a mugger as I am is not common . For all that , I am not proud , since pride is destruction ; but take notice , it is Fate , and against his Fate no one who swims or walks or runs should say anything at all . I am well contented with Fate . With good luck , a keen eye , and the custom of considering whether a creek or a backwater has an outlet to it ere you ascend , much may be done . '' `` Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a mistake , '' said the Jackal viciously . `` True ; but there my Fate helped me . It was before I had come to my full growth -- before the last famine but three -LRB- by the Right and Left of Gunga , how full used the streams to be in those days ! -RRB- . Yes , I was young and unthinking , and when the flood came , who so pleased as I ? A little made me very happy then . The village was deep in flood , and I swam above the Ghaut and went far inland , up to the rice-fields , and they were deep in good mud . I remember also a pair of bracelets -LRB- glass they were , and troubled me not a little -RRB- that I found that evening . Yes , glass bracelets ; and , if my memory serves me well , a shoe . I should have shaken off both shoes , but I was hungry . I learned better later . Yes . And so I fed and rested me ; but when I was ready to go to the river again the flood had fallen , and I walked through the mud of the main street . Who but I ? Came out all my people , priests and women and children , and I looked upon them with benevolence . The mud is not a good place to fight in .
Said a boatman , ` Get axes and kill him , for he is the XXXXX of the ford . '
Ghaut Gunga Jackal Mugger Protector Right bracelets evening flood rice-fields