"The toudaks are attacking us!"
"What shall we do?"
"How many dead? We shall all perish!"
Padouka Sri Maharadja in great haste mounts the elephant and goes forth,
followed by his ministers, his body-guards, and all his officers. Arriving at the
seashore he sees with horror the work of these monsters, the toudaks. Whoever
was wounded by them inevitably perished. The number of the victims became
larger and larger. The prince ordered the men to make a rampart of their legs, but
in their boundings the toudaks succeeded in passing this barrier. They came like
the rain, and the slaughter was terrible. While this was happening a young boy
said:
"Why make thus a rampart of our legs? That is an artifice very much to our hurt.
If we should make a rampart of the trunks of banana-trees, would not that be
better?"
When Padouka Sri Maharadja heard the words of the child, "He is right," he
said. And on his orders they hastened to construct a barrier of banana-tree
trunks. When the toudaks came bounding along their snouts were buried in the
tree-trunks, and the men ran up and killed them. There perished thus of these
toudaks a number beyond computation. Their bodies formed heaps on the shore,
and all the population of Singapore did not suffice to eat them. And the toudaks
ceased their leapings. They say, by the force of their boundings the toudaks
reached the elephant of the prince and tore the sleeve of his cloak. About this
they made a song:
"The boundings of the toudaks tore
The mantle which the Sultan wore,
But here they ceased their onset wild,
Thanks to the wisdom of a child."