Page:The Orange Fairy Book.djvu/47

traitor, and from her he learnt the secret of the Magic Mirror. One night, when all the town slept, he felt beneath her pillow and, finding the Mirror, he stole it and fled back with it to Rei, the chief of the white men.

So it befell that one day, as Gopáni-Kúfa was gazing at the river from a window of the palace, he again saw the war-canoes of the white men; and at the sight his spirit misgave him.

‘Shasása! my daughter!’ he cried wildly, ‘go fetch me the Mirror, for the white men are at hand.’

‘Woe is me, my father!’ she sobbed. ‘The Mirror is gone! For I loved Butou the traitor, and he has stolen Sipáo from me!’

Then Gopáni-Kúfa calmed himself, and drew out Zéngi-mízi from its rush basket.

‘O spirit of my father!’ he said, ‘what now shall I do?’

‘O Gopáni-Kúfa!’ hummed the wasp, ‘there is nothing now that can be done, for the words of the antelope which you slew are being fulfilled.’

‘Alas! I am an old man—I had forgotten!’ cried the chief. ‘The words of the antelope were true words—my reward shall be my own undoing—they are being fulfilled!’

Then the white men fell upon the people of Gopáni-Kúfa and slew them together with the chief and his daughter Shasása; and since then all the power of the Earth has rested in the hands of the white men, for they have in their possession Sipáo, the Magic Mirror.