Then the crab looked down and saw a great rock of sacrifice, made horrible by heaps of fish-skeletons. And he thought: "Ah me!
Friends are foes and foes are friends
As they mar or serve your ends;
Few discern where profit tends.
Again:
If you will, with serpents play;
Dwell with foemen who betray:
Shun your false and foolish friends,
Fickle, seeking vicious ends.
Why, he has already eaten these fish whose skeletons are scattered in heaps. So what might be an opportune course of action for me? Yet why do I need to consider?
Man is bidden to chastise
Even elders who devise
Devious courses, arrogant,
Of their duty ignorant.
Again:
Fear fearful things, while yet
No fearful thing appears;
When danger must be met,
Strike, and forget your fears.
So, before he drops me there, I will catch his neck with all four claws."
When he did so, the heron tried to escape, but being a fool, he found no parry to the grip of the crab's nippers, and had his head cut off.
Then the crab painfully made his way back to
