Prevod

They stopped the boat to draw water. While they were doing so, one of those aboard, leaning over the gunwale and looking down into the sea, saw the reflection of the mountain. At the top of a high cliff, some three or four hundred feet above them, a tiger crouched, watching for prey, its image reflected in the water. He alerted the others, and they hurriedly called the water gatherers aboard. Each took an oar, and they hastened to pull away. Just then the tiger sprang down toward the boat, but the boat was moving swiftly, and while the tiger was falling it drew farther away. The tiger fell some ten feet short and plunged into the sea. As they rowed hurriedly away, they kept their eyes on it. After a little while, it surfaced and swam toward land. They watched it climb onto a flat rock at the water’s edge and saw that its left foreleg had been bitten off above the knee, leaving blood streaming from the wound. A crocodile must have bitten it off, they realized. The tiger lay sprawled there with the stump dipped in the water. As they watched, wondering what it meant to do, they saw a crocodile coming toward it from out at sea. The tiger drove the claws of its right forepaw into the crocodile’s head and flung it ashore, sending it some ten feet up the beach. As the crocodile floundered on its back, the tiger sprang upon it and seized it beneath the jaw. Two or three shakes left it limp. Then, slinging it over its shoulder, the tiger climbed a rock face fifty or sixty feet high, sheer as an upright hand, using its three legs as easily as if it were running downhill. Watching this feat, those aboard the boat were half dead with terror. Had it landed among them, they thought, what could they possibly have done against such strength and speed, even if they had drawn their finest swords to face it? Their courage utterly deserted them, and they returned to Tsukushi scarcely able to keep their minds on the oars—or so the story goes.