two piggy eyes, and few manners. In those days the Rhinoceros's skin
fitted him quite tight. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere. He looked
exactly like a Noah's Ark Rhinoceros, but of course much bigger. All the
same, he had no manners then, and he has no manners now, and he never
will have any manners. He said, 'How!' and the Parsee left that cake and
climbed to the top of a palm tree with nothing on but his hat, from
which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more-than-oriental
splendour. And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the
cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his
nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate
and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of
Mazanderan, Socotra, and the Promontories of the Larger Equinox. Then
the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs
and recited the following _Sloka_, which, as you have not heard, I will
now proceed to relate:--

Them that takes cakes
Which the Parsee-man bakes
Makes dreadful mistakes.

And there was a great deal more in that than you would think.

_Because_, five weeks later, there was a heat-wave in the Red Sea, and
everybody took off all the clothes they had. The Parsee took off his
hat; but the Rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his
shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe. In those days it
buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof. He
said nothing whatever about the Parsee's cake, because he had eaten it
all; and he never had any manners, then, since, or henceforward. He
waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose,
leaving his skin on the beach.

[Illustration: THIS is the picture of the Parsee beginning to eat his
cake on the Uninhabited Island in the Red Sea on a very hot day; and of
the Rhinoceros coming down from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior,
which, as you can truthfully see, is all rocky. The Rhinoceros's skin is
quite smooth, and the three buttons that button it up are underneath, so
you can't see them. The squiggly things on the Parsee's hat are the rays
of the sun reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, because if I had
drawn real rays they would have filled up all the picture. The cake has
currants in it; and the wheel-thing lying on the sand in front belonged
to one of Pharaoh's chariots when he tried to cross