with the right hand, with all five
fingers of his right hand, and lo and behold, Best Beloved, Pau Amma
grew smaller and smaller and smaller, till at last there was only a
little green crab swimming in the water alongside the canoe, crying in a
very small voice, 'Give me the scissors!'

And the girl-daughter picked him up on the palm of her little brown
hand, and sat him in the bottom of the canoe and gave him her scissors,
and he waved them in his little arms, and opened them and shut them and
snapped them, and said, 'I can eat nuts. I can crack shells. I can dig
holes. I can climb trees. I can breathe in the dry air, and I can find
a safe Pusat Tasek under every stone. I did not know I was so important.
Kun?' (Is this right?)

'Payah-kun,' said the Eldest Magician, and he laughed and gave him his
blessing; and little Pau Amma scuttled over the side of the canoe into
the water; and he was so tiny that he could have hidden under the shadow
of a dry leaf on land or of a dead shell at the bottom of the sea.

'Was that well done?' said the Eldest Magician.

'Yes,' said the Man. 'But now we must go back to Perak, and that is
a weary way to paddle. If we had waited till Pau Amma had gone out of
Pusat Tasek and come home, the water would have carried us there by
itself.'

'You are lazy,' said the Eldest Magician. 'So your children shall be
lazy. They shall be the laziest people in the world. They shall be
called the Malazy--the lazy people;' and he held up his finger to the
Moon and said, 'O Fisherman, here is the Man too lazy to row home. Pull
his canoe home with your line, Fisherman.'

'No,' said the Man. 'If I am to be lazy all my days, let the Sea work
for me twice a day for ever. That will save paddling.'

And the Eldest Magician laughed and said, 'Payah kun' (That is right).

And the Rat of the Moon stopped biting the line; and the Fisherman let
his line down till it touched the Sea, and he pulled the whole deep Sea
along, past the Island of Bintang, past Singapore, past Malacca, past
Selangor, till the canoe whirled into the mouth of the Perak River
again. Kun?' said the Fisherman of the Moon.

'Payah kun,' said the Eldest Magician. 'See now that you pull the Sea
twice a day and twice a night for ever, so that the Malazy fishermen may
be saved paddling. But be careful not to do it too hard, or I shall make
a magic on you as I did to Pau Amma.'

Then they all went up the Perak River and went to bed, Best Belo