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Aesop’s Fables
23. TWO TRAVELLERS AND But the man wasn’t afraid any more. He
listened as his friend told him all about his
A BEAR
fight with the bear. ‘It was very big,’ he
boasted. ‘Twice as big as me. But I picked
By Sue Reid
up a stick and fought it off.’
One cold winter’s day two friends set off
to travel to the town. They talked and All of a sudden there was an enormous
laughed as they strode along. It was crash. And out of the bushes lumbered -
cold and snow was falling but the two a bear! The men had never seen such a
men hardly noticed - they were enjoying huge bear. When it saw the men it licked
each other’s company so much. What its lips. ‘At last!’ it said, standing up on its
a pleasant fellow he is, each of them hind legs and growling. ‘Dinner!’
thought. I’m glad that we are travelling
together. With a cry of fright, the friend ran to the
nearest tree and hauled himself up onto
The road to the town lay through a forest. a branch.
It was late by the time the men reached it.
‘Aren’t you going to fight it?’ the man cried.
‘We should turn back,’ one of them said to
the other nervously. ‘It’ll soon be dark and ‘Fight it! You must be mad,’ said his friend.
there are bears in that forest.’ ‘It will kill us.’
His friend was just as scared as he was. The man ran up to the tree where his
But didn’t want his friend to know. So he friend crouched, trembling. ‘There’s room
laughed. ‘Pah! Bears. That’s nothing to for us both in that tree,’ he cried. ‘Help me
be afraid of. I fought a bear once - and he up.’
ran away.’
But his friend pushed him away. ‘No there
The other man felt ashamed of himself. I isn’t. Find somewhere else to hide,’ he
am a coward, but he is brave, he thought. said.
‘Then we’ll go on,’ he said.
‘What shall I do?’ the man thought.
It was very dark in that forest. The trees
grew close together. It was hard to see the
road clearly. It was hard to see anything
at all!
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The bear was so close now he could have And with that he turned away, leaving the
stretched out a hand and touched it. ‘If I other to make his own way home.
try to run it will run faster. If I fight it, it will 
kill me. It is bigger and stronger than me.’
He flung himself to the ground and lay
there, as still as he could. ‘Perhaps it will
leave me alone,’ he thought, ‘if it thinks I
am dead.’
The bear was very hungry. It hadn’t eaten
for a long time. But it was puzzled when
it saw the man drop to the ground. ‘Is he
dead?’ it wondered. ‘Let me see.’
It bent down, so close that the man could
feel its fur brush his cheek. Then it put out
a paw and prodded him. The man lay still,
his heart pounding. ‘Any minute now,’ he
thought, ‘that bear will tear me to pieces.’
But the bear got up. ‘He hasn’t moved.
He must be dead,’ it thought. ‘And I don’t
like dead meat.’ And it ambled away sadly
into the forest.
The man got up and dusted himself down.
He didn’t look at his friend. He was very
angry with him. He had pretended to be
brave, but he was a coward. He had left
him to face the bear on his own.
‘I saw the bear whisper in your ear,’ the
friend said climbing down from the tree.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said a man who leaves his friend to
face danger isn’t a true friend.’
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