Budweiserhotep looked with pleasure upon the fruits of the pitdiggers' work. The maw of the pit lay open and waiting for the brew. Other workers rolled bulging grey skins of brew to the edge of the pit and emptied all five skins of their content. Foamy beer lapped at the edge of the pit around its entire circumference.
Bud (as his workers called him, especially the ones prone to covert sips of brew from the skins before they were emptied)filled pottery bowls with beer and laid them in a line from the Nile's shore to the pit. Then the ponderous brewmaker wormed into a grey skin, put over his own head a large hippo head and waddled into the papyrus to wait. The workers rolled the now empty skins carts to an area near the pit in plain view of anything considering tasting the pit's content. It didn't matter, they thought. A cart is a cart is a cart. Then the workers hid as well.
They didn't have long to wait as the Great Hippo's keen sense of smell soon detected the presence of the brew. It left the waters of the Nile and sought out the first bowl of beer, slurrped it down and then sought out the next... and the next... and the next. In only moments it seemed the Great Hippo was standing at the edge of the beer-filled pit considering whether to drink or not.
GH sniffed the liquid and detected the subtle scent of hops, grain and sweet well water. But still the beast hesitated. Surprising the Great Hippo momentarily, Bud emerged from the papyrus and waddled over towards the pit, hippo head on his own and feet and hands on the ground. The Great Hippo bellowed a greeting to what he thought was one of his own. Bud couldn't bellow, so at the very edge of the pit he moved the hollow hippo head up and down as if to acknowledge the greeting.
The Great Hippo promptly accepted the gesture and plunged its great mouth into the beer and began to drink. Too bad for Bud, but moving the hippo head up and down cost him his balance and the beermaker fell head first, hippo skin and all, into the pit and the beer.
Startled, the Great Hippo reared backwards as it observed a desperate Bud trying to extricate himself from the costume before it took him down to the bottom of the pit. In so jumping, the Great Hippo elevated its head and saw the beer carts for the first time.
Witnesses to the devastation that followed could never completely agree as to whether the Great Hippo was more horrified by Bud and the costume, by the despoiling of the beer when the beermaker fell in, or by the recognition that the great grey skins now emptied of beer were formerly hippos. Regardless, once again workers scattered as GH took out his fury on anything and everyone within reach of its toothed mouth and ponderous feet.
This time, it was Pharaoh's prized grain farm nearby that absorbed the brunt of the hippo's fury. Pharaoh was not amused. Nefertoomuch was greatly relieved.
The Chief Advisor didn't need to be told. He led the next man to take up Pharaoh's challenge into the King's presence immediately after the beermaker's dismal failure was announced. "Pharaoh HipHopHotep, I present Wrapsalothotep, the greatest embalmer in all of Egypt."
"Fine," replied Pharaoh. "You see my daughter there. She is your reward." Nefertoomuch felt her skin chill and begin to crawl up and down her arms.
Wrapsalothotep looked the girl over. "Yes, sire, about a size 5. Thirty yards of linen wrap would be just fine. She's small enough. Six jars I would say. We can do up the hair with small braids and..."
"ENOUGH!" bellowed Pharaoh. "She is not a customer!"
"Oh no sire, I was simply admiring her beauty. I mean... if she were not the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, I would rate her only worth 20 yards. No, no, my King, she is a thirty yard beauty at least."
Pharaoh shook his head. "You know your mission, embalmer. Proceed!" And as Nefertoomuch looked on, Wrapsalothotep bowed to both, left the chamber and set about executing his plan to end the rampages of the Great Hippo.
[This message has been edited by Civis Romanus (edited 12-07-2000).]