My greatest treasure in the world floated in the box, midway between the surface and the copper bottom. In the cold of the north, the honey had become solid and borne him up, but now in Africa it was liquid again, though he had not settled to the bottom. He must be full of gas. I reached down into the honey and I put my hands behind his armpits, as I had when he was young and barked his shin or took fright at an angry bee. I touched his skin and began to weep, and he was so heavy that I could not bring him up. I hauled on him and felt the muscles in my back turn from strength to agony to exhaustion, and still he would not come. He was always stubborn. I simply kept reaching for him, because I was his mother. It took an hour, in that last embrace, before his head and shoulders slipped free, and then he sighed, as if I had said something particularly foolish.