The Jungle Book 7 page

And Kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty) and

said, ‘I am the only white seal that has ever been born on

the beaches, and I am the only seal, black or white, who ever

thought of looking for new islands.’

This cheered him immensely; and when he came back

to Novastoshnah that summer, Matkah, his mother, begged

him to marry and settle down, for he was no longer a hol-

luschick but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly white mane

on his shoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his father.

‘Give me another season,’ he said. ‘Remember, Mother, it is

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach.’

Curiously enough, there was another seal who thought

that she would put off marrying till the next year, and

Kotick danced the Fire-dance with her all down Lukannon

Beach the night before he set off on his last exploration. This

time he went westward, because he had fallen on the trail

of a great shoal of halibut, and he needed at least one hun-

dred pounds of fish a day to keep him in good condition. He

chased them till he was tired, and then he curled himself up

and went to sleep on the hollows of the ground swell that

sets in to Copper Island. He knew the coast perfectly well,

so about midnight, when he felt himself gently bumped on

a weed-bed, he said, ‘Hm, tide’s running strong tonight,’

and turning over under water opened his eyes slowly and

stretched. Then he jumped like a cat, for he saw huge things

nosing about in the shoal water and browsing on the heavy

fringes of the weeds.

‘By the Great Combers of Magellan!’ he said, beneath his

mustache. ‘Who in the Deep Sea are these people?’

They were like no walrus, sea lion, seal, bear, whale,

shark, fish, squid, or scallop that Kotick had ever seen be-

fore. They were between twenty and thirty feet long, and

they had no hind flippers, but a shovel-like tail that looked

as if it had been whittled out of wet leather. Their heads were

the most foolish-looking things you ever saw, and they bal-

anced on the ends of their tails in deep water when they

weren’t grazing, bowing solemnly to each other and waving

their front flippers as a fat man waves his arm.

‘Ahem!’ said Kotick. ‘Good sport, gentlemen?’ The big

The Jungle Book

things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like

the Frog Footman. When they began feeding again Kotick

saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces that they

could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again

with a whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. They

tucked the stuff into their mouths and chumped solemnly.

‘Messy style of feeding, that,’ said Kotick. They bowed

again, and Kotick began to lose his temper. ‘Very good,’ he

said. ‘If you do happen to have an extra joint in your front

flipper you needn’t show off so. I see you bow gracefully,

but I should like to know your names.’ The split lips moved

and twitched; and the glassy green eyes stared, but they did

not speak.

‘Well!’ said Kotick. ‘You’re the only people I’ve ever met

uglier than Sea Vitch—and with worse manners.’

Then he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster

gull had screamed to him when he was a little yearling at

Walrus Islet, and he tumbled backward in the water, for he

knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.

The sea cows went on schlooping and grazing and

chumping in the weed, and Kotick asked them questions in

every language that he had picked up in his travels; and the

Sea People talk nearly as many languages as human beings.

But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot

talk. He has only six bones in his neck where he ought to

have seven, and they say under the sea that that prevents

him from speaking even to his companions. But, as you

know, he has an extra joint in his foreflipper, and by waving

it up and down and about he makes what answers to a sort

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

of clumsy telegraphic code.

By daylight Kotick’s mane was standing on end and his

temper was gone where the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow

began to travel northward very slowly, stopping to hold

absurd bowing councils from time to time, and Kotick fol-

lowed them, saying to himself, ‘People who are such idiots

as these are would have been killed long ago if they hadn’t

found out some safe island. And what is good enough for

the Sea Cow is good enough for the Sea Catch. All the same,

I wish they’d hurry.’

It was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more

than forty or fifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night,

and kept close to the shore all the time; while Kotick swam

round them, and over them, and under them, but he could

not hurry them up one-half mile. As they went farther north

they held a bowing council every few hours, and Kotick

nearly bit off his mustache with impatience till he saw that

they were following up a warm current of water, and then

he respected them more.

One night they sank through the shiny water—sank like

stones—and for the first time since he had known them

began to swim quickly. Kotick followed, and the pace aston-

ished him, for he never dreamed that Sea Cow was anything

of a swimmer. They headed for a cliff by the shore—a cliff

that ran down into deep water, and plunged into a dark hole

at the foot of it, twenty fathoms under the sea. It was a long,

long swim, and Kotick badly wanted fresh air before he was

out of the dark tunnel they led him through.

‘My wig!’ he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into

The Jungle Book

open water at the farther end. ‘It was a long dive, but it was

worth it.’

The sea cows had separated and were browsing lazily

along the edges of the finest beaches that Kotick had ever

seen. There were long stretches of smooth-worn rock run-

ning for miles, exactly fitted to make seal-nurseries, and

there were play-grounds of hard sand sloping inland behind

them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and long

grass to roll in, and sand dunes to climb up and down, and,

best of all, Kotick knew by the feel of the water, which never

deceives a true sea catch, that no men had ever come there.

The first thing he did was to assure himself that the fish-

ing was good, and then he swam along the beaches and

counted up the delightful low sandy islands half hidden in

the beautiful rolling fog. Away to the northward, out to sea,

ran a line of bars and shoals and rocks that would never let

a ship come within six miles of the beach, and between the

islands and the mainland was a stretch of deep water that

ran up to the perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the

cliffs was the mouth of the tunnel.

‘It’s Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better,’ said

Kotick. ‘Sea Cow must be wiser than I thought. Men can’t

come down the cliffs, even if there were any men; and the

shoals to seaward would knock a ship to splinters. If any

place in the sea is safe, this is it.’

He began to think of the seal he had left behind him, but

though he was in a hurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he

thoroughly explored the new country, so that he would be

able to answer all questions.

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

Then he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel,

and raced through to the southward. No one but a sea cow

or a seal would have dreamed of there being such a place,

and when he looked back at the cliffs even Kotick could

hardly believe that he had been under them.

He was six days going home, though he was not swim-

ming slowly; and when he hauled out just above Sea Lion’s

Neck the first person he met was the seal who had been

waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyes that he

had found his island at last.

But the holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all

the other seals laughed at him when he told them what he

had discovered, and a young seal about his own age said,

‘This is all very well, Kotick, but you can’t come from no one

knows where and order us off like this. Remember we’ve

been fighting for our nurseries, and that’s a thing you never

did. You preferred prowling about in the sea.’

The other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began

twisting his head from side to side. He had just married that

year, and was making a great fuss about it.

‘I’ve no nursery to fight for,’ said Kotick. ‘I only want to

show you all a place where you will be safe. What’s the use

of fighting?’

‘Oh, if you’re trying to back out, of course I’ve no more to

say,’ said the young seal with an ugly chuckle.

‘Will you come with me if I win?’ said Kotick. And a

green light came into his eye, for he was very angry at hav-

ing to fight at all.

‘Very good,’ said the young seal carelessly. ‘If you win,

The Jungle Book

I’ll come.’

He had no time to change his mind, for Kotick’s head

was out and his teeth sunk in the blubber of the young seal’s

neck. Then he threw himself back on his haunches and

hauled his enemy down the beach, shook him, and knocked

him over. Then Kotick roared to the seals: ‘I’ve done my

best for you these five seasons past. I’ve found you the is-

land where you’ll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged

off your silly necks you won’t believe. I’m going to teach you

now. Look out for yourselves!’

Limmershin told me that never in his life—and Limmer-

shin sees ten thousand big seals fighting every year—never

in all his little life did he see anything like Kotick’s charge

into the nurseries. He flung himself at the biggest sea catch

he could find, caught him by the throat, choked him and

bumped him and banged him till he grunted for mercy, and

then threw him aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotick

had never fasted for four months as the big seals did every

year, and his deep-sea swimming trips kept him in perfect

condition, and, best of all, he had never fought before. His

curly white mane stood up with rage, and his eyes flamed,

and his big dog teeth glistened, and he was splendid to look

at. Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing past, haul-

ing the grizzled old seals about as though they had been

halibut, and upsetting the young bachelors in all directions;

and Sea Catch gave a roar and shouted: ‘He may be a fool,

but he is the best fighter on the beaches! Don’t tackle your

father, my son! He’s with you!’

Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

with his mustache on end, blowing like a locomotive, while

Matkah and the seal that was going to marry Kotick cowered

down and admired their men-folk. It was a gorgeous fight,

for the two fought as long as there was a seal that dared lift

up his head, and when there were none they paraded grand-

ly up and down the beach side by side, bellowing.

At night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and

flashing through the fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and

looked down on the scattered nurseries and the torn and

bleeding seals. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ve taught you your lesson.’

‘My wig!’ said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiff-

ly, for he was fearfully mauled. ‘The Killer Whale himself

could not have cut them up worse. Son, I’m proud of you,

and what’s more, I’ll come with you to your island—if there

is such a place.’

‘Hear you, fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to

the Sea Cow’s tunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again,’

roared Kotick.

There was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and

down the beaches. ‘We will come,’ said thousands of tired

voices. ‘We will follow Kotick, the White Seal.’

Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and

shut his eyes proudly. He was not a white seal any more, but

red from head to tail. All the same he would have scorned

to look at or touch one of his wounds.

A week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand hol-

luschickie and old seals) went away north to the Sea Cow’s

tunnel, Kotick leading them, and the seals that stayed at No-

vastoshnah called them idiots. But next spring, when they

The Jungle Book

all met off the fishing banks of the Pacific, Kotick’s seals

told such tales of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow’s tun-

nel that more and more seals left Novastoshnah. Of course

it was not all done at once, for the seals are not very clev-

er, and they need a long time to turn things over in their

minds, but year after year more seals went away from No-

vastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other nurseries, to the

quiet, sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all the summer

through, getting bigger and fatter and stronger each year,

while the holluschickie play around him, in that sea where

no man comes.

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

Lukannon

This is the great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals

sing when they are heading back to their beaches in the

summer. It is a sort of very sad seal National Anthem.

I met my mates in the morning (and, oh, but I am old!)

Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rol ed;

I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers’ song—

The Beaches of Lukannon—two mil ion voices strong.

The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,

The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,

The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame—

The Beaches of Lukannon—before the sealers came!

I met my mates in the morning (I’ll never meet them more!);

They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.

And o’er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach

We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.

The Beaches of Lukannon—the winter wheat so tal—

The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching al !

The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and

worn!

The Beaches of Lukannon—the home where we were born!

The Jungle Book

I met my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.

Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;

Men drive us to the Salt House like sil y sheep and tame,

And still we sing Lukannon—before the sealers came.

Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska, go!

And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe;

Ere, empty as the shark’s egg the tempest flings ashore,

The Beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”

At the hole where he went in

Red-Eye cal ed to Wrinkle-Skin.

Hear what little Red-Eye saith:

‘Nag, come up and dance with death!’

Eye to eye and head to head,

(Keep the measure, Nag.)

This shall end when one is dead;

(At thy pleasure, Nag.)

Turn for turn and twist for twist—

(Run and hide thee, Nag.)

Hah! The hooded Death has missed!

(Woe betide thee, Nag!)

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi

fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big

bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the Tailorbird,

helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never

comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps

round by the wall, gave him advice, but Rikki-tikki did the

real fighting.

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and

his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.

His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink. He could

The Jungle Book

scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or

back, that he chose to use. He could fluff up his tail till it

looked like a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled

through the long grass was: ‘Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!’

One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the

burrow where he lived with his father and mother, and car-

ried him, kicking and clucking, down a roadside ditch. He

found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till

he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot

sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed,

and a small boy was saying, ‘Here’s a dead mongoose. Let’s

have a funeral.’

‘No,’ said his mother, ‘let’s take him in and dry him. Per-

haps he isn’t really dead.’

They took him into the house, and a big man picked him

up between his finger and thumb and said he was not dead

but half choked. So they wrapped him in cotton wool, and

warmed him over a little fire, and he opened his eyes and

sneezed.

‘Now,’ said the big man (he was an Englishman who had

just moved into the bungalow), ‘don’t frighten him, and

we’ll see what he’ll do.’

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mon-

goose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.

The motto of all the mongoose family is ‘Run and find out,’

and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the cot-

ton wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round

the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself,

and jumped on the small boy’s shoulder.

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

‘Don’t be frightened, Teddy,’ said his father. ‘That’s his

way of making friends.’

‘Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,’ said Teddy.

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s collar and

neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the floor,

where he sat rubbing his nose.

‘Good gracious,’ said Teddy’s mother, ‘and that’s a wild

creature! I suppose he’s so tame because we’ve been kind to

him.’

‘All mongooses are like that,’ said her husband. ‘If Teddy

doesn’t pick him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage,

he’ll run in and out of the house all day long. Let’s give him

something to eat.’

They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki

liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out

into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his

fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better.

‘There are more things to find out about in this house,’

he said to himself, ‘than all my family could find out in all

their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.’

He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly

drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink

on a writing table, and burned it on the end of the big man’s

cigar, for he climbed up in the big man’s lap to see how writ-

ing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy’s nursery to

watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy

went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too. But he was a rest-

less companion, because he had to get up and attend to

every noise all through the night, and find out what made it.

The Jungle Book

Teddy’s mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at

their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. ‘I don’t

like that,’ said Teddy’s mother. ‘He may bite the child.’ ‘He’ll

do no such thing,’ said the father. ‘Teddy’s safer with that

little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a

snake came into the nursery now—‘

But Teddy’s mother wouldn’t think of anything so aw-

ful.Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast

in the veranda riding on Teddy’s shoulder, and they gave

him banana and some boiled egg. He sat on all their laps

one after the other, because every well-brought-up mon-

goose always hopes to be a house mongoose some day and

have rooms to run about in; and Rikki-tikki’s mother (she

used to live in the general’s house at Segowlee) had carefully

told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what

was to be seen. It was a large garden, only half cultivated,

with bushes, as big as summer-houses, of Marshal Niel ros-

es, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets

of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. ‘This is a splendid

hunting-ground,’ he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at

the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden,

snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful voices

in a thorn-bush.

It was Darzee, the Tailorbird, and his wife. They had

made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and

stitching them up the edges with fibers, and had filled the

hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to and

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Rikki-tikki.

‘We are very miserable,’ said Darzee. ‘One of our babies

fell out of the nest yesterday and Nag ate him.’

‘H’m!’ said Rikki-tikki, ‘that is very sad—but I am a

stranger here. Who is Nag?’

Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest with-

out answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the

bush there came a low hiss—a horrid cold sound that made

Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out

of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the

big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to

tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the

ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dande-

lion tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki

with the wicked snake’s eyes that never change their expres-

sion, whatever the snake may be thinking of.

‘Who is Nag?’ said he. ‘I am Nag. The great God Brahm

put his mark upon all our people, when the first cobra

spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look,

and be afraid!’

He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki

saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly

like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid

for the minute, but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay

frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki

had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him

on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose’s

business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that

The Jungle Book

too and, at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid.

‘Well,’ said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up

again, ‘marks or no marks, do you think it is right for you to

eat fledglings out of a nest?’

Nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least lit-

tle movement in the grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that

mongooses in the garden meant death sooner or later for

him and his family, but he wanted to get Rikki-tikki off his

guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it on one

side.‘Let us talk,’ he said. ‘You eat eggs. Why should not I eat

birds?’

‘Behind you! Look behind you!’ sang Darzee.

Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring.

He jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and just un-

der him whizzed by the head of Nagaina, Nag’s wicked wife.

She had crept up behind him as he was talking, to make an

end of him. He heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed.

He came down almost across her back, and if he had been

an old mongoose he would have known that then was the

time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the

terrible lashing return stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed,

but did not bite long enough, and he jumped clear of the

whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and angry.

‘Wicked, wicked Darzee!’ said Nag, lashing up as high as

he could reach toward the nest in the thorn-bush. But Dar-

zee had built it out of reach of snakes, and it only swayed to

and fro.

Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

mongoose’s eyes grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on

his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all

round him, and chattered with rage. But Nag and Nagai-

na had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its

stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it

means to do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to follow them,

for he did not feel sure that he could manage two snakes at

once. So he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and

sat down to think. It was a serious matter for him.

If you read the old books of natural history, you will find

they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and hap-

pens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures

him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter of quick-

ness of eye and quickness of foot—snake’s blow against

mongoose’s jump—and as no eye can follow the motion of a

snake’s head when it strikes, this makes things much more

wonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a

young mongoose, and it made him all the more pleased to

think that he had managed to escape a blow from behind. It

gave him confidence in himself, and when Teddy came run-

ning down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.

But just as Teddy was stooping, something wriggled a

little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: ‘Be careful. I am

Death!’ It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies

for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous

as the cobra’s. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him,

and so he does the more harm to people.

Rikki-tikki’s eyes grew red again, and he danced up to

Karait with the peculiar rocking, swaying motion that he

The Jungle Book

had inherited from his family. It looks very funny, but it is

so perfectly balanced a gait that you can fly off from it at

any angle you please, and in dealing with snakes this is an

advantage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a

much more dangerous thing than fighting Nag, for Karait is

so small, and can turn so quickly, that unless Rikki bit him

close to the back of the head, he would get the return stroke

in his eye or his lip. But Rikki did not know. His eyes were

all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for a good

place to hold. Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and

tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed

within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over

the body, and the head followed his heels close.

Teddy shouted to the house: ‘Oh, look here! Our mon-

goose is killing a snake.’ And Rikki-tikki heard a scream

from Teddy’s mother. His father ran out with a stick, but

by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once too far,

and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake’s back,

dropped his head far between his forelegs, bitten as high up

the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite par-

alyzed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up

from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 785