The Jungle Book 8 page

he remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose,

and if he wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he

must keep himself thin.

He went away for a dust bath under the castor-oil bushes,

while Teddy’s father beat the dead Karait. ‘What is the use

of that?’ thought Rikki-tikki. ‘I have settled it all;’ and then

Teddy’s mother picked him up from the dust and hugged

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him, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Ted-

dy’s father said that he was a providence, and Teddy looked

on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at

all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand. Ted-

dy’s mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing

in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly enjoying himself.

That night at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-

glasses on the table, he might have stuffed himself three

times over with nice things. But he remembered Nag and

Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted and

petted by Teddy’s mother, and to sit on Teddy’s shoulder, his

eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off

into his long war cry of ‘Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!’

Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki

sleeping under his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred to

bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he went off

for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark he ran

up against Chuchundra, the musk-rat, creeping around by

the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. He

whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his

mind to run into the middle of the room. But he never gets

there.

‘Don’t kill me,’ said Chuchundra, almost weeping. ‘Rik-

ki-tikki, don’t kill me!’

‘Do you think a snake-killer kills muskrats?’ said Rikki-

tikki scornfully.

‘Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,’ said Chuc-

hundra, more sorrowfully than ever. ‘And how am I to be

sure that Nag won’t mistake me for you some dark night?’

The Jungle Book

‘There’s not the least danger,’ said Rikki-tikki. ‘But Nag

is in the garden, and I know you don’t go there.’

‘My cousin Chua, the rat, told me—’ said Chuchundra,

and then he stopped.

‘Told you what?’

‘H’sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have

talked to Chua in the garden.’

‘I didn’t—so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or

I’ll bite you!’

Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off

his whiskers. ‘I am a very poor man,’ he sobbed. ‘I never had

spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room. H’sh! I

mustn’t tell you anything. Can’t you hear, Rikki-tikki?’

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but

he thought he could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch

in the world—a noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a

window-pane—the dry scratch of a snake’s scales on brick-

work.

‘That’s Nag or Nagaina,’ he said to himself, ‘and he is

crawling into the bath-room sluice. You’re right, Chuchun-

dra; I should have talked to Chua.’

He stole off to Teddy’s bath-room, but there was noth-

ing there, and then to Teddy’s mother’s bathroom. At the

bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled

out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as Rikki-tikki

stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard

Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside in the moon-

light.

‘When the house is emptied of people,’ said Nagaina to

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her husband, ‘he will have to go away, and then the garden

will be our own again. Go in quietly, and remember that the

big man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then come

out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.’

‘But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by

killing the people?’ said Nag.

‘Everything. When there were no people in the bunga-

low, did we have any mongoose in the garden? So long as

the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the gar-

den; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon

bed hatch (as they may tomorrow), our children will need

room and quiet.’

‘I had not thought of that,’ said Nag. ‘I will go, but there

is no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I

will kill the big man and his wife, and the child if I can, and

come away quietly. Then the bungalow will be empty, and

Rikki-tikki will go.’

Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this,

and then Nag’s head came through the sluice, and his five

feet of cold body followed it. Angry as he was, Rikki-tikki

was very frightened as he saw the size of the big cobra. Nag

coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bath-

room in the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes glitter.

‘Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight

him on the open floor, the odds are in his favor. What am I

to do?’ said Rikki-tikki-tavi.

Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him

drinking from the biggest water-jar that was used to fill the

bath. ‘That is good,’ said the snake. ‘Now, when Karait was

The Jungle Book

killed, the big man had a stick. He may have that stick still,

but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not

have a stick. I shall wait here till he comes. Nagaina—do

you hear me?—I shall wait here in the cool till daytime.’

There was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew

Nagaina had gone away. Nag coiled himself down, coil by

coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water jar, and

Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he began to

move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag was asleep,

and Rikki-tikki looked at his big back, wondering which

would be the best place for a good hold. ‘If I don’t break his

back at the first jump,’ said Rikki, ‘he can still fight. And if

he fights—O Rikki!’ He looked at the thickness of the neck

below the hood, but that was too much for him; and a bite

near the tail would only make Nag savage.

‘It must be the head‘‘ he said at last; ‘the head above the

hood. And, when I am once there, I must not let go.’

Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the

water jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki

braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to

hold down the head. This gave him just one second’s pur-

chase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered

to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog—to and fro on the

floor, up and down, and around in great circles, but his eyes

were red and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the

floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap dish and the

flesh brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath. As

he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made

sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honor of his

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family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He

was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when some-

thing went off like a thunderclap just behind him. A hot

wind knocked him senseless and red fire singed his fur. The

big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both

barrels of a shotgun into Nag just behind the hood.

Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was

quite sure he was dead. But the head did not move, and the

big man picked him up and said, ‘It’s the mongoose again,

Alice. The little chap has saved our lives now.’

Then Teddy’s mother came in with a very white face, and

saw what was left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged him-

self to Teddy’s bedroom and spent half the rest of the night

shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he really was

broken into forty pieces, as he fancied.

When morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased

with his doings. ‘Now I have Nagaina to settle with, and she

will be worse than five Nags, and there’s no knowing when

the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness! I must go and

see Darzee,’ he said.

Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the

thornbush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph at

the top of his voice. The news of Nag’s death was all over the

garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on the rub-

bish-heap.

‘Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!’ said Rikki-tikki angrily.

‘Is this the time to sing?’

‘Nag is dead—is dead—is dead!’ sang Darzee. ‘The val-

iant Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast. The

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big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell in two pieces!

He will never eat my babies again.’

‘All that’s true enough. But where’s Nagaina?’ said Rikki-

tikki, looking carefully round him.

‘Nagaina came to the bathroom sluice and called for

Nag,’ Darzee went on, ‘and Nag came out on the end of

a stick—the sweeper picked him up on the end of a stick

and threw him upon the rubbish heap. Let us sing about

the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki!’ And Darzee filled his

throat and sang.

‘If I could get up to your nest, I’d roll your babies out!’

said Rikki-tikki. ‘You don’t know when to do the right thing

at the right time. You’re safe enough in your nest there, but

it’s war for me down here. Stop singing a minute, Darzee.’

‘For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki’s sake I will stop,’

said Darzee. ‘What is it, O Killer of the terrible Nag?’

‘Where is Nagaina, for the third time?’

‘On the rubbish heap by the stables, mourning for Nag.

Great is Rikki-tikki with the white teeth.’

‘Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she

keeps her eggs?’

‘In the melon bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the

sun strikes nearly all day. She hid them there weeks ago.’

‘And you never thought it worth while to tell me? The

end nearest the wall, you said?’

‘Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?’

‘Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense

you will fly off to the stables and pretend that your wing is

broken, and let Nagaina chase you away to this bush. I must

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get to the melon-bed, and if I went there now she’d see me.’

Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could

never hold more than one idea at a time in his head. And

just because he knew that Nagaina’s children were born in

eggs like his own, he didn’t think at first that it was fair to

kill them. But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew

that cobra’s eggs meant young cobras later on. So she flew

off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm,

and continue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was

very like a man in some ways.

She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap

and cried out, ‘Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house

threw a stone at me and broke it.’ Then she fluttered more

desperately than ever.

Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, ‘You warned Rik-

ki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and truly,

you’ve chosen a bad place to be lame in.’ And she moved to-

ward Darzee’s wife, slipping along over the dust.

‘The boy broke it with a stone!’ shrieked Darzee’s wife.

‘Well! It may be some consolation to you when you’re

dead to know that I shall settle accounts with the boy. My

husband lies on the rubbish heap this morning, but before

night the boy in the house will lie very still. What is the use

of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at

me!’Darzee’s wife knew better than to do that, for a bird

who looks at a snake’s eyes gets so frightened that she can-

not move. Darzee’s wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully,

and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina quickened her

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pace.

Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the sta-

bles, and he raced for the end of the melon patch near the

wall. There, in the warm litter above the melons, very cun-

ningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a

bantam’s eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell.

‘I was not a day too soon,’ he said, for he could see the

baby cobras curled up inside the skin, and he knew that the

minute they were hatched they could each kill a man or a

mongoose. He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could,

taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over

the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed

any. At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki

began to chuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee’s wife

screaming:

‘Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has

gone into the veranda, and—oh, come quickly—she means

killing!’

Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward

down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and

scuttled to the veranda as hard as he could put foot to the

ground. Teddy and his mother and father were there at ear-

ly breakfast, but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating

anything. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white.

Nagaina was coiled up on the matting by Teddy’s chair,

within easy striking distance of Teddy’s bare leg, and she

was swaying to and fro, singing a song of triumph.

‘Son of the big man that killed Nag,’ she hissed, ‘stay

still. I am not ready yet. Wait a little. Keep very still, all you

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three! If you move I strike, and if you do not move I strike.

Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!’

Teddy’s eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father

could do was to whisper, ‘Sit still, Teddy. You mustn’t move.

Teddy, keep still.’

Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried, ‘Turn round, Na-

gaina. Turn and fight!’

‘All in good time,’ said she, without moving her eyes.

‘I will settle my account with you presently. Look at your

friends, Rikki-tikki. They are still and white. They are

afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer

I strike.’

‘Look at your eggs,’ said Rikki-tikki, ‘in the melon bed

near the wall. Go and look, Nagaina!’

The big snake turned half around, and saw the egg on the

veranda. ‘Ah-h! Give it to me,’ she said.

Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and

his eyes were blood-red. ‘What price for a snake’s egg? For a

young cobra? For a young king cobra? For the last—the very

last of the brood? The ants are eating all the others down by

the melon bed.’

Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the

sake of the one egg. Rikki-tikki saw Teddy’s father shoot

out a big hand, catch Teddy by the shoulder, and drag him

across the little table with the tea-cups, safe and out of reach

of Nagaina.

‘Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tck-tck!’ chuckled Rik-

ki-tikki. ‘The boy is safe, and it was I—I—I that caught Nag

by the hood last night in the bathroom.’ Then he began to

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jump up and down, all four feet together, his head close to

the floor. ‘He threw me to and fro, but he could not shake

me off. He was dead before the big man blew him in two. I

did it! Rikki-tikki-tck-tck! Come then, Nagaina. Come and

fight with me. You shall not be a widow long.’

Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Ted-

dy, and the egg lay between Rikki-tikki’s paws. ‘Give me

the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I will

go away and never come back,’ she said, lowering her hood.

‘Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back. For

you will go to the rubbish heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The

big man has gone for his gun! Fight!’

Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping

just out of reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals.

Nagaina gathered herself together and flung out at him.

Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and again and

again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack

on the matting of the veranda and she gathered herself to-

gether like a watch spring. Then Rikki-tikki danced in a

circle to get behind her, and Nagaina spun round to keep

her head to his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the mat-

ting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.

He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and

Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rik-

ki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth,

turned to the veranda steps, and flew like an arrow down

the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When the cobra runs

for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked across a horse’s

neck.

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Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trou-

ble would begin again. She headed straight for the long

grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running Rikki-tikki

heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of triumph.

But Darzee’s wife was wiser. She flew off her nest as Nagaina

came along, and flapped her wings about Nagaina’s head. If

Darzee had helped they might have turned her, but Nagaina

only lowered her hood and went on. Still, the instant’s delay

brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the

rat-hole where she and Nag used to live, his little white teeth

were clenched on her tail, and he went down with her—and

very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be,

care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole;

and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and

give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him. He held on

savagely, and stuck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark

slope of the hot, moist earth.

Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving,

and Darzee said, ‘It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We must

sing his death song. Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead! For Nagai-

na will surely kill him underground.’

So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the

spur of the minute, and just as he got to the most touch-

ing part, the grass quivered again, and Rikki-tikki, covered

with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg by leg, licking

his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki

shook some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed. ‘It is all

over,’ he said. ‘The widow will never come out again.’ And

the red ants that live between the grass stems heard him,

The Jungle Book

and began to troop down one after another to see if he had

spoken the truth.

Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept

where he was—slept and slept till it was late in the after-

noon, for he had done a hard day’s work.

‘Now,’ he said, when he awoke, ‘I will go back to the

house. Tell the Coppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the

garden that Nagaina is dead.’

The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like

the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and the rea-

son he is always making it is because he is the town crier

to every Indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody

who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the path, he

heard his ‘attention’ notes like a tiny dinner gong, and then

the steady ‘Ding-dong-tock! Nag is dead—dong! Nagaina is

dead! Ding-dong-tock!’ That set all the birds in the garden

singing, and the frogs croaking, for Nag and Nagaina used

to eat frogs as well as little birds.

When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy’s mother

(she looked very white still, for she had been fainting) and

Teddy’s father came out and almost cried over him; and that

night he ate all that was given him till he could eat no more,

and went to bed on Teddy’s shoulder, where Teddy’s mother

saw him when she came to look late at night.

‘He saved our lives and Teddy’s life,’ she said to her hus-

band. ‘Just think, he saved all our lives.’

Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are

light sleepers.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said he. ‘What are you bothering for? All

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the cobras are dead. And if they weren’t, I’m here.’

Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself. But he did

not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose

should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till

never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.

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Darzee’s Chant

(Sung in honor of Rikki-tikki-tavi)

Singer and tailor am I—

Doubled the joys that I know—

Proud of my lilt to the sky,

Proud of the house that I sew—

Over and under, so weave I my music—so weave I the house

that I sew.

Sing to your fledglings again,

Mother, oh lift up your head!

Evil that plagued us is slain,

Death in the garden lies dead.

Terror that hid in the roses is impotent—flung on the dung-

hill and dead!

Who has delivered us, who?

Tell me his nest and his name.

Rikki, the valiant, the true,

Tikki, with eyebal s of flame,

Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyebal s of

flame!

Give him the Thanks of the Birds,

Bowing with tail feathers spread!

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Praise him with nightingale words—

Nay, I will praise him instead.

Hear! I will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed Rikki, with

eyebal s of red!

(Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is

lost.)

The Jungle Book

Toomai of the Elephants

I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain—

I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.

I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane:

I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.

I will go out until the day, until the morning break—

Out to the wind’s untainted kiss, the water’s clean caress;

I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.

I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!

Kala Nag, which means Black Snake, had served the In-

dian Government in every way that an elephant could serve

it for forty-seven years, and as he was fully twenty years old

when he was caught, that makes him nearly seventy—a ripe

age for an elephant. He remembered pushing, with a big

leather pad on his forehead, at a gun stuck in deep mud,

and that was before the Afghan War of 1842, and he had not

then come to his full strength.

His mother Radha Pyari,—Radha the darling,—who had

been caught in the same drive with Kala Nag, told him, be-

fore his little milk tusks had dropped out, that elephants

who were afraid always got hurt. Kala Nag knew that that

advice was good, for the first time that he saw a shell burst

he backed, screaming, into a stand of piled rifles, and the

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bayonets pricked him in all his softest places. So, before he

was twenty-five, he gave up being afraid, and so he was the

best-loved and the best-looked-after elephant in the service

of the Government of India. He had carried tents, twelve

hundred pounds’ weight of tents, on the march in Upper

India. He had been hoisted into a ship at the end of a steam

crane and taken for days across the water, and made to car-

ry a mortar on his back in a strange and rocky country very

far from India, and had seen the Emperor Theodore lying

dead in Magdala, and had come back again in the steamer

entitled, so the soldiers said, to the Abyssinian War medal.

He had seen his fellow elephants die of cold and epilepsy

and starvation and sunstroke up at a place called Ali Mus-

jid, ten years later; and afterward he had been sent down

thousands of miles south to haul and pile big balks of teak

in the timberyards at Moulmein. There he had half killed

an insubordinate young elephant who was shirking his fair

share of work.

After that he was taken off timber-hauling, and em-

ployed, with a few score other elephants who were trained

to the business, in helping to catch wild elephants among

the Garo hills. Elephants are very strictly preserved by the

Indian Government. There is one whole department which

does nothing else but hunt them, and catch them, and break

them in, and send them up and down the country as they

are needed for work.

Kala Nag stood ten fair feet at the shoulders, and his

tusks had been cut off short at five feet, and bound round

the ends, to prevent them splitting, with bands of copper;

The Jungle Book

but he could do more with those stumps than any untrained

elephant could do with the real sharpened ones. When,

after weeks and weeks of cautious driving of scattered ele-

phants across the hills, the forty or fifty wild monsters were

driven into the last stockade, and the big drop gate, made

of tree trunks lashed together, jarred down behind them,

Kala Nag, at the word of command, would go into that flar-

ing, trumpeting pandemonium (generally at night, when

the flicker of the torches made it difficult to judge distanc-

es), and, picking out the biggest and wildest tusker of the

mob, would hammer him and hustle him into quiet while

the men on the backs of the other elephants roped and tied

the smaller ones.

There was nothing in the way of fighting that Kala Nag,

the old wise Black Snake, did not know, for he had stood up

more than once in his time to the charge of the wounded

tiger, and, curling up his soft trunk to be out of harm’s way,

had knocked the springing brute sideways in mid-air with a

quick sickle cut of his head, that he had invented all by him-

self; had knocked him over, and kneeled upon him with his

huge knees till the life went out with a gasp and a howl, and

there was only a fluffy striped thing on the ground for Kala

Nag to pull by the tail.

‘Yes,’ said Big Toomai, his driver, the son of Black Toomai

who had taken him to Abyssinia, and grandson of Toomai

of the Elephants who had seen him caught, ‘there is noth-

ing that the Black Snake fears except me. He has seen three

generations of us feed him and groom him, and he will live

to see four.’

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‘He is afraid of me also,’ said Little Toomai, standing up

to his full height of four feet, with only one rag upon him.

He was ten years old, the eldest son of Big Toomai, and, ac-

cording to custom, he would take his father’s place on Kala

Nag’s neck when he grew up, and would handle the heavy

iron ankus, the elephant goad, that had been worn smooth

by his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfa-

ther.

He knew what he was talking of; for he had been born

under Kala Nag’s shadow, had played with the end of his

trunk before he could walk, had taken him down to water

as soon as he could walk, and Kala Nag would no more have

dreamed of disobeying his shrill little orders than he would

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