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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Kipling Reader, by Rudyard Kipling
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Kipling Reader
Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Release Date: August 21, 2005 [EBook #16578]
Last updated: March 27, 2012
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KIPLING READER ***
Produced by Roy Brown
THE KIPLING READER
SELECTIONS FROM THE BOOKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING
NEW AND REVISED EDITION
MACMILLAN AND CO, LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1923
COPYRIGHT
First Edition 1900. Reprinted with corrections 1901.
Reprinted 1907, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1916, 1918 (twice),
1919 (twice), 1920, 1921, 1923.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
PROSE
'RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI'
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR PART I
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR PART II
WEE WILLIE WINKIE
A MATTER OF FACT
MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
THE LOST LEGION
NAMGAY DOOLA
A GERM-DESTROYER
'TIGER! TIGER!'
TODS' AMENDMENT
THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN
THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
POETRY
THE NATIVE BORN
THE FLOWERS
MUNICIPAL
THE COASTWISE LIGHTS
THE ENGLISH FLAG
ENGLAND'S ANSWER
THE OVERLAND MAIL
IN SPRING TIME
'RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI'
At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called 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 tailor-bird, 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 habits. His eyes and the end
of his restless nose were pink; he could 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 carried 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. Perhaps 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 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 mongoose, 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 cotton-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.
'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 verandah 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 burnt it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he
climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done. At
nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to watch how the kerosene-lamps
were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too;
but he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend
to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it.
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 awful.
Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast-in the
verandah riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and
some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other,
because every well-brought-up mongoose 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 roses, 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 tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a
beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them
up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and
downy fluff. The nest swayed to and 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 without 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 dandelion-tuft
balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked
snake's eyes that never change their expression, 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 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 little 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 under 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; and 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 Darzee 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 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 Nagaina 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 happens to get bitten, he
runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The
victory is only a matter of quickness 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, that 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 running down the path,
Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.
But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched 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 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
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 mongoose 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 fore-legs, bitten as
high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite
paralysed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from
the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when 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 him, crying that he had saved
Teddy from death, and Teddy'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.
Teddy'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 could 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 round 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. 'Rikki-tikki, don't
kill me.'
'Do you think a snake-killer kills musk-rats?' said Rikki-tikki
scornfully.
'Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,' said Chuchundra, more
sorrowfully than ever. 'And how am I to be sure that Nag won't
mistake me for you some dark night?'
'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 brickwork.
'That's Nag or Nagaina,' he said to himself; 'and he's crawling into
the bath-room sluice. You're right, Chuchundra; I should have talked
to Chua.'
He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and
then to Teddy's mother's bath-room. 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 moonlight.
'When the house is emptied of people,' said Nagaina to 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 bungalow, did we have
any mongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are
king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs
in the melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), 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 favour. 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 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 earthen-rare to hold down the head.
This gave him just one second's purchase, 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 round in great circles; at 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 honour of his family, preferred to be
found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to
pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him; a
hot wind knocked him senseless, and red fire singed his fur. The man
had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a
shot-gun 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 himself Teddy's
bedroom and spent half the rest of the night shaking himself
tenderly to find out whether he really 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 thorn-bush
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 rubbish-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 valiant
Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast. The 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 bath-room 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 all 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 three 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 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 Rikki-tikki when
I would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you've chosen a bad place
to be lame in.' And she moved toward 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 cannot move. Darzee's wife
fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and
Nagaina quickened her pace.
Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he
raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in the
warm litter about the melons, very cunningly 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 verandah, 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 verandah as hard
as he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father
were there at early 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 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, Nagaina; 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 round, and saw the egg on the verandah.
'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; and 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 Rikki-tikki.
'The boy is safe, and it was I--I--I that caught Nag by the hood last
night in the bath-room.' Then he began to 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 Teddy, 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 verandah, and she
gathered herself together 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 matting
sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.
He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the verandah, and Nagaina
came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was
drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the verandah
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.
Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble 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 struck 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 Nagaina 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 touching 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,
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 afternoon, 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 reason 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-lock!_ 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 I 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 husband.
'Just think, he saved all our lives.'
Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all the mongooses are light
sleepers.
'Oh, it's you,' said he. 'What are you bothering for? All 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.
DARZEE'S CHAUNT.
(SUNG IN HONOUR OF RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI.)
Singer and tailor am I--
Doubled the joys that I know--
Proud of my lilt through 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 hath delivered us, who?
Tell me his nest and his name.
Rikki, the valiant, the true,
Tikki, with eyeballs of flame,
Rik-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame.
Give him the Thanks of the Birds,
Bowing with tail-feathers spread!
Praise him with nightingale words--
Nay, I will praise him instead.
Hear! I will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed Rikki, with
eyeballs of red!
(_Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost_.)
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR PART I
I have done one braver thing
Than all the worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.
THE UNDERTAKING.
'Is it officially declared yet?'
'They've gone as far as to admit extreme local scarcity, and they've
started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says.'
'That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the
men and the rolling-stock. Shouldn't wonder if it were as bad as the
Big Famine.'
'Can't be,' said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.
'We've had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal
report more than they know what to do with. They'll be able to check
it before it gets out of hand. It will only be local.'
Martyn picked up the _Pioneer_ from the table, read through the
telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a
hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the
newly-watered Mall. The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and
black on their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked
mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of days. Most of
the men were at the bandstand in the public gardens--from the Club
verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale
waltzes--or on the polo-ground or in the high-walled fives-court,
hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads
of their ponies, waited their masters' return. From time to time a
man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly
loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building. These
were supposed to be chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same
faces night after night at dinner, and drawing out their office-work
till the latest possible hour, that they might escape that doleful
company.
'What are you going to do?' said Martyn, with a yawn. 'Let's have a
swim before dinner.'
'Water's hot,' said Scott. 'I was at the bath to-day.'
'Play you game o' billiards--fifty up.'
'It's a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don't be so
abominably energetic.'
A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider
fumbling a leather pouch.
'_Kubber-kargaz--ki--yektraaa_,' the man whined, handing down the
newspaper extra--a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the
press. It was pinned on the green baize-board, between notices of
ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.
Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. 'It's declared!' he cried.
'One, two, three--eight districts go under the operation of the
Famine Code _ek dum_. They've put Jimmy Hawkins in charge.'
'Good business!' said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had
shown. 'When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I
first came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more _bundobust_
than most men.'
'Jimmy's a Jubilee Knight now,' said Martyn. 'He was a good chap,
even though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the Benighted
Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts rejoice in--all
_ungas_ or _rungas_ or _pillays_ or _polliums_.'
A dog-cart drove up, and a man entered, mopping his head. He was
editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a province of
twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white men, and as his
staff was limited to himself and one assistant, his office hours ran
variously from ten to twenty a day.
'Hi, Raines; you're supposed to know everything,' said Martyn,
stopping him. 'How's this Madras "scarcity" going to turn out?'
'No one knows as yet. There's a message as long as your arm coming in
on the telephone. I've left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned
she can't manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in
getting all the men he needs. Arbuthnot's warned to hold himself in
readiness.'
'"Badger" Arbuthnot?'
'The Peshawur chap. Yes, and the _Pi_ wires that Ellis and Clay have
been moved from the North-West already, and they've taken half a
dozen Bombay men, too. It's pukka famine, by the looks of it.'
'They're nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes to
indenting on the Punjab this early, there's more in this than meets
the eye,' said Martyn.
'Here to-day and gone to-morrow. Didn't come to stay for ever,' said
Scott, dropping one of Marryat's novels, and rising to his feet.
'Martyn, your sister's waiting for you.'
A rough gray horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the
verandah, where the light of a kerosene-lamp fell on a brown calico
habit and a white face under a gray felt hat.
'Right, O,' said Martyn. 'I'm ready. Better come and dine with us if
you've nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner in the
house?'
'I'll go home first and see,' was the rider's answer. 'You can drive
him over--at eight, remember.'
Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress
of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to
foot, with a broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns' was a
decided improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and
tinned entrees of the Club. But it was a great pity Martyn could not
afford to send his sister to the Hills for the hot weather. As an
Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the magnificent
pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month, and his little
four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were the usual
blue-and-white striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual
glass studded Amritsar _phulkaris_ draped to nails driven into the
flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did
not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects; and the usual
streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran through the
wall. It was as though everything had been unpacked the night before
to be repacked next morning. Not a door in the house was true on its
hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with
wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the
wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott's life. Thus did
people live who had such an income; and in a land where each man's
pay, age, and position are printed in a book, that all may read, it
is hardly worth while to play at pretences in word or deed. Scott
counted eight years' service in the Irrigation Department, and drew
eight hundred rupees a month, on the understanding that if he served
the State faithfully for another twenty-two years he could retire on
a pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His working life,
which had been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary shelters
where a man could sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up with
the opening and guarding of irrigation canals, the handling of two or
three thousand workmen of all castes and creeds, and the payment of
vast sums of coined silver. He had finished that spring, not without
credit, the last section of the great Mosuhl Canal, and--much against
his will, for he hated office work--had been sent in to serve during
the hot weather on the accounts and supply side of the Department,
with sole charge of the sweltering sub-office at the capital of the
Province. Martyn knew this; William, his sister, knew it; and
everybody knew it.
Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn
had come out to India four years before, to keep house for her
brother, who, as everyone, again, knew, had borrowed the money to pay
for her passage, and that she ought, as all the world said, to have
married long ago. Instead of this, she had refused some half a dozen
subalterns, a civilian twenty years her senior, one major, and a man
in the Indian Medical Department. This, too, was common property. She
had 'stayed down three hot weathers,' as the saying is, because her
brother was in debt and could not afford the expense of her keep at
even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was white as bone, and
in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size
of a shilling--the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a
'Bagdad date.' This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly eats
into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out with acids.
None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years.
Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river on horseback;
once she had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight
attack of thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice
administered with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak
Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her
seniors; had altogether fallen out of the habit of writing to her
aunts in England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had
been through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told;
and had wound up her experiences by six weeks of typhoid fever,
during which her head had been shaved; and hoped to keep her
twenty-third birthday that September. It is conceivable that her
aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the
ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl
thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over
her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill;
whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could
act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants
and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men
slowly and deliberately between the eyes--yea, after they had
proposed to her and been rejected.
'I like men who do things,' she had confided to a man in the
Educational Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth merchants
and dyers the beauty of Wordsworth's 'Excursion' in annotated
cram-books; and when he grew poetical, William explained that she
'didn't understand poetry very much; it made her head ache,' and
another broken heart took refuge at the Club. But it was all
William's fault. She delighted in hearing men talk of their own work,
and that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet.
Scott had known her more or less for some three years, meeting her,
as a rule, under canvas when his camp and her brother's joined for a
day on the edge of the Indian Desert. He had danced with her several
times at the big Christmas gatherings, when as many as five hundred
white people came into the station; and he had always a great
respect for her housekeeping and her dinners.
She looked more like a boy than ever when, after their meal, she sat,
one foot tucked under her, on the leather camp-sofa, rolling
cigarettes for her brother, her low forehead puckered beneath the
dark curls as she twiddled the papers. She stuck out her rounded
chin when the tobacco stayed in place, and, with a gesture as true as
a school-boy's throwing a stone, tossed the finished article across
the room to Martyn, who caught it with one hand, and continued his
talk with Scott. It was all 'shop,'--canals and the policing of
canals; the sins of villagers who stole more water than they had paid
for, and the grosser sin of native constables who connived at the
thefts; of the transplanting bodily of villages to newly-irrigated
ground, and of the coming fight with the desert in the south when the
Provincial funds should warrant the opening of the long-surveyed Luni
Protective Canal System. And Scott spoke openly of his great desire
to be put on one particular section of the work where he knew the
land and the people, and Martyn sighed for a billet in the Himalayan
foot-hills, and spoke his mind of his superiors, and William rolled
cigarettes and said nothing, but smiled gravely on her brother
because he was happy.
At ten Scott's horse came to the door, and the evening was ended.
The lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was
printed showed bright across the road. It was too early to try to
find sleep, and Scott drifted over to the editor. Raines, stripped
to the waist like a sailor at a gun, lay in a long chair, waiting
for night telegrams. He had a theory that if a man did not stay by
his work all day and most of the night he laid himself open to fever;
so he ate and slept among his files.
'Can you do it?' he said drowsily. 'I didn't mean to bring you over.'
'About what? I've been dining at the Martyns'.'
'The famine, of course, Martyn's warned for it, too. They're taking