The Jungle Book (31 page)
Authors: Rudyard Kipling
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-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 husband. “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 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 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, O 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 dunghill and dead!
Who has delivered us, who?
Tell me his nest and his name.
Rikki
, the valiant, the true,
Tikki
, with eyeballs of flame—
Rikk-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, so the rest of the song is lost.)
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in Bombay, India, and his parents took him to England when he was six years old. As an adult, he lived in India, England, South Africa, and the United States. Kipling is most famous for his short stories and books for children. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. When he died in 1936, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.
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