The Kipling Reader | Page 8

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