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.
(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.)
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.
