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-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.
(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.
