EPISODE: 17

down the beach, shook him, and knocked him over. Then Kotick

roared to the seals: "I've done my best for you these five seasons

past. I've found you the island where you'll be safe, but unless

your heads are dragged off your silly necks you won't believe.

I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves!"

Limmershin told me that never in his life—and Limmershin

sees ten thousand big seals fighting every year—never in all his

little life did he see anything like Kotick's charge into the

nurseries. He flung himself at the biggest sea catch he could

find, caught him by the throat, choked him and bumped him

and banged him till he grunted for mercy, and then threw him

aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotick had never fasted for

four months as the big seals did every year, and his deep-sea

swimming trips kept him in perfect condition, and, best of all,

he had never fought before. His curly white mane stood up with

rage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dog teeth glistened, and

he was splendid to look at. Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him

tearing past, hauling the grizzled old seals about as though they

had been halibut, and upsetting the young bachelors in all

directions; and Sea Catch gave a roar and shouted: "He may be a

fool, but he is the best fighter on the beaches! Don't tackle your

father, my son! He's with you!"

Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in with

his mustache on end, blowing like a locomotive, while Matkah

and the seal that was going to marry Kotick cowered down and

admired their men-folk. It was a gorgeous fight, for the two

fought as long as there was a seal that dared lift up his head,

and when there were none they paraded grandly up and down

the beach side by side, bellowing.

At night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and

flashing through the fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked

down on the scattered nurseries and the torn and bleeding seals.

"Now," he said, "I've taught you your lesson."

"My wig!" said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for

he was fearfully mauled. "The Killer Whale himself could not have cut them up worse. Son, I'm proud of you, and what's

more, I'll come with you to your island—if there is such a place."

"Hear you, fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to the Sea

Cow's tunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again," roared Kotick.

There was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and

down the beaches. "We will come," said thousands of tired

voices. "We will follow Kotick, the White Seal."

Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut

his eyes proudly. He was not a white seal any more, but red

from head to tail. All the same he would have scorned to look at

or touch one of his wounds.

A week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand

holluschickie and old seals) went away north to the Sea Cow's

tunnel, Kotick leading them, and the seals that stayed at

Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next spring, when they all

met off the fishing banks of the Pacific, Kotick's seals told such

tales of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow's tunnel that more and

more seals left Novastoshnah. Of course it was not all done at

once, for the seals are not very clever, and they need a long time

to turn things over in their minds, but year after year more seals

went away from Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other

nurseries, to the quiet, sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all

the summer through, getting bigger and fatter and stronger each

year, while the holluschickie play around him, in that sea where

no man comes.

Lukannon

This is the great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals sing

when they are heading back to their beaches in the summer. It is

a sort of very sad seal National Anthem. I met my mates in the morning (and, oh, but I am old!)

Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;

I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers' song—

The Beaches of Lukannon—two million voices strong.

The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,

The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,

The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame—

The Beaches of Lukannon—before the sealers came!

I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!);

They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.

And o'er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach

We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.

The Beaches of Lukannon—the winter wheat so tall—

The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!

The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!

The Beaches of Lukannon—the home where we were born!

I met my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.

Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;

Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,

And still we sing Lukannon—before the sealers came.

Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska, go!

And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe;

Ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore,

The Beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!

"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 Tailorbird, 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 his 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

over a little fire, 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

veranda 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 burned it on the end of the big man's cigar,....