day birds for miles round. Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious
to kill. The fighting strength of a python is in the driving blow of
his head backed by all the strength and weight of his body. If you can
imagine a lance, or a battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half
a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can
roughly imagine what Kaa was like when he fought. A python four or five
feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and
Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know. His first stroke was delivered
into the heart of the crowd round Baloo. It was sent home with shut
mouth in silence, and there was no need of a second. The monkeys
scattered with cries of-- Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run!
Generations of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the stories
their elders told them of Kaa, the night thief, who could slip along the
branches as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey
that ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead
branch or a rotten stump that the wisest were deceived, till the branch
caught them. Kaa was everything that the monkeys feared in the jungle,
for none of them knew the limits of his power, none of them could look
him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug. And so
they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the
houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was much thicker
than Bagheera s, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. Then Kaa
opened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hissing word, and
the far-away monkeys, hurrying to the defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed
where they were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and crackled
under them. The monkeys on the walls and the empty houses stopped
their cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the city Mowgli heard
Bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up from the tank. Then the
clamor broke out again. The monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They
clung around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they
skipped along the battlements, while Mowgli, dancing in the summerhouse,
put his eye to the screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front
teeth, to show his derision and contempt.
Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more, Bagheera gasped.
Let us take the man-cub and go. They may attack again.
They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso! Kaa hissed, and
the city was silent once more. I could not come before, Brother, but I
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