Mowgli (ENG). Kipling Rudyard

      “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 think I heard thee call"–this was to Bagheera.

      “I–I may have cried out in the battle,” Bagheera answered. "Baloo, art thou hurt?

      “I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little bearlings,” said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. "Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives–Bagheera and I.”

      “No matter. Where is the manling?”

      “Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out,” cried Mowgli. The curve of the broken dome was above his head.

      “Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will crush our young,” said the cobras inside.

      “Hah!” said Kaa with a chuckle, “he has friends everywhere, this manling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O Poison People. I break down the wall.”

      Kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows, nose-first. The screen-work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself between Baloo and Bagheera–an arm around each big neck.

      “Art thou hurt?” said Baloo, hugging him softly.

      “I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have handled ye grievously, my Brothers! Ye bleed.”

      “Others also,” said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.

      “It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride of all little frogs!” whimpered Baloo.

      “Of that we shall judge later,” said Bagheera, in a dry voice that Mowgli did not at all like. “But here is Kaa to whom we owe the battle and thou owest thy life. Thank him according to our customs, Mowgli.”

      Mowgli turned and saw the great Python’s head swaying a foot above his own.

      “So this is the manling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”

      “We be one blood, thou and I,” Mowgli answered. “I take my life from thee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa.”