non--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 is