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The man flashed the hue of lightning. "Then I must." An arm swept about the boy. A hand at his waist was fumbling for his dirk. For a second the lad struggled: then he felt himself helpless as a rabbit in a python's grip, and lay back quite still. Once face to face with God, his heart calmed strangely. There was a horrible breathing in his ear. A face, all eyes, was bending over him.

And with reason, for he was taking on, perhaps, the biggest thing in the hunting line that he had ever tackled, and it was a million to one that, if he did not win, he died, and horribly, too; and he knew it. Ordinarily he would have been the python's prey.

As a matter of course, Saloo had one, and luckily for his old shipmate, "Multa," he knew how to handle it with skill, so that, in driving its twisted blade through the python's throat, he did not also impale upon its point the jugular vein of the Irishman.

Once upon a time some people were looking for edible vegetables in the jungle, when they came upon a huge python, which they took to be a log. Sitting upon it to cut up their vegetables, they by chance wounded it, and caused the python's blood to flow out. Recognising then the nature of their resting-place, the people cut up the python and began to cook its flesh.

Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa's neck, dropped his right close to his body, and straightened his feet. Then Kaa breasted the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked water stood up in a frill round Mowgli's neck, and his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under the python's lashing sides.

No one ought to travel without one or two of my novels in their luggage as a stand-by. A friend of mine said only the other day that he would as soon think of going into the tropics without quinine as of going on a visit without a couple of Mark Mellowkents in his kit-bag. Perhaps sensation is more in your line. I wonder if I've got a copy of The Python's Kiss."

On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last night.

Once the python seemed about to retreat, but at that moment the boar struggled so desperately that the python's natural instinct prevailed, and without a moment's hesitation, it writhed into the lane, past the first loop, past the second, until it reached the cage. "Now, Piang, now!" softly whispered Kali.

He loosed his arm from the python's neck and went down the gorge like a log in a freshet, paddling toward the far bank, where he found slack-water, and laughing aloud from sheer happiness. There was nothing Mowgli liked better than, as he himself said, "to pull the whiskers of Death," and make the Jungle know that he was their overlord.

The big brown eyes in the depths of the sunbonnet filled with tears, but she resolutely winked them back, whispering the python's words: "A brave heart and a courteous tongue, manling." But she could not stop the frightened thumping in her breast, and of what use was a courteous tongue, when nobody would stop to listen?