worked his way over the west wall, landing with a
wrench that dislodged a coping stone into the ditch. He had no intention
of losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself
once or twice, to be sure that every foot of his long body was in
working order. All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the
monkeys yelled in the tank round Bagheera, and Mang the Bat, flying to
and fro, carried the news of the great battle over the jungle, till even
Hathi the Wild Elephant trumpeted, and, far away, scattered bands of
the Monkey-Folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help their
comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused all the
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 w