The huge Snake uncoiled three yards of his length, slipped it forward as easily, as noiselessly as one blows smoke, shoved his big flat head up over the Keeper's knee, ran his tongue out four times to moisten his lips, and said: "I am also from the East, and I do not like this land. Here my strength is nothing, for I can't eat. A Chicken twice a month—what is that to one of my size? Sa'-zada will eat as much in a day; and yet in my full strength I could crush five such as our Little Brother. Many loops! in my own Jungle I could wind myself about a Buffalo and pull his ribs together until his whole body was like loose earth. I have done it. Sa'-zada knows that for months and months after I came I ate nothing, and in the end they took me out on the floor there, six of them, and shoved food down my throat with a stick.
"Once I had run down a Barking Deer, and swallowed him, and was having a little sleep, when I wandered into the most frightful sort of nightmare. It came to me in my sleep that Bagh had charged me of a sudden, and gripped my throat in his strong jaws. I opened my eyes in fright, and, sure enough, I was being choked with a rope in the hands of the Men-kind. Each end of it was fastened to a long bamboo, and the Men were on either side of me. I made the leaves and dry wood in that part of the Jungle whirl for a little, but it was no use—I couldn't get away. Also a man of the White-kind was sitting on a laid tree, and in his hands was a loud-voiced gun. But I nearly paid him out for some of the insult. They dragged me on to the road, and I lay there quiet and simple-looking. He thought I was asleep, I suppose. At any rate he came up and touched me on the nose with his toe.
"I struck; but, though I knew it not, the rope was tight held by one of the Yellow-kind who stood behind me, and I but got a full choking; though, as I have said, the other, he of the White Face, was stricken with fear.
"They put me in a box, but though I have no appetite here, I could eat there, and they gave me so many chickens that I shed my beautiful skin almost monthly. I nearly died from the over-diet, not being used to such plenty."
"Tell us of your food-winning in the Jungle," craved Sa'-zada.
"Though I go wondrous swift," began Python, "yet if any of the Deer-kind passed me on foot I could not catch them. Because of this I was forced to take great thought to outwit them. You, Gidar, and you, Hathi, know of the elephant creeper that is in all those Jungles, how it runs from tree to tree for many a mile—so strong that it sometimes pulls down the biggest wood-grower. Well, having knowledge of a Deer's path, I would stretch my body across it much after that fashion, and the silly creatures with their ribbed faces, always coughing a hoarse bark, and always possessed of a stupid fear, would walk right into my folds, thinking me a part of the creeper. Once, even, as I think of it, a hunter—of the White-kind he was—ate his food sitting on a coil of my body as I lay twisted about a tree. To tell you the truth, I was asleep, having fed well, and only woke up because of his sticking his cutting knife into my back, thinking, of course, he was standing it in the wood, when I suddenly squirmed and upset him, and his food and drink.
"But when it was the dry season and the leaves were off the trees, the Jungle was so open that even the silly Deer could see the rich color of my beautiful skin, and for days and days I went hungry. Then I would go to the small water ponds, Jheels, and curling my tail about a tree on one side, put myself across, and catching a tree on the other side with my teeth, swing my body back and forth and throw the water all out on the land. Then I would eat all the Fish-dwellers, and go to sleep for a week.
"I WOULD STRETCH MY BODY ACROSS IT MUCH AFTER THAT FASHION."