The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling

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!”