Just So Stories

JUST SO STORIES

By Rudyard Kipling

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

HOW THE WHALE GOT HIS THROAT

HOW THE CAMEL GOT HIS HUMP

HOW THE RHINOCEROS GOT HIS SKIN

HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS SPOTS

THE ELEPHANT’S CHILD

THE SING-SONG OF OLD MAN KANGAROO

THE BEGINNING OF THE ARMADILLOS

HOW THE FIRST LETTER WAS WRITTEN

HOW THE ALPHABET WAS MADE

THE CRAB THAT PLAYED WITH THE SEA

THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF

THE BUTTERFLY THAT STAMPED

HOW THE WHALE GOT HIS THROAT

IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and

he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the

dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the

mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All

the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth--so! Till

at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a

small ‘Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear,

so as to be out of harm’s way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and

said, ‘I’m hungry.’ And the small ‘Stute Fish said in a small ‘stute

voice, ‘Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?’

‘No,’ said the Whale. ‘What is it like?’

‘Nice,’ said the small ‘Stute Fish. ‘Nice but nubbly.’

‘Then fetch me some,’ said the Whale, and he made the sea froth up with

his tail.

‘One at a time is enough,’ said the ‘Stute Fish. ‘If you swim to

latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West (that is magic), you will

find, sitting _on_ a raft, _in_ the middle of the sea, with nothing on

but a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must _not_

forget the suspenders, Best Beloved), and a jack-knife, one

ship-wrecked Mariner, who, it is only fair to tell you, is a man of

infinite-resource-and-sagacity.’

So the Whale swam and swam to latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty

West, as fast as he could swim, and _on_ a raft, _in_ the middle of the

sea, _with_ nothing to wear except a pair of blue canvas breeches, a

pair of suspenders (you must particularly remember the suspenders, Best

Beloved), _and_ a jack-knife, he found one single, solitary shipwrecked

Mariner, trailing his toes in the water. (He had his mummy’s leave to

paddle, or else he would never have done it, because he was a man of

infinite-resource-and-sagacity.)

Then the Whale opened his mouth back and back and back till it nearly

touched his tail, and he swallowed the shipwrecked Mariner, and the

raft he was sitting on, and his blue canvas breeches, and the suspenders

(which you _must_ not forget), _and_ the jack-knife--He swallowed them

all down into his warm, dark, inside cup-boards, and then he smacked his

lips--so, and turned round three times on his tail.

But as soon as the Mariner, who was a man of

infinite-resource-and-sagacity, found himself truly inside the Whale’s

warm, dark, inside cup-boards, he stumped and he jumped and he thumped

and he bumped, and he pranced and he danced, and he banged and he

clanged, and he hit and he bit, and he leaped and he creeped, and he

prowled and he howled, and he hopped and he dropped, and he cried and he

sighed, and he crawled and he bawled, and he stepped and he lepped, and

he danced hornpipes where he shouldn’t, and the Whale felt most unhappy

indeed. (_Have_ you forgotten the suspenders?)

So he said to the ‘Stute Fish, ‘This man is very nubbly, and besides he

is making me hiccough. What shall I do?’

‘Tell him to come out,’ said the ‘Stute Fish.

So the Whale called down his own throat to the shipwrecked Mariner,

cake-crumbs inside.

But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which

the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour,

packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of Orotavo,

Amygdala, the Upland Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput.

THIS Uninhabited Island

Is off Cape Gardafui,

By the Beaches of Socotra

And the Pink Arabian Sea:

But it’s hot--too hot from Suez

For the likes of you and me

Ever to go

In a P. and O.

And call on the Cake-Parsee!

HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS SPOTS

IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived

in a place called the High Veldt. ‘Member it wasn’t the Low Veldt, or

the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the ‘sclusively bare, hot, shiny

High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and ‘sclusively

tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland

and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were ‘sclusively

sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the ‘sclusivest

sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all--a greyish-yellowish

catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the ‘sclusively

yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one hair. This

was very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of them; for

he would lie down by a ‘sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or

clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the

Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would surprise them

out of their jumpsome lives. He would indeed! And, also, there was an

Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a ‘sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish

man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with the Leopard; and the

two used to hunt together--the Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and

the Leopard ‘sclusively with his teeth and claws--till the Giraffe and

the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and all the rest of them didn’t

know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They didn’t indeed!

After a long time--things lived for ever so long in those days--they

learned to avoid anything that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian;

and bit by bit--the Giraffe began it, because his legs were the

longest--they went away from the High Veldt. They scuttled for days

and days and days till they came to a great forest, ‘sclusively full of

trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there

they hid: and after another long time, what with standing half in the

shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy shadows of

the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew

stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with little wavy grey

lines on their backs like bark on a tree trunk; and so, though you could

hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only

when you knew precisely where to look. They had a beautiful time in the

‘sclusively speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and

the Ethiopian ran about over the ‘sclusively greyish-yellowish-reddish

High Veldt outside, wondering where all their breakfasts and their

dinners and their teas had gone. At last they were so hungry that they

ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the Ethiopian,

and then they had the Big Tummy-ache, both together; and then they met

Baviaan--the dog-headed, barking Baboon, who is Quite the Wisest Animal

in All South Africa.

Said Leopard to Baviaan (and it was a very hot day), ‘Where has all the

game gone?’

And Baviaan winked. He knew.

Said the Ethiopian to Baviaan, ‘Can you tell me the present habitat

of the aboriginal Fauna?’ (That meant just the same thing, but the

Ethiopian always used long words. He was a grown-up.)

mother, and my uncle and my aunt, not to mention my other aunt, the

Hippopotamus, and my other uncle, the Baboon, have all spanked me for my

‘satiable curtiosity--and I suppose this is the same thing.

So he said good-bye very politely to the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake,

and helped to coil him up on the rock again, and went on, a little warm,

but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about,

because he could not pick it up, till he trod on what he thought was

a log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo

River, all set about with fever-trees.

But it was really the Crocodile, O Best Beloved, and the Crocodile

winked one eye--like this!

‘’Scuse me,’ said the Elephant’s Child most politely, ‘but do you happen

to have seen a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?’

Then the Crocodile winked the other eye, and lifted half his tail out of

the mud; and the Elephant’s Child stepped back most politely, because he

did not wish to be spanked again.

‘Come hither, Little One,’ said the Crocodile. ‘Why do you ask such

things?’

‘’Scuse me,’ said the Elephant’s Child most politely, ‘but my father has

spanked me, my mother has spanked me, not to mention my tall aunt, the

Ostrich, and my tall uncle, the Giraffe, who can kick ever so hard, as

well as my broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and my hairy uncle, the Baboon,

and including the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, with the scalesome,

flailsome tail, just up the bank, who spanks harder than any of them;

and so, if it’s quite all the same to you, I don’t want to be spanked

any more.’

‘Come hither, Little One,’ said the Crocodile, ‘for I am the Crocodile,’

and he wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true.

Then the Elephant’s Child grew all breathless, and panted, and kneeled

down on the bank and said, ‘You are the very person I have been looking

for all these long days. Will you please tell me what you have for

dinner?’

‘Come hither, Little One,’ said the Crocodile, ‘and I’ll whisper.’

Then the Elephant’s Child put his head down close to the Crocodile’s

musky, tusky mouth, and the Crocodile caught him by his little nose,

which up to that very week, day, hour, and minute, had been no bigger

than a boot, though much more useful.

‘I think, said the Crocodile--and he said it between his teeth, like

this--‘I think to-day I will begin with Elephant’s Child!’

At this, O Best Beloved, the Elephant’s Child was much annoyed, and he

said, speaking through his nose, like this, ‘Led go! You are hurtig be!’

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake scuffled down from the bank and

said, ‘My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly,

pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in

the large-pattern leather ulster’ (and by this he meant the Crocodile)

‘will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack

Robinson.’

This is the way Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.

Then the Elephant’s Child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled,

and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. And the Crocodile

floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his

tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.

And the Elephant’s Child’s nose kept on stretching; and the Elephant’s

Child spread all his little four legs and pulled, and pulled, and

pulled, and his nose kept on stretching; and the Crocodile threshed his

tail like an oar, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each

pull the Elephant’s Child’s nose grew longer and longer--and it hurt him

hijjus!

Then the Elephant’s Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through