This passage is taken from the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, from Kipling’s Jungle Book. In this passage, our hero meets evil in the form of Nag the cobra. He stares into the eyes of evil, and knows that it is his lot in life to fight it and defeat it. And he never backs down.
Here begins the lesson.
He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute, but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose’s business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too and, at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid.
