Jungle Book E-book
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Genre: Children Stories, Literature
1894
THE JUNGLE BOOK
by Rudyard Kipling
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
CONTENTS
-
Mowgli's Brothers
Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack
-
Kaa's Hunting
Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
-
"Tiger-Tiger!"
Mowgli's Song
-
The White Seal
Lukannon
-
"Rikki-tikki-tavi"
Darzee's Chaunt
-
Toomai of the Elephants
Shiv and the Grasshopper
-
Servants of the Queen
Parade-Song of the Camp-Animals
MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
-
Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free-
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call!- Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
NIGHT SONG IN THE JUNGLE
-
IT WAS SEVEN O'CLOCK of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills
when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself,
yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of
the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray
nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon
shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived.
"Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going
to spring downhill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed
the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the
Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children
that they may never forget the hungry in this world."
It was the jackal- Tabaqui, the Dish-licker- and the wolves of
India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and
telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the
village rubbish heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because
Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and
then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through
the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides
when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful
thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but
they call it dewanee- the madness- and run.
"Enter, then, and look," said Father Wolf stiffly, "but there is no
food here."
"For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for so mean a person as myself
a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal
people], to pick and choose?" He scuttled to the back of the cave,
where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat
cracking the end merrily.
"All thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips. "How
beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so
young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children
of kings are men from the beginning."
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so
unlucky as to compliment children to their faces. It pleased him to
see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made,
and then he said spitefully:
"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He
will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me."
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty
miles away.
"He has no right!" Father Wolf began angrily- "By the Law of the
Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due warning.
He will frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I- I have to
kill for two, these days."
"His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing,"
said Mother Wolf quietly. "He has been lame in one foot from his
birth. That is why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the
Waingunga are angry with him, and he has come here to make our
villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is far
away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set alight.
Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!"
"Shall I tell him of your gratitude?" said Tabaqui.
"Out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out and hunt with thy master. Thou
hast done harm enough for one night."
"I go," said Tabaqui quietly. "Ye can hear Shere Khan below in
the thickets. I might have saved myself the message."
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a
little river he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a
tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows
it.
"The fool!" said Father Wolf. "To begin a night's work with that
noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat Waingunga
bullocks?"
"H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts tonight," said
Mother Wolf. "It is Man."
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come
from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders
woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run
sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
"Man!" said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. "Faugh! Are
there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat
Man, and on our ground too!"
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a
reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to
show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the
hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that
man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on
elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets
and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the
beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most
defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch
him. They say too- and it is true- that man-eaters become mangy, and
lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "Aaarh!" of
the tiger's charge.
Then there was a howl- an untigerish howl- from Shere Khan. "He has
missed," said Mother Wolf. "What is it?"
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering
and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in the scrub.
"The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter's
campfire, and has burned his feet," said Father Wolf with a grunt.
"Tabaqui is with him."
"Something is coming uphill," said Mother Wolf, twitching one
ear. "Get ready."
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped
with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been
watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world-
the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what
it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The
result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five
feet, landing almost where he left ground.
"Man!" he snapped. "A man's cub. Look!"
Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked
brown baby who could just walk- as soft and as dimpled a little atom
as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Father
Wolf's face and laughed.
"Is that a man's cub?" said Mother Wolf. "I have never seen one.
Bring it here."
A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth
an egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf's jaws closed right
on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid
it down among the cubs.
"How little! How naked, and- how bold!" said Mother Wolf softly.
The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm
hide. "Ahai! He is taking his meal with the others. And so this is a
man's cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's
cub among her children?"
"I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our
Pack or in my time," said Father Wolf. "He is altogether without hair,
and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and
is not afraid."
The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere
Khan's great square head and shoulders were thrust into the
entrance. Tabaqui, behind him, was squeaking: "My lord, my lord, it
went in here!"
"Shere Khan does us great honor," said Father Wolf, but his eyes
were very angry. "What does Shere Khan need?"
"My quarry. A man's cub went this way," said Shere Khan. "Its
parents have run off. Give it to me."
Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter's campfire, as Father Wolf
had said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father
Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to
come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and forepaws
were cramped for want of room, as a man's would be if he tried to
fight in a barrel.
"The Wolves are a free people," said Father Wolf. "They take orders
from the Head of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The
man's cub is ours- to kill if we choose."
"Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing?
By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog's den
for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!"
The tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook
herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green
moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.
"And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man's cub is
mine, Lungri- mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run
with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you,
hunter of little naked cubs- frog-eater- fish-killer- he shall hunt
thee! Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved
cattle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle,
lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!"
Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when
he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she
ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment's sake.
Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up
against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the
advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed
out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was clear he shouted:
"Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say
to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he
will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!"
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father
Wolf said to her gravely:
"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the
Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?"
"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and very
hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes
to one side already. And that lame butcher would have killed him and
would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted
through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him.
Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli- for Mowgli the Frog I will call
thee- the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has
hunted thee."
"But what will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may,
when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon
as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them
to the Pack Council, which is generally held once a month at full
moon, in order that the other wolves may identify them. After that
inspection the cubs are free to run where they please, and until
they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown
wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where
the murderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will
see that this must be so.
Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on
the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf
to the Council Rock- a hilltop covered with stones and boulders
where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf,
who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length
on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size
and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck
alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The
Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf
trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so
he knew the manners and customs of men. There was very little
talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of
the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a
senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and
return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push
her cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that he had not been
overlooked. Akela from his rock would cry: "Ye know the Law- ye know
the Law. Look well, O Wolves!" And the anxious mothers would take up
the call: "Look- look well, O Wolves!"
At last- and Mother Wolf's neck bristles lifted as the time came-
Father Wolf pushed "Mowgli the Frog," as they called him, into the
center, where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that
glistened in the moonlight.
Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the
monotonous cry: "Look well!" A muffled roar came up from behind the
rocks- the voice of Shere Khan crying: "The cub is mine. Give him to
me. What have the Free People to do with a man's cub?" Akela never
even twitched his ears. All he said was: "Look well, O Wolves! What
have the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free
People? Look well!"
There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth
year flung back Shere Khan's question to Akela: "What have the Free
People to do with a man's cub?" Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down
that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted
by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack
who are not his father and mother.
"Who speaks for this cub?" said Akela. "Among the Free People who
speaks?" There was no answer and Mother Wolf got ready for what she
knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting.
Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council-
Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of
the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he
eats only nuts and roots and honey- rose upon his hind quarters and
grunted.
"The man's cub- the man's cub?" he said. "I speak for the man's
cub. There is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift of words, but I
speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the
others. I myself will teach him."
"We need yet another," said Akela. "Baloo has spoken, and he is our
teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?"
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the
Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings
showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk.
Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he
was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as
reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild
honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
"O Akela, and ye the Free People," he purred, "I have no right in
your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt
which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that
cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or
may not pay that price. Am I right?"
"Good! Good!" said the young wolves, who are always hungry. "Listen
to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law."
"Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave."
"Speak then," cried twenty voices.
"To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport
for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to
Baloo's word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not
half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man's cub according to
the Law. Is it difficult?"
There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: "What matter? He
will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can
a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is the bull,
Bagheera? Let him be accepted." And then came Akela's deep bay,
crying: "Look well- look well, O Wolves!"
Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not
notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they
all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera,
Baloo, and Mowgli's own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared still in
the night, for he was very angry that Mowgli had not been handed
over to him.
"Ay, roar well," said Bagheera, under his whiskers, "for the time
will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune,
or I know nothing of man."
"It was well done," said Akela. "Men and their cubs are very
wise. He may be a help in time."
"Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the
Pack forever," said Bagheera.
Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every
leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets
feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new
leader comes up- to be killed in his turn.
"Take him away," he said to Father Wolf, "and train him as befits
one of the Free People."
And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for
the price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.
-
. . . . . . . . .
-
Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only
guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves,
because if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He
grew up with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves
almost before he was a child. And Father Wolf taught him his business,
and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the
grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls
above his head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a
while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a
pool meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a
business man.
When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate
and went to sleep again. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the
forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey
and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for
it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do. Bagheera would lie out
on a branch and call, "Come along, Little Brother," and at first
Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling
himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took
his place at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he
discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be
forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun.
At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his
friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their
coats. He would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by
night, and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but
he had a mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with
a drop gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked
into it, and told him that it was a trap. He loved better than
anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the
forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how
Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt
hungry, and so did Mowgli- with one exception. As soon as he was old
enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that he must never
touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price
of a bull's life.
"All the jungle is thine," said Bagheera, "and thou canst kill
everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of
the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young
or old. That is the Law of the Jungle."
Mowgli obeyed faithfully.
And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know
that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to
think of except things to eat.
Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a
creature to be trusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan. But
though a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour,
Mowgli forgot it because he was only a boy- though he would have
called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human
tongue.
Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela
grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends
with the younger wolves of the Pack, who followed him for scraps, a
thing Akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his
authority to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and
wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a
dying wolf and a man's cub. "They tell me," Shere Khan would say,
"that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes." And the young
wolves would growl and bristle.
Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this,
and once or twice he told Mowgli in so many words that Shere Khan
would kill him some day. Mowgli would laugh and answer: "I have the
Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike
a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?"
It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera- born
of something that he had heard. Perhaps Sahi the Porcupine had told
him; but he said to Mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the
boy lay with his head on Bagheera's beautiful black skin, "Little
Brother, how often have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?"
"As many times as there are nuts on that palm," said Mowgli, who,
naturally, could not count. "What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and
Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk- like Mor the Peacock."
"But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the
Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui has
told thee too."
"Ho! Ho!" said Mowgli. "Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some
rude talk that I was a naked man's cub and not fit to dig pignuts. But
I caught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm tree
to teach him better manners."
"That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he
would have told thee of something that concerned thee closely. Open
those eyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the
jungle. But remember, Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when
he cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. Many of
the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Council
first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has
taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack. In a little
time thou wilt be a man."
"And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?"
said Mowgli. "I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the
Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled
a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!"
Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes.
"Little Brother," said he, "feel under my jaw."
Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under Bagheera's
silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy
hair, he came upon a little bald spot.
"There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry
that mark- the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born
among men, and it was among men that my mother died- in the cages of
the king's palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I paid the
price for thee at the Council when thou wast a little naked cub.
Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed
me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was
Bagheera- the Panther- and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly
lock with one blow of my paw and came away. And because I had
learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than
Shere Khan. Is it not so?"
"Yes," said Mowgli, "all the jungle fear Bagheera- all except
Mowgli."
"Oh, thou art a man's cub," said the Black Panther very tenderly.
"And even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men at
last- to the men who are thy brothers- if thou art not killed in the
Council."
"But why- but why should any wish to kill me?" said Mowgli.
"Look at me," said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him steadily
between the eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half a
minute.
"That is why," he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. "Not even I
can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love
thee, Little Brother. The others they hate thee because their eyes
cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out
thorns from their feet- because thou art a man."
"I did not know these things," said Mowgli sullenly, and he frowned
under his heavy black eyebrows.
"What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give
tongue. By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be
wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill- and at
each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck- the Pack will turn
against him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the
Rock, and then- and then- I have it!" said Bagheera, leaping up. "Go
thou down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of
the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou
mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the
Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower."
By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle
will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of
it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.
"The Red Flower?" said Mowgli. "That grows outside their huts in
the twilight. I will get some."
"There speaks the man's cub," said Bagheera proudly. "Remember that
it grows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for time
of need."
"Good!" said Mowgli. "I go. But art thou sure, O my Bagheera"- he
slipped his arm around the splendid neck and looked deep into the
big eyes- "art thou sure that all this is Shere Khan's doing?"
"By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little Brother."
"Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full
tale for this, and it may be a little over," said Mowgli, and he
bounded away.
"That is a man. That is all a man," said Bagheera to himself, lying
down again. "Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunting than that
frog hunt of thine ten years ago!"
Mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his
heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose,
and drew breath, and looked down the valley. The cubs were out, but
Mother Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that
something was troubling her frog.
"What is it, Son?" she said.
"Some bat's chatter of Shere Khan," he called back. "I hunt among
the plowed fields tonight," and he plunged downward through the
bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley. There he checked,
for he heard the yell of the Pack hunting, heard the bellow of a
hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there
were wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves: "Akela! Akela! Let
the Lone Wolf show his strength. Room for the leader of the Pack!
Spring, Akela!"
The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli
heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him
over with his forefoot.
He did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells
grew fainter behind him as he ran into the croplands where the
villagers lived.
"Bagheera spoke truth," he panted, as he nestled down in some
cattle fodder by the window of a hut. "Tomorrow is one day both for
Akela and for me."
Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire
on the hearth. He saw the husband-man's wife get up and feed it in the
night with black lumps. And when the morning came and the mists were
all white and cold, he saw the man's child pick up a wicker pot
plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal,
put it under his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre.
"Is that all?" said Mowgli. "If a cub can do it, there is nothing
to fear." So he strode round the corner and met the boy, took the
pot from his hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy
howled with fear.
"They are very like me," said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as he
had seen the woman do. "This thing will die if I do not give it things
to eat"; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway
up the hill he met Bagheera with the morning dew shining like
moonstones on his coat.
"Akela has missed," said the Panther. "They would have killed him
last night, but they needed thee also. They were looking for thee on
the hill."
"I was among the plowed lands. I am ready. See!" Mowgli held up the
fire pot.
"Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff,
and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou
not afraid?"
"No. Why should I fear? I remember now- if it is not a dream-
how, before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm
and pleasant."
All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire pot and
dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch
that satisfied him, and in the evening when Tabaqui came to the cave
and told him rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council Rock,
he laughed till Tabaqui ran away. Then Mowgli went to the Council,
still laughing.
Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that
the leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following
of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly being flattered. Bagheera
lay close to Mowgli, and the fire pot was between Mowgli's knees. When
they were all gathered together, Shere Khan began to speak- a thing he
would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.
"He has no right," whispered Bagheera. "Say so. He is a dog's
son. He will be frightened."
Mowgli sprang to his feet. "Free People," he cried, "does Shere
Khan lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?"
"Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak-"
Shere Khan began.
"By whom?" said Mowgli. "Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle
butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack alone."
There were yells of "Silence, thou man's cub!" "Let him speak. He
has kept our Law"; and at last the seniors of the Pack thundered: "Let
the Dead Wolf speak." When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill,
he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long.
Akela raised his old head wearily:
"Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons
I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has
been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that
plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make
my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here
on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end
of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the Jungle, that
ye come one by one."
There was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela to
the death. Then Shere Khan roared: "Bah! What have we to do with
this toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has
lived too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him
to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle
for ten seasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always,
and not give you one bone. He is a man, a man's child, and from the
marrow of my bones I hate him!"
Then more than half the Pack yelled: "A man! A man! What has a
man to do with us? Let him go to his own place."
"And turn all the people of the villages against us?" clamored
Shere Khan. "No, give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can
look him between the eyes."
Akela lifted his head again and said, "He has eaten our food. He
has slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of
the Law of the Jungle."
"Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The worth
of a bull is little, but Bagheera's honor is something that he will
perhaps fight for," said Bagheera in his gentlest voice.
"A bull paid ten years ago!" the Pack snarled. "What do we care for
bones ten years old?"
"Or for a pledge?" said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his
lip. "Well are ye called the Free People!"
"No man's cub can run with the people of the jungle," howled
Shere Khan. "Give him to me!"
"He is our brother in all but blood," Akela went on, "and ye
would kill him here! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are
eaters of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere
Khan's teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children from the
villager's doorstep. Therefore I know ye to be cowards, and it is to
cowards I speak. It is certain that I must die, and my life is of no
worth, or I would offer that in the man-cub's place. But for the
sake of the Honor of the Pack- a little matter that by being without a
leader ye have forgotten- I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to
his own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth
against ye. I will die without fighting. That will at least save the
Pack three lives. More I cannot do; but if ye will, I can save ye
the shame that comes of killing a brother against whom there is no
fault- a brother spoken for and bought into the Pack according to
the Law of the Jungle."
"He is a man- a man- a man!" snarled the Pack. And most of the
wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to
switch.
"Now the business is in thy hands," said Bagheera to Mowgli. "We
can do no more except fight."
Mowgli stood upright- the fire pot in his hands. Then he
stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but
he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolflike, the wolves had
never told him how they hated him. "Listen you!" he cried. "There is
no need for this dog's jabber. Ye have told me so often tonight that I
am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life's
end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my
brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye will do,
and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. That matter is with
me; and that we may see the matter more plainly, I, the man, have
brought here a little of the Red Flower which ye, dogs, fear."
He flung the fire pot on the ground, and some of the red coals
lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew
back in terror before the leaping flames.
Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit
and crackled, and whirled it above his head among the cowering wolves.
"Thou art the master," said Bagheera in an undertone. "Save Akela
from the death. He was ever thy friend."
Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life,
gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long
black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing
branch that made the shadows jump and quiver.
"Good!" said Mowgli, staring round slowly. "I see that ye are dogs.
I go from you to my own people- if they be my own people. The jungle
is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship. But
I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your
brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will
not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me." He kicked the fire
with his foot, and the sparks flew up. "There shall be no war
between any of us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go."
He strode forward to where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at the
flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin. Bagheera followed in
case of accidents. "Up, dog!" Mowgli cried. "Up, when a man speaks, or
I will set that coat ablaze!"
Shere Khan's ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his
eyes, for the blazing branch was very near.
"This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he
had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat
dogs when we are men. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower
down thy gullet!" He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch,
and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear.
"Pah! Singed jungle cat- go now! But remember when next I come to
the Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan's
hide on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he
pleases. Ye will not kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I
think that ye will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as
though ye were somebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out- thus!
Go!" The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and
Mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran
howling with the sparks burning their fur. At last there were only
Akela, Bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli's
part. Then something began to hurt Mowgli inside him, as he had
never been hurt in his life before, and he caught his breath and
sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.
"What is it? What is it?" he said. "I do not wish to leave the
jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?"
"No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use," said
Bagheera. "Now I know thou art a man, and a man's cub no longer. The
jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli.
They are only tears."
So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had
never cried in all his life before.
"Now," he said, "I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to
my mother." And he went to the cave where she lived with Father
Wolf, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably.
"Ye will not forget me?" said Mowgli.
"Never while we can follow a trail," said the cubs. "Come to the
foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we
will come into the croplands to play with thee by night."
"Come soon!" said Father Wolf. "Oh, wise little frog, come again
soon; for we be old, thy mother and I."
"Come soon," said Mother Wolf, "little naked son of mine. For,
listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs."
"I will surely come," said Mowgli. "And when I come it will be to
lay out Shere Khan's hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me!
Tell them in the jungle never to forget me!"
The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the
hillside alone, to meet those mysterious things that are called men.
Hunting Song of the Seeonee Pack
-
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled
Once, twice, and again!
And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scouting alone, beheld,
Once, twice, and again!
-
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled
Once, twice, and again!
And a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back
To carry the word to the waiting pack,
And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track
Once, twice, and again!
-
As the dawn was breaking the Wolf Pack yelled
Once, twice, and again!
Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark- the dark!
Tongue- give tongue to it! Hark! O hark!
Once, twice, and again!
KAA'S HUNTING
-
His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns
are the Buffalo's pride.
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known
by the gloss of his hide.
If ye find that the Bullock can toss you, or the
heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew
it ten seasons before.
Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail
them as Sister and Brother,
For though they are little and fubsy, it may be
the Bear is their mother.
"There is none like to me!" says the Cub in the
pride of his earliest kill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small.
Let him think and be still.
MAXIMS OF BALOO
-
ALL THAT IS TOLD HERE happened some time before Mowgli was turned
out of the Seeonee Wolf Pack, or revenged himself on Shere Khan the
Tiger. It was in the days when Baloo was teaching him the Law of the
Jungle. The big, serious, old brown bear was delighted to have so
quick a pupil, for the young wolves will only learn as much of the Law
of the Jungle as applies to their own pack and tribe, and run away
as soon as they can repeat the Hunting Verse- "Feet that make no
noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds
in their lairs, and sharp white teeth, all these things are the
marks of our brothers except Tabaqui the Jackal and the Hyena whom
we hate."
But Mowgli, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this.
Sometimes Bagheera the Black Panther would come lounging through the
jungle to see how his pet was getting on, and would purr with his head
against a tree while Mowgli recited the day's lesson to Baloo. The boy
could climb almost as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well
as he could run. So Baloo, the Teacher of the Law, taught him the Wood
and Water Laws: how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; how to
speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty
feet above ground; what to say to Mang the Bat when he disturbed him
in the branches at midday; and how to warn the water snakes in the
pools before he splashed down among them. None of the Jungle People
like being disturbed, and all are very ready to fly at an intruder.
Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers' Hunting Call, which
must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle
People hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, "Give me
leave to hunt here because I am hungry." And the answer is, "Hunt then
for food, but not for pleasure."
All this will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart, and
he grew very tired of saying the same thing over a hundred times. But,
as Baloo said to Bagheera, one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and run
off in a temper, "A man's cub is a man's cub, and he must learn all
the Law of the Jungle."
"But think how small he is," said the Black Panther, who would have
spoiled Mowgli if he had had his own way. "How can his little head
carry all thy long talk?"
"Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No.
That is why I teach him these things, and that is why I hit him,
very softly, when he forgets."
"Softly! What dost thou know of softness, old Iron-feet?"
Bagheera grunted. "His face is all bruised today by thy- softness.
Ugh."
"Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him
than that he should come to harm through ignorance," Baloo answered
very earnestly. "I am now teaching him the Master Words of the
Jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and
all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack. He can now claim
protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the
jungle. Is not that worth a little beating?"
"Well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is
no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those
Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it"-
Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue,
ripping-chisel talons at the end of it- "still I should like to know."
"I will call Mowgli and he shall say them- if he will. Come, Little
Brother!"
"My head is ringing like a bee tree," said a sullen little voice
over their heads, and Mowgli slid down a tree trunk very angry and
indignant, adding as he reached the ground: "I come for Bagheera and
not for thee, fat old Baloo!"
"That is all one to me," said Baloo, though he was hurt and
grieved. "Tell Bagheera, then, the Master Words of the Jungle that I
have taught thee this day."
"Master Words for which people?" said Mowgli, delighted to show
off. "The jungle has many tongues. I know them all."
"A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never
thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to
thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting
Peoples then- great scholar."
"We be of one blood, ye and I," said Mowgli, giving the words the
Bear accent which all the Hunting People use.
"Good. Now for the birds."
Mowgli repeated, with the Kite's whistle at the end of the
sentence.
"Now for the Snake People," said Bagheera.
The answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and Mowgli kicked up
his feet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and
jumped on to Bagheera's back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his
heels on the glossy skin and making the worst faces he could think of,
at Baloo.
"There- there! That was worth a little bruise," said the brown bear
tenderly. "Some day thou wilt remember me." Then he turned aside to
tell Bagheera how he had begged the Master Words from Hathi the Wild
Elephant, who knows all about these things, and how Hathi had taken
Mowgli down to a pool to get the Snake Word from a water snake,
because Baloo could not pronounce it, and how Mowgli was now
reasonably safe against all accidents in the jungle, because neither
snake, bird, nor beast would hurt him.
"No one, then, is to be feared," Baloo wound up, patting his big
furry stomach with pride.
"Except his own tribe," said Bagheera, under his breath; and then
aloud to Mowgli, "Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all
this dancing up and down?"
Mowgli had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at
Bagheera's shoulder fur and kicking hard. When the two listened to him
he was shouting at the top of his voice, "And so I shall have a
tribe of my own, and lead them through the branches all day long."
"What is this new folly, little dreamer of dreams?" said Bagheera.
"Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old Baloo," Mowgli went on.
"They have promised me this. Ah!"
"Whoof!" Baloo's big paw scooped Mowgli off Bagheera's back, and as
the boy lay between the big forepaws he could see the Bear was angry.
"Mowgli," said Baloo, "thou hast been talking with the
Bandar-log- the Monkey People."
Mowgli looked at Bagheera to see if the Panther was angry too,
and Bagheera's eyes were as hard as jade stones.
"Thou hast been with the Monkey People- the gray apes- the people
without a law- the eaters of everything. That is great shame."
"When Baloo hurt my head," said Mowgli (he was still on his
back), "I went away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and
had pity on me. No one else cared." He snuffled a little.
"The pity of the Monkey People!" Baloo snorted. "The stillness of
the mountain stream! The cool of the summer sun! And then, man-cub?"
"And then, and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to
eat, and they- they carried me in their arms up to the top of the
trees and said I was their blood brother except that I had no tail,
and should be their leader some day."
"They have no leader," said Bagheera. "They lie. They have always
lied."
"They were very kind and bade me come again. Why have I never
been taken among the Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I
do. They do not hit me with their hard paws. They play all day. Let me
get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I will play with them again."
"Listen, man-cub," said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like
thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the Law of the
Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle- except the Monkey Folk who
live in the trees. They have no law. They are outcaste. They have no
speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they over-hear
when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their
way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no
remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a
great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the
falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten.
We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the
monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where
they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard me speak
of the Bandar-log till today?"
"No," said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now
Baloo had finished.
"The Jungle People put them out of their mouths and out of their
minds. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if
they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we
do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads."
He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down
through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and
angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.
"The Monkey People are forbidden," said Baloo, "forbidden to the
Jungle People. Remember."
"Forbidden," said Bagheera, "but I still think Baloo should have
warned thee against them."
"I- I? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. The
Monkey People! Faugh!"
A fresh shower came down on their heads and the two trotted away,
taking Mowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the monkeys was
perfectly true. They belonged to the treetops, and as beasts very
seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle
People to cross each other's path. But whenever they found a sick
wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him,
and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope
of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and
invite the Jungle People to climb up their trees and fight them, or
would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave
the dead monkeys where the Jungle People could see them.
They were always just going to have a leader, and laws and
customs of their own, but they never did, because their memories would
not hold over from day to day, and so they compromised things by
making up a saying, "What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will
think later," and that comforted them a great deal. None of the beasts
could reach them, but on the other hand, none of the beasts would
notice them, and that was why they were so pleased when Mowgli came to
play with them, and they heard how angry Baloo was.
They never meant to do any more- the Bandar-log never mean anything
at all. But one of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant
idea, and he told all the others that Mowgli would be a useful
person to keep in the tribe, because he could weave sticks together
for protection from the wind; so, if they caught him, they could
make him teach them. Of course Mowgli, as a woodcutter's child,
inherited all sorts of instincts, and used to make little huts of
fallen branches without thinking how he came to do it. The Monkey
People, watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful.
This time, they said, they were really going to have a leader and
become the wisest people in the jungle- so wise that everyone else
would notice and envy them.
Therefore they followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the
jungle very quietly till it was time for the midday nap, and Mowgli,
who was very much ashamed of himself, slept between the Panther and
the Bear, resolving to have no more to do with the Monkey People.
The next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and
arms- hard, strong, little hands- and then a swash of branches in
his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as
Baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up
the trunk with every tooth bared. The Bandar-log howled with triumph
and scuffled away to the upper branches where Bagheera dared not
follow, shouting: "He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. All the
Jungle People admire us for our skill and our cunning." Then they
began their flight; and the flight of the Monkey People through
tree-land is one of the things nobody can describe. They have their
regular roads and crossroads, up hills and down hills, all laid out
from fifty to seventy or a hundred feet above ground, and by these
they can travel even at night if necessary. Two of the strongest
monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung off with him through
the treetops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they could
have gone twice as fast, but the boy's weight held them back. Sick and
giddy as Mowgli was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though
the glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the
terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but empty
air brought his heart between his teeth.
His escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the thinnest
topmost branches crackle and bend under them, and then with a cough
and a whoop would fling themselves into the air outward and
downward, and bring up, hanging by their hands or their feet to the
lower limbs of the next tree. Sometimes he could see for miles and
miles across the still green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can
see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would
lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost
down to earth again. So, bounding and crashing and whooping and
yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log swept along the tree-roads with
Mowgli their prisoner.
For a time he was afraid of being dropped. Then he grew angry but
knew better than to struggle, and then he began to think. The first
thing was to send back word to Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace
the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far
behind. It was useless to look down, for he could only see the
topsides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the
blue, Chil the Kite balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the
jungle waiting for things to die.
Chil saw that the monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a
few hundred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He
whistled with surprise when he saw Mowgli being dragged up to a
treetop and heard him give the Kite call for- "We be of one blood,
thou and I." The waves of the branches closed over the boy, but Chil
balanced away to the next tree in time to see the little brown face
come up again. "Mark my trail!" Mowgli shouted. "Tell Baloo of the
Seeonee Pack and Bagheera of the Council Rock."
"In whose name, Brother?" Chil had never seen Mowgli before, though
of course he had heard of him.
"Mowgli the Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my tra-il!"
The last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air,
but Chil nodded and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of
dust, and there he hung, watching with his telescope eyes the
swaying of the treetops as Mowgli's escort whirled along.
"They never go far," he said with a chuckle. "They never do what
they set out to do. Always pecking at new things are the Bandar-log.
This time, if I have any eye-sight, they have pecked down trouble
for themselves, for Baloo is no fledgling and Bagheera can, as I know,
kill more than goats."
So he rocked on his wings, his feet gathered up under him, and
waited.
Meantime, Baloo and Bagheera were furious with rage and grief.
Bagheera climbed as he had never climbed before, but the thin branches
broke beneath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark.
"Why didst thou not warn the man-cub?" he roared to poor Baloo, who
had set off at a clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the monkeys.
"What was the use of half slaying him with blows if thou didst not
warn him?"
"Haste! O haste! We- we may catch them yet!" Baloo panted.
"At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher of the
Law- cub-beater- a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee
open. Sit still and think! Make a plan. This is no time for chasing.
They may drop him if we follow too close."
"Arrula! Whoo! They may have dropped him already, being tired of
carrying him. Who can trust the Bandar-log? Put dead bats on my
head! Give me black bones to eat! Roll me into the hives of the wild
bees that I may be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyena, for I
am most miserable of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O Mowgli, Mowgli! Why did
I not warn thee against the Monkey Folk instead of breaking thy
head? Now perhaps I may have knocked the day's lesson out of his mind,
and he will be alone in the jungle without the Master Words."
Baloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro moaning.
"At least he gave me all the Words correctly a little time ago,"
said Bagheera impatiently. "Baloo, thou hast neither memory nor
respect. What would the jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled
myself up like Sahi the Porcupine, and howled?"
"What do I care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead by now."
"Unless and until they drop him from the branches in sport, or kill
him out of idleness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and
well taught, and above all he has the eyes that make the Jungle People
afraid. But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the
Bandar-log, and they, because they live in trees, have no fear of
any of our people." Bagheera licked one forepaw thoughtfully.
"Fool that I am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that I am," said
Baloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk, "it is true what Hathi the
Wild Elephant says: 'To each his own fear'; and they, the
Bandar-log, fear Kaa the Rock Snake. He can climb as well as they can.
He steals the young monkeys in the night. The whisper of his name
makes their wicked tails cold. Let us go to Kaa."
"What will he do for us? He is not of our tribe, being footless-
and with most evil eyes," said Bagheera.
"He is very old and very cunning. Above all, he is always
hungry," said Baloo hopefully. "Promise him many goats."
"He sleeps for a full month after he has once eaten. He may be
asleep now, and even were he awake what if he would rather kill his
own goats?" Bagheera, who did not know much about Kaa, was naturally
suspicious.
"Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make him
see reason." Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the
Panther, and they went off to look for Kaa the Rock Python.
They found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the afternoon
sun, admiring his beautiful new coat, for he had been in retirement
for the last ten days changing his skin, and now he was very splendid-
darting his big blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twisting the
thirty feet of his body into fantastic knots and curves, and licking
his lips as he thought of his dinner to come.
"He has not eaten," said Baloo, with a grunt of relief, as soon
as he saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket. "Be
careful, Bagheera! He is always a little blind after he has changed
his skin, and very quick to strike."
Kaa was not a poison snake- in fact he rather despised the poison
snakes as cowards- but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had
once lapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said.
"Good hunting!" cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches. Like all
snakes of his breed Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call
at first. Then he curled up ready for any accident, his head lowered.
"Good hunting for us all," he answered. "Oho, Baloo, what dost thou
do here? Good hunting, Bagheera. One of us at least needs food. Is
there any news of game afoot? A doe now, or even a young buck? I am as
empty as a dried well."
"We are hunting," said Baloo carelessly. He knew that you must
not hurry Kaa. He is too big.
"Give me permission to come with you," said Kaa. "A blow more or
less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I- I have to wait
and wait for days in a wood path and climb half a night on the mere
chance of a young ape. Psshaw! The branches are not what they were
when I was young. Rotten twigs and dry boughs are they all."
"Maybe thy great weight has something to do with the matter,"
said Baloo.
"I am a fair length- a fair length," said Kaa with a little
pride. "But for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown timber.
I came very near to falling on my last hunt- very near indeed- and the
noise of my slipping, for my tail was not tight wrapped around the
tree, waked the Bandar-log, and they called me most evil names."
"Footless, yellow earthworm," said Bagheera under his whiskers,
as though he were trying to remember something.
"Sssss! Have they ever called me that?" said Kaa.
"Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon,
but we never noticed them. They will say anything- even that thou hast
lost all thy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid,
because (they are indeed shameless, these Bandar-log)- because thou
art afraid of the he-goats' horns," Bagheera went on sweetly.
Now a snake, especially a wary old python like Kaa, very seldom
shows that he is angry, but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big
swallowing muscles on either side of Kaa's throat ripple and bulge.
"The Bandar-log have shifted their grounds," he said quietly. "When
I came up into the sun today I heard them whooping among the
treetops."
"It- it is the Bandar-log that we follow now," said Baloo, but
the words stuck in his throat, for that was the first time in his
memory that one of the Jungle People had owned to being interested
in the doings of the monkeys.
"Beyond doubt then it is no small thing that takes two such
hunters- leaders in their own jungle I am certain- on the trail of the
Bandar-log," Kaa replied courteously, as he swelled with curiosity.
"Indeed," Baloo began, "I am no more than the old and sometimes
very foolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf cubs, and Bagheera
here-"
"Is Bagheera," said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut with a
snap, for he did not believe in being humble. "The trouble is this,
Kaa. Those nut stealers and pickers of palm leaves have stolen away
our man-cub of whom thou hast perhaps heard."
"I heard some news from Sahi (his quills make him presumptuous)
of a man-thing that was entered into a wolf pack, but I did not
believe. Sahi is full of stories half heard and very badly told."
"But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was," said Baloo.
"The best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs- my own pupil, who
shall make the name of Baloo famous through all the jungles; and
besides, I- we- love him, Kaa."
"Ts! Ts!" said Kaa, weaving his head to and fro. "I also have known
what love is. There are tales I could tell that-"
"That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise
properly," said Bagheera quickly. "Our man-cub is in the hands of
the Bandar-log now, and we know that of all the Jungle People they
fear Kaa alone."
"They fear me alone. They have good reason," said Kaa. "Chattering,
foolish, vain- vain, foolish, and chattering, are the monkeys. But a
man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the
nuts they pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day,
meaning to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. That
man-thing is not to be envied. They called me also- yellow fish was it
not?"
"Worm- worm- earthworm," said Bagheera, "as well as other things
which I cannot now say for shame."
"We must remind them to speak well of their master. Aaa-ssp! We
must help their wandering memories. Now, whither went they with the
cub?"
"The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe," said Baloo.
"We had thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa."
"I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do not hunt
the Bandar-log, or frogs- or green scum on a water hole, for that
matter. Hsss!"
"Up, up! Up, up! Hillo! Illo! Illo, look up, Baloo of the Seeonee
Wolf Pack!"
Baloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was
Chil the Kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned
flanges of his wings. It was near Chil's bedtime, but he had ranged
all over the jungle looking for the Bear and had missed him in the
thick foliage.
"What is it?" said Baloo.
"I have seen Mowgli among the Bandar-log. He bade me tell you. I
watched. The Bandar-log have taken him beyond the river to the
monkey city- to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a night, or
ten nights, or an hour. I have told the bats to watch through the dark
time. That is my message. Good hunting, all you below!"
"Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Chil," cried Bagheera. "I will
remember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee
alone- oh, best of kites!"
"It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I
could have done no less," and Chil circled up again to his roost.
"He has not forgotten to use his tongue," said Baloo with a chuckle
of pride. "To think of one so young remembering the Master Word for
the birds too while he was being pulled across trees!"
"It was most firmly driven into him," said Bagheera. "But I am
proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs."
They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle People
ever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old
deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use
a place that men have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunting
tribes do not. Besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they
could be said to live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would
come within eyeshot of it except in times of drought, when the
half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water.
"It is half a night's journey- at full speed," said Bagheera, and
Baloo looked very serious. "I will go as fast as I can," he said
anxiously.
"We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on the
quickfoot- Kaa and I."
"Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four," said Kaa
shortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down
panting, and so they left him to come on later, while Bagheera hurried
forward, at the quick panther-canter. Kaa said nothing, but, strive as
Bagheera might, the huge Rock Python held level with him. When they
came to a hill stream, Bagheera gained, because he bounded across
while Kaa swam, his head and two feet of his neck clearing the
water, but on level ground Kaa made up the distance.
"By the Broken Lock that freed me," said Bagheera, when twilight
had fallen, "thou art no slow goer!"
"I am hungry," said Kaa. "Besides, they called me speckled frog."
"Worm- earthworm, and yellow to boot."
"All one. Let us go on," and Kaa seemed to pour himself along the
ground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and keeping to
it.
In the Cold Lairs the Monkey People were not thinking of Mowgli's
friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, and were
very much pleased with themselves for the time. Mowgli had never
seen an Indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins
it seemed very wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago
on a little hill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led
up to the ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the
worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the
battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung
out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps.
A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the
courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and
green. The very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king's
elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and
young trees. From the palace you could see the rows and rows of
roofless houses that made up the city looking like empty honeycombs
filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an
idol in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at
street corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered
domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides.
The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise
the Jungle People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never
knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They
would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council chamber, and
scratch for fleas and pretend to be men. Or they would run in and
out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old
bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight
and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down
the terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose
trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall.
They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and
the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they
had seen and what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and
twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did.
They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they
fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and
shout: "There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever
and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log." Then all would begin again
till they grew tired of the city and went back to the treetops, hoping
the Jungle People would notice them.
Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not
like or understand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the
Cold Lairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as
Mowgli would have done after a long journey, they joined hands and
danced about and sang their foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a
speech and told his companions that Mowgli's capture marked a new
thing in the history of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show
them how to weave sticks and canes together as a protection against
rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some creepers and began to work them
in and out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; but in a very few
minutes they lost interest and began to pull their friends' tails or
jump up and down on all fours, coughing.
"I wish to eat," said Mowgli. "I am a stranger in this part of
the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here."
Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts and wild
papaws. But they fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much
trouble to go back with what was left of the fruit. Mowgli was sore
and angry as well as hungry, and he roamed through the empty city
giving the Strangers' Hunting Call from time to time, but no one
answered him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place
indeed. "All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true," he
thought to himself. "They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and no
leaders- nothing but foolish words and little picking thievish
hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault.
But I must try to return to my own jungle. Baloo will surely beat
me, but that is better than chasing silly rose leaves with the
Bandar-log."
No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled
him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and
pinching him to make him grateful. He set his teeth and said
nothing, but went with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above the red
sandstone reservoirs that were half full of rain water. There was a
ruined summerhouse of white marble in the center of the terrace, built
for queens dead a hundred years ago. The domed roof had half fallen in
and blocked up the underground passage from the palace by which the
queens used to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble
tracery- beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and carnelians
and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill
it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the ground like
black velvet embroidery.
Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mowgli could not help
laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him
how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he
was to wish to leave them.
"We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most
wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be
true," they shouted. "Now as you are a new listener and can carry
our words back to the Jungle People so that they may notice us in
future, we will tell you all about our most excellent selves."
Mowgli made no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds and
hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speakers singing the
praises of the Bandar-log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want
of breath they would all shout together: "This is true; we all say
so."
Mowgli nodded and blinked, and said "Yes" when they asked him a
question, and his head spun with the noise. "Tabaqui the Jackal must
have bitten all these people," he said to himself, "and now they
have madness. Certainly this is dewanee, the madness. Do they never go
to sleep? Now there is a cloud coming to cover that moon. If it were
only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in the darkness. But I
am tired."
That same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined
ditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well how
dangerous the Monkey People were in large numbers, did not wish to run
any risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one,
and few in the jungle care for those odds.
"I will go to the west wall," Kaa whispered, "and come down swiftly
with the slope of the ground in my favor. They will not throw
themselves upon my back in their hundreds, but-"
"I know it," said Bagheera. "Would that Baloo were here, but we
must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go to the
terrace. They hold some sort of council there over the boy."
"Good hunting," said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the west
wall. That happened to be the least ruined of any, and the big snake
was delayed awhile before he could find a way up the stones. The cloud
hid the moon, and as Mowgli wondered what would come next he heard
Bagheera's light feet on the terrace. The Black Panther had raced up
the slope almost without a sound and was striking- he knew better than
to waste time in biting- right and left among the monkeys, who were
seated round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep.
There was a howl of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped
on the rolling kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: "There is
only one here! Kill him! Kill." A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting,
scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five
or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the summerhouse
and pushed him through the hole of the broken dome. A man-trained
boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good fifteen
feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed on
his feet.
"Stay there," shouted the monkeys, "till we have killed thy
friends, and later we will play with thee- if the Poison People
leave thee alive."
"We be of one blood, ye and I," said Mowgli, quickly giving the
Snake's Call. He could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish all
round him and gave the call a second time, to make sure.
"Even ssso! Down hoods all!" said half a dozen low voices (every
ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling place of snakes,
and the old summerhouse was alive with cobras). "Stand still, Little
Brother, for thy feet may do us harm."
Mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through the open
work and listening to the furious din of the fight round the Black
Panther- the yells and chatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera's
deep, hoarse cough as he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged
under the heaps of his enemies. For the first time since he was
born, Bagheera was fighting for his life.
"Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come alone," Mowgli
thought. And then he called aloud: "To the tank, Bagheera. Roll to the
water tanks. Roll and plunge! Get to the water!"
Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe gave
him new courage. He worked his way desperately, inch by inch, straight
for the reservoirs, halting in silence. Then from the ruined wall
nearest the jungle rose up the rumbling war shout of Baloo. The old
Bear had done his best, but he could not come before. "Bagheera," he
shouted, "I am here. I climb! I haste! Ahuwora! The stones slip
under my feet! Wait my coming, O most infamous Bandar-log!"
He panted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in a wave of
monkeys, but he threw himself squarely on his haunches, and, spreading
out his forepaws, hugged as many as he could hold, and then began to
hit with a regular bat-bat-bat, like the flipping strokes of a
paddle wheel. A crash and a splash told Mowgli that Bagheera had
fought his way to the tank where the monkeys could not follow. The
Panther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of the water,
while the monkeys stood three deep on the red steps, dancing up and
down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out
to help Baloo.
It was then that Bagheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in
despair gave the Snake's Call for protection- "We be of one blood,
ye and I"- for he believed that Kaa had turned tail at the last
minute. Even Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the edge of
the terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the Black Panther
asking for help.
Kaa had only just 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 faraway 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 walls and
the empty houses stopped their cries, and in the stillness that fell
upon the city Mowgli heard Bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came
up from the tank. Then the clamor broke out again. The monkeys
leaped higher up the walls. They clung around the necks of the big
stone idols and shrieked as they skipped along the battlements,
while Mowgli, dancing in the summerhouse, put his eye to the
screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front teeth, to show his
derision and contempt.
"Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more," Bagheera
gasped. "Let us take the man-cub and go. They may attack again."
"They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!" Kaa hissed,
and the city was silent once more. "I could not come before,
Brother, but I think I heard thee call"- this was to Bagheera.
"I- I may have cried out in the battle," Bagheera answered. "Baloo,
art thou hurt?
"I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little
bearlings," said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. "Wow!
I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives- Bagheera and I."
"No matter. Where is the manling?"
"Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out," cried Mowgli. The curve of
the broken dome was above his head.
"Take him away. He dances like Mor the Peacock. He will crush our
young," said the cobras inside.
"Hah!" said Kaa with a chuckle, "he has friends everywhere, this
manling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O Poison People. I break
down the wall."
Kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble
tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his
head to get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body
clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows,
nose-first. The screenwork broke and fell away in a cloud of dust
and rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself
between Baloo and Bagheera- an arm around each big neck.
"Art thou hurt?" said Baloo, hugging him softly.
"I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have
handled ye grievously, my brothers! Ye bleed."
"Others also," said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the
monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.
"It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride of
all little frogs!" whimpered Baloo.
"Of that we shall judge later," said Bagheera, in a dry voice
that Mowgli did not at all like. "But here is Kaa to whom we owe the
battle and thou owest thy life. Thank him according to our customs,
Mowgli."
Mowgli turned and saw the great Python's head swaying a foot
above his own.
"So this is the manling," said Kaa. "Very soft is his skin, and
he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do not
mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my
coat."
"We be one blood, thou and I," Mowgli answered. "I take my life
from thee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art
hungry, O Kaa."
"All thanks, Little Brother," said Kaa, though his eyes twinkled.
"And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I may follow when next
he goes abroad."
"I kill nothing- I am too little- but I drive goats toward such
as can use them. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the
truth. I have some skill in these"- he held out his hands- "and if
ever thou art in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee, to
Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good hunting to ye all, my masters."
"Well said," growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned thanks very
prettily. The Python dropped his head lightly for a minute on Mowgli's
shoulder. "A brave heart and a courteous tongue," said he. "They shall
carry thee far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly
with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it
is not well that thou shouldst see."
The moon was sinking behind the hills and the lines of trembling
monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like
ragged shaky fringes of things. Baloo went down to the tank for a
drink and Bagheera began to put his fur in order, as Kaa glided out
into the center of the terrace and brought his jaws together with a
ringing snap that drew all the monkeys' eyes upon him.
"The moon sets," he said. "Is there yet light enough to see?"
From the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-tops- "We see,
O Kaa."
"Good. Begins now the dance- the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa. Sit
still and watch."
He turned twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving his head from
right to left. Then he began making loops and figures of eight with
his body, and soft, oozy triangles that melted into squares and
five-sided figures, and coiled mounds, never resting, never
hurrying, and never stopping his low humming song. It grew darker
and darker, till at last the dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but
they could hear the rustle of the scales.
Baloo and Bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their throats,
their neck hair bristling, and Mowgli watched and wondered.
"Bandar-log," said the voice of Kaa at last, "can ye stir foot or
hand without my order? Speak!"
"Without thy order we cannot stir foot or hand, O Kaa!"
"Good! Come all one pace nearer to me."
The lines of the monkeys swayed forward helplessly, and Baloo and
Bagheera took one stiff step forward with them.
"Nearer!" hissed Kaa, and they all moved again.
Mowgli laid his hands on Baloo and Bagheera to get them away, and
the two great beasts started as though they had been waked from a
dream.
"Keep thy hand on my shoulder," Bagheera whispered. "Keep it there,
or I must go back- must go back to Kaa. Aah!"
"It is only old Kaa making circles on the dust," said Mowgli.
"Let us go." And the three slipped off through a gap in the walls to
the jungle.
"Whoof!" said Baloo, when he stood under the still trees again.
"Never more will I make an ally of Kaa," and he shook himself all
over.
"He knows more than we," said Bagheera, trembling. "In a little
time, had I stayed, I should have walked down his throat."
"Many will walk by that road before the moon rises again," said
Baloo. "He will have good hunting- after his own fashion."
"But what was the meaning of it all?" said Mowgli, who did not know
anything of a python's powers of fascination. "I saw no more than a
big snake making foolish circles till the dark came. And his nose
was all sore. Ho! Ho!"
"Mowgli," said Bagheera angrily, "his nose was sore on thy account,
as my ears and sides and paws, and Baloo's neck and shoulders are
bitten on thy account. Neither Baloo nor Bagheera will be able to hunt
with pleasure for many days."
"It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my again."
"True, but he has cost us heavily in time which might have been
spent in good hunting, in wounds, in hair- I am half plucked along
my back- and last of all, in honor. For, remember, Mowgli, I, who am
the Black Panther, was forced to call upon Kaa for protection, and
Baloo and I were both made stupid as little birds by the Hunger Dance.
All this, man-cub, came of thy playing with the Bandar-log."
"True, it is true," said Mowgli sorrowfully. "I am an evil man-cub,
and my stomach is sad in me."
"Mf! What says the Law of the Jungle, Baloo?"
Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trouble, but he
could not tamper with the Law, so he mumbled: "Sorrow never stays
punishment. But remember, Bagheera, he is very little."
"I will remember. But he has done mischief, and blows must be dealt
now. Mowgli, hast thou anything to say?"
"Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou are wounded. It is just."
Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps from a panther's point
of view (they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs), but for
a seven-year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could
wish to avoid. When it was all over Mowgli sneezed, and picked himself
up without a word.
"Now," said Bagheera, "jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will
go home."
One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all
scores. There is no nagging afterward.
Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera's back and slept so deeply
that he never waked when he was put down in the home cave.
Road Song of the Bandar-Log
-
HERE we go in a flung festoon,
Halfway up to the jealous moon!
Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
Don't you wish you had extra hands?
Wouldn't you like if your tails were- so-
Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
Now you're angry, but- never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
-
Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two-
Something noble and wise and good,
Done by merely wishing we could.
We've forgotten, but- never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
-
All the talk we ever have heard
Uttered by bat or beast or bird-
Hide or fin or scale or feather-
Jabber it quickly and all together!
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again!
Now we are talking just like men!
Let's pretend we are- never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
This is the way of the monkey-kind.
-
Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!
"TIGER! TIGER!"
-
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair to die.
-
WHEN MOWGLI LEFT the wolf's cave after the fight with the Pack at
the Council Rock, he went down to the plowed lands where the villagers
lived, but he would not stop there because it was too near to the
jungle, and he knew that he had made at least one bad enemy at the
Council. So he hurried on, keeping to the rough road that ran down the
valley, and followed it at a steady jog trot for nearly twenty
miles, till he came to a country that he did not know. The valley
opened out into a great plain dotted over with rocks and cut up by
ravines. At one end stood a little village, and at the other the thick
jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing grounds, and stopped
there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over the plain,
cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in
charge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the
yellow pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked. Mowgli
walked on, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the
village gate he saw the big thornbush that was drawn up before the
gate at twilight, pushed to one side.
"Umph!" he said, for he had come across more than one such
barricade in his night rambles after things to eat. "So men are afraid
of the People of the Jungle here also."
He sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stood up,
opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he wanted food. The
man stared, and ran back up the one street of the village shouting for
the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with a red and
yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to the gate, and with him
at least a hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted and
pointed at Mowgli.
"They have no manners, these Men Folk," said Mowgli to himself.
"Only the gray ape would behave as they do." So he threw back his long
hair and frowned at the crowd.
"What is there to be afraid of?" said the priest. "Look at the
marks on his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but
a wolf-child run away from the jungle."
Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped Mowgli
harder than they intended, and there were white scars all over his
arms and legs. But he would have been the last person in the world
to call these bites, for he knew what real biting meant.
"Arre! Arre!" said two or three women together. "To be bitten by
wolves, poor child! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire.
By my honor, Messua, he is not unlike thy boy that was taken by the
tiger."
"Let me look," said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists
and ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the palm of her hand.
"Indeed he is not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy."
The priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua was wife to
the richest villager in the place. So he looked up at the sky for a
minute and said solemnly: "What the jungle has taken the jungle has
restored. Take the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to
honor the priest who sees so far into the lives of men."
"By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli to himself, "but all this
talking is like another looking over by the Pack! Well, if I am a man,
a man I must be."
The crowd parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to her hut, where
there was a red-lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain chest with
funny raised patterns on it, half a dozen copper cooking pots, an
image of a Hindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall a real
looking glass, such as they sell at the country fairs for eight cents.
She gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid
her hand on his head and looked into his eyes; for she thought perhaps
that he might be her real son come back from the jungle where the
tiger had taken him. So she said, "Nathoo, O Nathoo!" Mowgli did not
show that he knew the name. "Dost thou not remember the day when I
gave thee thy new shoes?" She touched his foot, and it was almost as
hard as horn. "No," she said sorrowfully, "those feet have never
worn shoes, but thou art very like my Nathoo, and thou shalt be my
son."
Mowgli was uneasy, because he had never been under a roof before.
But as he looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any
time if he wanted to get away, and that the window had no
fastenings. "What is the good of a man," he said to himself at last,
"if he does not understand man's talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a
man would be with us in the jungle. I must speak their talk."
He had not learned while he was with the wolves to imitate the
challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little wild
pig for fun. So, as soon as Messua pronounced a word Mowgli would
imitate it almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the
names of many things in the hut.
There was a difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would not sleep
under anything that looked so like a panther trap as that hut, and
when they shut the door he went through the window.
"Give him his will," said Messua's husband. "Remember he can
never till now have slept on a bed. If he is indeed sent in the
place of our son he will not run away."
So Mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge
of the field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked
him under the chin.
"Phew!" said Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Mother Wolf's
cubs). "This is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou
smellest of wood smoke and cattle- altogether like a man already.
Wake, Little Brother; I bring news."
"Are all well in the jungle?" said Mowgli, hugging him.
"All except the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now,
listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows
again, for he is badly singed. When he returns he swears that he
will lay thy bones in the Waingunga."
"There are two words to that. I also have made a little promise.
But news is always good. I am tired tonight- very tired with new
things, Gray Brother- but bring me the news always."
"Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make
thee forget?" said Gray Brother anxiously.
"Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in our
cave. But also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the
Pack."
"And that thou mayest be cast out of another pack. Men are only
men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a
pond. When I come down here again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos
at the edge of the grazing ground."
For three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the
village gate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men.
First he had to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly;
and then he had to learn about money, which he did not in the least
understand, and about plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then
the little children in the village made him very angry. Luckily, the
Law of the Jungle had taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle
life and food depend on keeping your temper.
But when they made fun of him because he would not play games or
fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the knowledge
that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him from
picking them up and breaking them in two. He did not know his own
strength in the least. In the jungle he knew he was weak compared with
the beasts, but in the village people said that he was as strong as
a bull. He certainly had no notion of what fear was, for when the
village priest told him that the god in the temple would be angry with
him if he ate the priest's mangoes, he picked up the image, brought it
over to the priest's house, and asked the priest to make the god angry
and he would be happy to fight him. It was a horrible scandal, but the
priest hushed it up, and Messua's husband paid much good silver to
comfort the god.
And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste
makes between man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the
clay pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the
pots for their journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very
shocking, too, for the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is
worse. When the priest scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on
the donkey too, and the priest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had
better be set to work as soon as possible. So the village headman told
Mowgli that he would have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and
herd them while they grazed.
No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because he had
been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to
a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great
fig tree. It was the village club, and the headman and the watchman
and the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old
Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked.
The monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole
under the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little
platter of milk every night because he was sacred.
The old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big
huqas (the water pipes) till far into the night. They told wonderful
tales of gods and men and ghosts; and Buldeo told even more
wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of
the children sitting outside the circle bulged out of their heads.
Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at
their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and
now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within sight of
the village gates.
Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking
of, had to cover his face not to show that he was laughing, while
Buldeo, the Tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one
wonderful story to another, and Mowgli's shoulders shook.
Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away
Messua's son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the
ghost of a wicked, old moneylender, who had died some years ago.
"And I know that this is true," he said, "because Purun Dass always
limped from the blow that he got in a riot when his account books were
burned, and the tiger that I speak of he limps, too, for the tracks of
his pads are unequal."
"True, true, that must be the truth, said the gray-beards,
nodding together.
"Are all these tales such cobwebs and moon talk?" said Mowgli.
"That tiger limps because he was born lame, as everyone knows. To talk
of the soul of a moneylender in a beast that never had the courage
of a jackal is child's talk."
Buldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the headman
stared.
"Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?" said Buldeo. "If thou art so
wise, better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government has
set a hundred rupees on his life. Better still, talk not when thy
elders speak."
Mowgli rose to go. "All the evening I have lain here listening," he
called back over his shoulder, "and, except once or twice, Buldeo
has not said one word of truth concerning the jungle, which is at
his very doors. How, then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and
gods and goblins which he says he has seen?"
"It is full time that boy went to herding," said the headman, while
Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli's impertinence.
The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the
cattle and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them
back at night. The very cattle that would trample a white man to death
allow themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by children
that hardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with
the herds they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of
cattle. But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are
sometimes carried off.
Mowgli went through the village street in the dawn, sitting on
the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-blue buffaloes,
with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out
their byres, one by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very
clear to the children with him that he was the master. He beat the
buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the
boys, to graze the cattle by themselves, while he went on with the
buffaloes, and to be very careful not to stray away from the herd.
An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrubs and tussocks and
little ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The
buffaloes generally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie
wallowing or basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them on
to the edge of the plain where the Waingunga came out of the jungle;
then he dropped from Rama's neck, trotted off to a bamboo clump, and
found Gray Brother.
"Ah," said Gray Brother, "I have waited here very many days. What
is the meaning of this cattle-herding work?"
"It is an order," said Mowgli. "I am a village herd for a while.
What news of Shere Khan?"
"He has come back to this country, and has waited here a long
time for thee. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce.
But he means to kill thee."
"Very good," said Mowgli. "So long as he is away do thou or one
of the four brothers sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I
come out of the village. When he comes back wait for me in the
ravine by the dhak tree in the center of the plain. We need not walk
into Shere Khan's mouth."
Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept
while the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the
laziest things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down,
and move on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and
the buffaloes very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy
pools one after another, and work their way into the mud till only
their noses and staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and
then they lie like logs.
The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd children
hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead,
and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would
sweep down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and
follow, and the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead
there would be a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere.
Then they sleep and wake and sleep again, and weave little
baskets of dried grass and put grasshoppers in them; or catch two
praying mantises and make them fight; or string a necklace of red
and black jungle nuts; or watch a lizard basking on a rock, or a snake
hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they sing long, long songs
with odd native quavers at the end of them, and the day seems longer
than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they make a mud castle
with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into
the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the figures are
their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped.
Then evening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes
lumber up out of the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off
one after the other, and they all string across the gray plain back to
the twinkling village lights.
Day after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows,
and day after day he would see Gray Brother's back a mile and a half
away across the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come
back), and day after day he would lie on the grass listening to the
noises round him, and dreaming of old days in the jungle. If Shere
Khan had made a false step with his lame paw up in the jungles by
the Waingunga, Mowgli would have heard him in those long, still
mornings.
At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal
place, and he laughed and headed the b |
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