The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
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THE JUNGLE BOOK
By Rudyard Kipling
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 Chant
Toomai of the Elephants
Shiv and the Grasshopper
Her Majesty's Servants
Parade Song of the Camp Animals
Mowgli's Brothers
Now Rann 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 down hill 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 to-night," 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 Ikki 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 Mao, 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 pig-nuts. 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. "To-morrow 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 husbandman'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!
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