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.
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!