The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling

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THE JUNGLE BOOK

By Rudyard Kipling

“Little Toomai laid himself down close to the great necklest a swinging bough should sweep him to the ground.”

Mowgli and best hypoallergenic animal puppetsthe lone wolf

Contents

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 FatherWolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out hispaws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. MotherWolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealingcubs, 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 springdown hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold andwhined: “Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strongwhite teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry inthis world.”

“Good luck go with you, O chief of the wolves.”

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despiseTabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eatingrags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraidof him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to gomad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs throughthe forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides whenlittle Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that canovertake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee—themadness—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 boneis a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick andchoose?” He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buckwith some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.

“All thanks for this good meal,” he said, licking his lips. “How beautiful arethe 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 tocompliment children to their faces. It pleased him to see Mother and FatherWolf look uncomfortable.

Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then he saidspitefully:

“Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt amongthese 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 hasno right to change his quarters without due warning. He will frighten everyhead 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 MotherWolf quietly. “He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he hasonly killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, andhe has come here to make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle forhim when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is setalight. 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 harmenough for one night.”

“I go,” said Tabaqui quietly. “Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. Imight have saved myself the message.”

Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little riverhe heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caughtnothing 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 hethink that our buck are like his fat Waingunga bullocks?”

“H’sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,” said Mother Wolf. “Itis Man.”

The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from everyquarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsiessleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of thetiger.

“Man!” said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. “Faugh! Are there notenough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our groundtoo!”

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbidsevery beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how tokill, 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, thearrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men withgongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reasonthe beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and mostdefenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. Theysay 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’scharge.

Then there was a howl—an untigerish howl—from Shere Khan. “He has missed,” saidMother Wolf. “What is it?”

Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering and mumblingsavagely as he tumbled about in the scrub.

“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire, andhas 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 hishaunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching, youwould have seen the most wonderful thing in the world—the wolf checked inmid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, andthen he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into theair 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 babywho could just walk—as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to awolf’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 ithere.”

A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an eggwithout breaking it, and though Father Wolf’s jaws closed right on the child’sback 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 waspushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm hide. “Ahai! He istaking his meal with the others. And so this is a man’s cub. Now, was thereever 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 mytime,” said Father Wolf. “He is altogether without hair, and I could kill himwith 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 greatsquare 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 veryangry. “What does Shere Khan need?”

“My quarry. A man’s cub went this way,” said Shere Khan. “Its parents have runoff. Give it to me.”

Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter’s campfire, as Father Wolf had said, andwas furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that themouth 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’swould be if he tried to fight in a barrel.

“The Wolves are a free people,” said Father Wolf. “They take orders from theHead of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The man’s cub isours—to kill if we choose.”

“Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing? By the bullthat I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog’s den for my fair dues? It isI, Shere Khan, who speak!”

The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder.

The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook herself clearof 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 Packand to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little nakedcubs—frog-eater—fish-killer—he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by theSambhur 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 wonMother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack andwas not called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might have facedFather Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew thatwhere he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to thedeath. So he backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was clear heshouted:

“Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say to thisfostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in theend, O bush-tailed thieves!”

Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father Wolf said toher gravely:

“Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack. Wiltthou still keep him, Mother?”

“Keep him!” she gasped. “He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet hewas not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already. Andthat lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingungawhile 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 theFrog I will call thee—the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as hehas 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 hemarries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon as his cubs are oldenough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which isgenerally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves mayidentify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where theyplease, and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if agrown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where themurderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that thismust be so.

The ‘Council Rock’

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on the night ofthe Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—ahilltop 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 ofevery size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buckalone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf hadled them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, andonce he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customsof men. There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over eachother in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and nowand 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 hercub 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, OWolves!” And the anxious mothers would take up the call: “Look—look well, OWolves!”

At last—and Mother Wolf’s neck bristles lifted as the time came—Father Wolfpushed “Mowgli the Frog,” as they called him, into the center, where he satlaughing 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 ShereKhan crying: “The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have the Free People to dowith a man’s cub?” Akela never even twitched his ears. All he said was: “Lookwell, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the orders of any save theFree People? Look well!”

The meeting at the Council Rock

There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth year flungback Shere Khan’s question to Akela: “What have the Free People to do with aman’s cub?” Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any disputeas to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for byat 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 herlast fight, if things came to fighting.

Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council—Baloo, thesleepy 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 andhoney—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 noharm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let himrun 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 forthe 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 lightslike the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared tocross 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 wildhoney dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.

“O Akela, and ye the Free People,” he purred, “I have no right in yourassembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which is nota killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought ata price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price. Am Iright?”

“Good! Good!” said the young wolves, who are always hungry. “Listen toBagheera. 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 whenhe is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo’s word I will add onebull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will acceptthe man’s cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?”

There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: “What matter? He will die inthe 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 whenthe wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they all went down thehill for the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s ownwolves were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was very angrythat Mowgli had not been handed over to him.

“Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his whiskers, “for the time will comewhen this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing ofman.”

“It was well done,” said Akela. “Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be ahelp in time.”

‘Akela’ the lone wolf

“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 ofevery 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 killedin his turn.

“Take him away,” he said to Father Wolf, “and train him as befits one of theFree People.”

And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the price ofa bull and on Baloo’s good word.

Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only guess atall the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves, because if it werewritten out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs, thoughthey, of course, were grown wolves almost before he was a child. And FatherWolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, tillevery rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note ofthe owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for awhile in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meantjust as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man. When hewas not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleepagain. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when hewanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eatas 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.”

Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, “Come along, Little Brother,” andat first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would flinghimself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took hisplace at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he discovered thatif he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, andso he used to stare for fun. At other times he would pick the long thorns outof the pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs intheir 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 mistrustof men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunninglyhidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him that it was atrap. He loved better than anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warmheart of the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see howBagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt hungry, andso did Mowgli—with one exception. As soon as he was old enough to understandthings, Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had beenbought 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 tokill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eatany cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.” Mowgli obeyedfaithfully.

And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he islearning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of exceptthings to eat.

Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature to betrusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan. But though a young wolfwould have remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot it because he wasonly a boy—though he would have called himself a wolf if he had been able tospeak in any human tongue.

Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela grew olderand feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolvesof the Pack, who followed him for scraps, a thing Akela would never haveallowed if he had dared to push his authority to the proper bounds. Then ShereKhan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content tobe 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 wolveswould growl and bristle.

Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this, and once ortwice 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 beafraid?”

It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera—born of somethingthat he had heard. Perhaps Ikki the Porcupine had told him; but he said toMowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head onBagheera’s beautiful black skin, “Little Brother, how often have I told theethat 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 longtail 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 talkthat I was a naked man’s cub and not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaquiby the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him bettermanners.”

“That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he would havetold thee of something that concerned thee closely. Open those eyes, LittleBrother. Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the jungle. But remember, Akela isvery old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck, and then he willbe leader no more. Many of the wolves that looked thee over when thou wastbrought to the Council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, asShere Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack. In alittle time thou wilt be a man.”

“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?” said Mowgli. “Iwas born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is nowolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are mybrothers!”

Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes. “LittleBrother,” 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 alittle bald spot.

“There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark—themark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born among men, and it wasamong 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 thouwast a little naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen thejungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that Iwas Bagheera—the Panther—and no man’s plaything, and I broke the silly lockwith one blow of my paw and came away. And because I had learned the ways ofmen, 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 asI returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men at last—to the men who arethy 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 theeyes. 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 lookthee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love thee, LittleBrother. The others they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet thine;because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from theirfeet—because thou art a man.”

“I did not know these things,” said Mowgli sullenly, and he frowned under hisheavy black eyebrows.

“What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By thy verycarelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart thatwhen Akela misses his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin thebuck—the Pack will turn against him and against thee. They will hold a jungleCouncil 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 RedFlower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have evena stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get theRed Flower.”

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will callfire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents ahundred 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 inlittle 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 hisarm around the splendid neck and looked deep into the big eyes—“art thou surethat 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 tenyears ago!”

Mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his heart was hotin him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew breath, andlooked down the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother Wolf, at the back of thecave, 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 plowedfields tonight,” and he plunged downward through the bushes, to the stream atthe bottom of the valley. There he checked, for he heard the yell of the Packhunting, heard the bellow of a hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turnedat 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 snapof 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 fainterbehind him as he ran into the croplands where the villagers lived.

“Bagheera spoke truth,” he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle fodder bythe 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 thehearth. He saw the husbandman’s wife get up and feed it in the night with blacklumps. And when the morning came and the mists were all white and cold, he sawthe man’s child pick up a wicker pot plastered inside with earth, fill it withlumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and go out to tend thecows in the byre.

“Is that all?” said Mowgli. “If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.” Sohe strode round the corner and met the boy, took the pot from his hand, anddisappeared into the mist while the boy howled with fear.

“They are very like me,” said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as he had seen thewoman do. “This thing will die if I do not give it things to eat”; and hedropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway up the hill he metBagheera 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 presentlythe 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 aWolf, 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 drybranches 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 enoughthat he was wanted at the Council Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran away. ThenMowgli went to the Council, still laughing.

Mowgli and Bagheera

Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the leadershipof the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following of scrap-fed wolveswalked to and fro openly being flattered. Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and thefire 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 Akelawas in his prime.

“He has no right,” whispered Bagheera. “Say so. He is a dog’s son. He will befrightened.”

Mowgli sprang to his feet. “Free People,” he cried, “does Shere Khan lead thePack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?”

“Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak—” Shere Khanbegan.

“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 ourLaw”; 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 aslong 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 ledye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped ormaimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know howye brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverlydone. 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 ofthe 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? Heis doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free People, he wasmy meat from the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. Hehas troubled the jungle for ten seasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunthere always, and not give you one bone. He is a man, a man’s child, and fromthe marrow of my bones I hate him!”

Then more than half the Pack yelled: “A man! A man! What has a man to do withus? 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 withus. 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 islittle, but Bagheera’s honor is something that he will perhaps fight for,” saidBagheera in his gentlest voice.

“A bull paid ten years ago!” the Pack snarled. “What do we care for bones tenyears old?”

“Or for a pledge?” said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his lip. “Wellare ye called the Free People!”

“No man’s cub can run with the people of the jungle,” howled Shere Khan. “Givehim to me!”

“He is our brother in all but blood,” Akela went on, “and ye would kill himhere! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are eaters of cattle, and ofothers I have heard that, under Shere Khan’s teaching, ye go by dark night andsnatch children from the villager’s doorstep. Therefore I know ye to becowards, and it is to cowards I speak. It is certain that I must die, and mylife is of no worth, or I would offer that in the man-cub’s place. But for thesake of the Honor of the Pack,—a little matter that by being without a leaderye have forgotten,—I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, Iwill not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye. I will diewithout fighting. That will at least save the Pack three lives. More I cannotdo; but if ye will, I can save ye the shame that comes of killing a brotheragainst whom there is no fault—a brother spoken for and bought into the Packaccording to the Law of the Jungle.”

“He is a man—a man—a man!” snarled the Pack. And most of the wolves began togather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to switch.

“Now the business is in thy hands,” said Bagheera to Mowgli. “We can do no moreexcept 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 oftentonight that I am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to mylife’s end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my brothersany more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye will do, and what ye willnot do, is not yours to say. That matter is with me; and that we may see thematter more plainly, I, the man, have brought here a little of the Red Flowerwhich ye, dogs, fear.”

He flung the fire pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft ofdried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in terror before theleaping 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 thedeath. He was ever thy friend.”

Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave onepiteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black hair tossingover his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadowsjump and quiver.

“Good!” said Mowgli, staring round slowly. “I see that ye are dogs. I go fromyou to my own people—if they be my own people. The jungle is shut to me, and Imust forget your talk and your companionship. But I will be more merciful thanye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am aman among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.” He kickedthe fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. “There shall be no war betweenany of us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go.” He strodeforward to where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and caught himby 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 theblazing branch was very near.

“This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he had notkilled me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we aremen. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down thy gullet!” He beatShere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined inan agony of fear.

“Pah! Singed jungle cat—go now! But remember when next I come to the CouncilRock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan’s hide on my head. Forthe rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will not kill him, becausethat is not my will. Nor do I think that ye will sit here any longer, lollingout your tongues as though ye were somebodies, instead of dogs whom I driveout—thus! Go!” The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, andMowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling withthe sparks burning their fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, andperhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli’s part. Then something began to hurtMowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caughthis 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 donot know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?”

Mowgli leaving the jungle

“No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use,” said Bagheera. “Now Iknow thou art a man, and a man’s cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed tothee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears.” So Mowgli satand cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all hislife 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 hercoat, 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 thehill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we will come into thecroplands to play with thee by night.”

“Come soon!” said Father Wolf. “Oh, wise little frog, come again soon; for webe old, thy mother and I.”

“Come soon,” said Mother Wolf, “little naked son of mine. For, listen, child ofman, 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 ShereKhan’s hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them in the junglenever to forget me!”

The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside alone, tomeet 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 hishide.
If ye find that the Bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur cangore;
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 earliestkill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and bestill.
Maxims of Baloo

All that is told here happened some time before Mowgli was turned out of theSeeonee Wolf Pack, or revenged himself on Shere Khan the tiger. It was in thedays when Baloo was teaching him the Law of the Jungle. The big, serious, oldbrown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil, for the young wolves willonly learn as much of the Law of the Jungle as applies to their own pack andtribe, and run away as soon as they can repeat the Hunting Verse—“Feet thatmake no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds intheir lairs, and sharp white teeth, all these things are the marks of ourbrothers except Tabaqui the Jackal and the Hyaena whom we hate.” But Mowgli, asa man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this. Sometimes Bagheera theBlack Panther would come lounging through the jungle to see how his pet wasgetting on, and would purr with his head against a tree while Mowgli recitedthe 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 soundone; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of themfifty feet above ground; what to say to Mang the Bat when he disturbed him inthe branches at midday; and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools before hesplashed down among them. None of the Jungle People like being disturbed, andall are very ready to fly at an intruder. Then, too, Mowgli was taught theStrangers’ 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 answeris, “Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure.”

All this will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart, and he grew verytired of saying the same thing over a hundred times. But, as Baloo said toBagheera, one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and run off in a temper, “A man’scub 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 spoiledMowgli if he had had his own way. “How can his little head carry all thy longtalk?”

“Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No. That is why Iteach him these things, and that is why I hit him, very softly, when heforgets.”

“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 heshould come to harm through ignorance,” Baloo answered very earnestly. “I amnow teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with thebirds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his ownpack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from allin 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 trunkto sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am morelikely to give help than to ask it”—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admiredthe steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—“still I should like toknow.”

“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 theirheads, and Mowgli slid down a tree trunk very angry and indignant, adding as hereached 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. “TellBagheera, then, the Master Words of the Jungle that I have taught thee thisday.”

“Master Words for which people?” said Mowgli, delighted to show off. “Thejungle has many tongues. I know them all.”

“A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank theirteacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for histeachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People, then—great scholar.”

“We be of one blood, ye and I,” said Mowgli, giving the words the Bear accentwhich 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 feetbehind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped on toBagheera’s back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on the glossyskin 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 hehad begged the Master Words from Hathi the Wild Elephant, who knows all aboutthese things, and how Hathi had taken Mowgli down to a pool to get the SnakeWord from a water-snake, because Baloo could not pronounce it, and how Mowgliwas now reasonably safe against all accidents in the jungle, because neithersnake, bird, nor beast would hurt him.

“No one then is to be feared,” Baloo wound up, patting his big furry stomachwith pride.

“Except his own tribe,” said Bagheera, under his breath; and then aloud toMowgli, “Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all this dancing upand down?”

Mowgli had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at Bagheera’s shoulderfur and kicking hard. When the two listened to him he was shouting at the topof his voice, “And so I shall have a tribe of my own, and lead them through thebranches 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 havepromised me this. Ah!”

“Whoof!” Baloo’s big paw scooped Mowgli off Bagheera’s back, and as the boy laybetween the big fore-paws he could see the Bear was angry.

“Mowgli,” said Baloo, “thou hast been talking with the Bandar-log—the MonkeyPeople.”

Mowgli looked at Bagheera to see if the Panther was angry too, and Bagheera’seyes were as hard as jade stones.

“Thou hast been with the Monkey People—the gray apes—the people without alaw—the eaters of everything. That is great shame.”

“When Baloo hurt my head,” said Mowgli (he was still on his back), “I wentaway, and the gray apes came down from the trees and had pity on me. No oneelse cared.” He snuffled a little.

“The pity of the Monkey People!” Baloo snorted. “The stillness of the mountainstream! The cool of the summer sun! And then, man-cub?”

“And then, and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to eat, andthey—they carried me in their arms up to the top of the trees and said I wastheir blood brother except that I had no tail, and should be their leader someday.”

“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 amongthe Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I do. They do not hit me withtheir hard paws. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I willplay with them again.”

“Listen, man-cub,” said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hotnight. “I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of thejungle—except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees. They have no law. They areoutcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which theyoverhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Theirway is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. Theyboast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do greataffairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughterand all is forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do notdrink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do nothunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard mespeak of the Bandar-log till today?”

“No,” said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo hadfinished.

“The Jungle-People put them out of their mouths and out of their minds. Theyare very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixeddesire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not notice them even whenthey throw nuts and filth on our heads.”

He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down through thebranches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and angry jumpings high upin 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 theeagainst 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 Mowgliwith them. What Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. Theybelonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was nooccasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other’s path. Butwhenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys wouldtorment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in thehope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, andinvite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would startfurious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys wherethe 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 memorieswould not hold over from day to day, and so they compromised things by makingup a saying, “What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will think later,” andthat comforted them a great deal. None of the beasts could reach them, but onthe other hand none of the beasts would notice them, and that was why they wereso pleased when Mowgli came to play with them, and they heard how angry Baloowas.

They never meant to do any more—the Bandar-log never mean anything at all; butone of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and he told all theothers that Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in the tribe, because hecould weave sticks together for protection from the wind; so, if they caughthim, 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 fallenbranches without thinking how he came to do it. The Monkey-People, watching inthe trees, considered his play most wonderful. This time, they said, they werereally going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the jungle—sowise that everyone else would notice and envy them. Therefore they followedBaloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jungle very quietly till it was timefor the midday nap, and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of himself, sleptbetween the Panther and the Bear, resolving to have no more to do with theMonkey 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 wasstaring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with his deepcries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. The Bandar-loghowled with triumph and scuffled away to the upper branches where Bagheeradared not follow, shouting: “He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. Allthe Jungle-People admire us for our skill and our cunning.” Then they begantheir flight; and the flight of the Monkey-People through tree-land is one ofthe 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 feetabove ground, and by these they can travel even at night if necessary. Two ofthe strongest monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung off with himthrough the treetops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they couldhave gone twice as fast, but the boy’s weight held them back. Sick and giddy asMowgli was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses ofearth far down below frightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the endof 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 branchescrackle and bend under them, and then with a cough and a whoop would flingthemselves into the air outward and downward, and bring up, hanging by theirhands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree. Sometimes he could seefor miles and miles across the still green jungle, as a man on the top of amast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves wouldlash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost down toearth again. So, bounding and crashing and whooping and yelling, the wholetribe 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 betterthan to struggle, and then he began to think. The first thing was to send backword to Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knewhis friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look down, for he couldonly see the topsides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away inthe blue, Rann the Kite balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the junglewaiting for things to die. Rann 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 andheard him give the Kite call for—“We be of one blood, thou and I.” The waves ofthe branches closed over the boy, but Rann balanced away to the next tree intime to see the little brown face come up again. “Mark my trail!” Mowglishouted. “Tell Baloo of the Seeonee Pack and Bagheera of the Council Rock.”

“In whose name, Brother?” Rann had never seen Mowgli before, though of coursehe had heard of him.

“Mowgli, the Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my trail!”

The last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air, but Rannnodded and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of dust, and there hehung, watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the treetops as Mowgli’sescort whirled along.

Baloo in the forest

“They never go far,” he said with a chuckle. “They never do what they set outto do. Always pecking at new things are the Bandar-log. This time, if I haveany eye-sight, they have pecked down trouble for themselves, for Baloo is nofledgling 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 climbedas 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 offat a clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the monkeys. “What was the use ofhalf 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 theLaw—cub-beater—a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee open. Sitstill and think! Make a plan. This is no time for chasing. They may drop him ifwe 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 toeat! Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to death, andbury me with the Hyaena, for I am most miserable of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! OMowgli, Mowgli! Why did I not warn thee against the Monkey-Folk instead ofbreaking thy head? Now perhaps I may have knocked the day’s lesson out of hismind, 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 Bagheeraimpatiently. “Baloo, thou hast neither memory nor respect. What would thejungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki 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 ofidleness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and well taught, and aboveall he has the eyes that make the Jungle-People afraid. But (and it is a greatevil) he is in the power of the Bandar-log, and they, because they live intrees, have no fear of any of our people.” Bagheera licked one forepawthoughtfully.

“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. Hecan climb as well as they can. He steals the young monkeys in the night. Thewhisper 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 mostevil eyes,” said Bagheera.

“He is very old and very cunning. Above all, he is always hungry,” said Baloohopefully. “Promise him many goats.”

“He sleeps for a full month after he has once eaten. He may be asleep now, andeven were he awake what if he would rather kill his own goats?” Bagheera, whodid not know much about Kaa, was naturally suspicious.

“Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make him seereason.” Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther, andthey went off to look for Kaa the Rock Python.

They found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the afternoon sun, admiring hisbeautiful new coat, for he had been in retirement for the last ten dayschanging his skin, and now he was very splendid—darting his big blunt-nosedhead along the ground, and twisting the thirty feet of his body into fantasticknots 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 thebeautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket. “Be careful, Bagheera! He isalways 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 ascowards—but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once lapped his hugecoils 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 ofgame 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 isnothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in awood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape. Psshaw! Thebranches are not what they were when I was young. Rotten twigs and dry boughsare 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 allthat, it is the fault of this new-grown timber. I came very near to falling onmy last hunt—very near indeed—and the noise of my slipping, for my tail was nottight wrapped around the tree, waked the Bandar-log, and they called me mostevil names.”

“Footless, yellow earth-worm,” said Bagheera under his whiskers, as though hewere 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 nevernoticed 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 indeedshameless, these Bandar-log)—because thou art afraid of the he-goat’s horns,”Bagheera went on sweetly.

Now a snake, especially a wary old python like Kaa, very seldom shows that heis angry, but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing muscles on eitherside of Kaa’s throat ripple and bulge.

“The Bandar-log have shifted their grounds,” he said quietly. “When I came upinto the sun today I heard them whooping among the tree-tops.”

“It—it is the Bandar-log that we follow now,” said Baloo, but the words stuckin his throat, for that was the first time in his memory that one of theJungle-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 intheir own jungle I am certain—on the trail of the Bandar-log,” Kaa repliedcourteously, as he swelled with curiosity.

“Indeed,” Baloo began, “I am no more than the old and sometimes very foolishTeacher 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 hedid not believe in being humble. “The trouble is this, Kaa. Those nut-stealersand pickers of palm leaves have stolen away our man-cub of whom thou hastperhaps heard.”

“I heard some news from Ikki (his quills make him presumptuous) of a man-thingthat was entered into a wolf pack, but I did not believe. Ikki is full ofstories half heard and very badly told.”

“But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was,” said Baloo. “The best andwisest and boldest of man-cubs—my own pupil, who shall make the name of Baloofamous 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 loveis. There are tales I could tell that—”

“That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise properly,” saidBagheera quickly. “Our man-cub is in the hands of the Bandar-log now, and weknow 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 theirhands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw themdown. They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with it, andthen they snap it in two. That man-thing is not to be envied. They called mealso—`yellow fish’ was it not?”

“Worm—worm—earth-worm,” said Bagheera, “as well as other things which I cannotnow say for shame.”

“We must remind them to speak well of their master. Aaa-ssp! We must help theirwandering memories. Now, whither went they with the cub?”

“The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe,” said Baloo. “We hadthought that thou wouldst know, Kaa.”

“I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do not hunt theBandar-log, or frogs—or green scum on a water-hole, for that matter.”

“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 Rann the Kite,sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his wings. It wasnear Rann’s bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle looking for the Bearand 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. TheBandar-log have taken him beyond the river to the monkey city—to the ColdLairs. They may stay there for a night, or ten nights, or an hour. I have toldthe bats to watch through the dark time. That is my message. Good hunting, allyou below!”

“Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann,” cried Bagheera. “I will rememberthee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee alone, O best of kites!”

“It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I could have doneno less,” and Rann 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 whilehe 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 wentthere, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted city, lostand buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have onceused. The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes do not. Besides, the monkeyslived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere, and noself-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it except in times ofdrought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water.

The “Cold Lairs”

“It is half a night’s journey—at full speed,” said Bagheera, and Baloo lookedvery 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 quick-foot—Kaa andI.”

“Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four,” said Kaa shortly. Baloomade one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, and so they left him tocome on later, while Bagheera hurried forward, at the quick panther-canter. Kaasaid nothing, but, strive as Bagheera might, the huge Rock-python held levelwith him. When they came to a hill stream, Bagheera gained, because he boundedacross 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—earth-worm, 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 atall. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, and were very much pleased withthemselves for the time. Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before, andthough 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 thestone causeways that led up to the ruined gates where the last splinters ofwood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of thewalls; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hungout 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 andthe fountains was split, and stained with red and green, and the verycobblestones in the courtyard where the king’s elephants used to live had beenthrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace you could seethe rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like emptyhoneycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been anidol in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at street cornerswhere the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wildfigs sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, andpretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. Andyet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. Theywould sit in circles on the hall of the king’s council chamber, and scratch forfleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the rooflesshouses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forgetwhere they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and thenbreak off to play up and down the terraces of the king’s garden, where theywould shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit andflowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace andthe hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seenand what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds tellingeach other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and madethe water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rushtogether in mobs and shout: “There is no one in the jungle so wise and good andclever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log.” Then all would begin againtill they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping theJungle-People would notice them.

Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not like orunderstand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the Cold Lairs latein the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli would have doneafter a long journey, they joined hands and danced about and sang their foolishsongs. One of the monkeys made a speech and told his companions that Mowgli’scapture marked a new thing in the history of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli wasgoing to show them how to weave sticks and canes together as a protectionagainst rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some creepers and began to work them inand out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lostinterest and began to pull their friends’ tails or jump up and down on allfours, 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 pawpaws. Butthey fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much trouble to go back withwhat was left of the fruit. Mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry, and heroamed through the empty city giving the Strangers’ Hunting Call from time totime, but no one answered him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very badplace indeed. “All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true,” hethought to himself. “They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders—nothingbut foolish words and little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved orkilled here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my ownjungle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is better than chasing silly roseleaves 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 himgrateful. He set his teeth and said nothing, but went with the shouting monkeysto a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half-full of rainwater. There was a ruined summer-house of white marble in the center of theterrace, built for queens dead a hundred years ago. The domed roof had halffallen in and blocked up the underground passage from the palace by which thequeens used to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marbletracery—beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians andjasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill it shonethrough the open work, casting shadows on the ground like black velvetembroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mowgli could not help laughingwhen the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise andstrong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave them. “Weare great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people inall the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true,” they shouted. “Now asyou are a new listener and can carry our words back to the Jungle-People sothat they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our mostexcellent selves.” Mowgli made no objection, and the monkeys gathered byhundreds and hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speakers singingthe praises of the Bandar-log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want ofbreath they would all shout together: “This is true; we all say so.” Mowglinodded and blinked, and said “Yes” when they asked him a question, and his headspun with the noise. “Tabaqui the Jackal must have bitten all these people,” hesaid 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 coverthat moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in thedarkness. But I am tired.”

That same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined ditch belowthe city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well how dangerous theMonkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to run any risks. The monkeysnever fight unless they are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle care forthose odds.

“I will go to the west wall,” Kaa whispered, “and come down swiftly with theslope of the ground in my favor. They will not throw themselves upon my back intheir hundreds, but—”

“I know it,” said Bagheera. “Would that Baloo were here, but we must do what wecan. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go to the terrace. They hold somesort of council there over the boy.”

“Good hunting,” said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the west wall. Thathappened to be the least ruined of any, and the big snake was delayed awhilebefore he could find a way up the stones. The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgliwondered 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 wasstriking—he knew better than to waste time in biting—right and left among themonkeys, who were seated round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. Therewas a howl of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rollingkicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: “There is only one here! Killhim! Kill.” A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, andpulling, closed over Bagheera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, draggedhim up the wall of the summerhouse and pushed him through the hole of thebroken dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall wasa good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, andlanded on his feet.

The monkey fight

“Stay there,” shouted the monkeys, “till we have killed thy friends, and laterwe 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 theCall a second time, to make sure.

“Even ssso! Down hoods all!” said half a dozen low voices (every ruin in Indiabecomes sooner or later a dwelling place of snakes, and the old summerhouse wasalive 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 andlistening to the furious din of the fight round the Black Panther—the yells andchatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera’s deep, hoarse cough as he backed andbucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his enemies. For the firsttime 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. Rolland 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 therumbling war-shout of Baloo. The old Bear had done his best, but he could notcome before. “Bagheera,” he shouted, “I am here. I climb! I haste! Ahuwora! Thestones slip under my feet! Wait my coming, O most infamous Bandar-log!” Hepanted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in a wave of monkeys, buthe 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 regularbat-bat-bat, like the flipping strokes of a paddle wheel. A crash and a splashtold Mowgli that Bagheera had fought his way to the tank where the monkeyscould not follow. The Panther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of thewater, while the monkeys stood three deep on the red steps, dancing up and downwith rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out to helpBaloo. It was then that Bagheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in despairgave the Snake’s Call for protection—“We be of one blood, ye and I”—for hebelieved that Kaa had turned tail at the last minute. Even Baloo, halfsmothered under the monkeys on the edge of the terrace, could not helpchuckling as he heard the Black Panther asking for help.

Kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, landing with a wrench thatdislodged a coping stone into the ditch. He had no intention of losing anyadvantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself once or twice, to besure that every foot of his long body was in working order. All that while thefight 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 overthe jungle, till even Hathi the Wild Elephant trumpeted, and, far away,scattered bands of the Monkey-Folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roadsto help their comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused allthe day birds for miles round. Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious tokill. The fighting strength of a python is in the driving blow of his headbacked 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 waslike when he fought. A python four or five feet long can knock a man down if hehits him fairly in the chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know. Hisfirst stroke was delivered into the heart of the crowd round Baloo. It was senthome with shut mouth in silence, and there was no need of a second. The monkeysscattered with cries of—“Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run!”

‘Kaa’ the python

Generations of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the stories theirelders told them of Kaa, the night thief, who could slip along the branches asquietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived; ofold Kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead branch or a rotten stumpthat the wisest were deceived, till the branch caught them. Kaa was everythingthat the monkeys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits of hispower, none of them could look him in the face, and none had ever come aliveout of his hug. And so they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and theroofs of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was muchthicker than Bagheera’s, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. Then Kaaopened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hissing word, and thefar-away monkeys, hurrying to the defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed where theywere, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and crackled under them. Themonkeys on the walls and the empty houses stopped their cries, and in thestillness that fell upon the city Mowgli heard Bagheera shaking his wet sidesas he came up from the tank. Then the clamor broke out again. The monkeysleaped higher up the walls. They clung around the necks of the big stone idolsand shrieked as they skipped along the battlements, while Mowgli, dancing inthe summerhouse, put his eye to the screenwork and hooted owl-fashion betweenhis front teeth, to show his derision and contempt.

“Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more,” Bagheera gasped. “Let ustake the man-cub and go. They may attack again.”

“They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!” Kaa hissed, and thecity was silent once more. “I could not come before, Brother, but I think Iheard thee call”—this was to Bagheera.

“I—I may have cried out in the battle,” Bagheera answered. “Baloo, art thouhurt?

“I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little bearlings,” saidBaloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. “Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owethee, 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 brokendome was above his head.

“Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will crush our young,” saidthe cobras inside.

“Hah!” said Kaa with a chuckle, “he has friends everywhere, this manling. Standback, manling. And hide you, O Poison People. I break down the wall.”

Kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble traceryshowing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get thedistance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear of the ground, senthome half a dozen full-power smashing blows, nose-first. The screen-work brokeand fell away in a cloud of dust and rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through theopening and flung himself between Baloo and Bagheera—an arm around each bigneck.

“Art thou hurt?” said Baloo, hugging him softly.

“I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have handled yegrievously, my Brothers! Ye bleed.”

“Others also,” said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the monkey-deadon the terrace and round the tank.

“It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride of all littlefrogs!” whimpered Baloo.

“Of that we shall judge later,” said Bagheera, in a dry voice that Mowgli didnot at all like. “But here is Kaa to whom we owe the battle and thou owest thylife. 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 notunlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake thee for amonkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”

“We be one blood, thou and I,” Mowgli answered. “I take my life from theetonight. 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 mayso 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 usethem. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the truth. I have someskill in these [he held out his hands], and if ever thou art in a trap, I maypay the debt which I owe to thee, to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good huntingto ye all, my masters.”

“Well said,” growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned thanks very prettily. ThePython dropped his head lightly for a minute on Mowgli’s shoulder. “A braveheart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through thejungle, manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, forthe 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 monkeyshuddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged shaky fringesof things. Baloo went down to the tank for a drink and Bagheera began to puthis fur in order, as Kaa glided out into the center of the terrace and broughthis 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 andwatch.”

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, oozytriangles that melted into squares and five-sided figures, and coiled mounds,never resting, never hurrying, and never stopping his low humming song. It grewdarker and darker, till at last the dragging, shifting coils disappeared, butthey could hear the rustle of the scales.

Baloo and Bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their throats, their neckhair bristling, and Mowgli watched and wondered.

“Bandar-log,” said the voice of Kaa at last, “can ye stir foot or hand withoutmy 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 tookone 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 greatbeasts started as though they had been waked from a dream.

“Keep thy hand on my shoulder,” Bagheera whispered. “Keep it there, or I mustgo back—must go back to Kaa. Aah!”

“It is only old Kaa making circles on the dust,” said Mowgli. “Let us go.” Andthe three slipped off through a gap in the walls to the jungle.

“Whoof!” said Baloo, when he stood under the still trees again. “Never morewill 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 Istayed, I should have walked down his throat.”

“Many will walk by that road before the moon rises again,” said Baloo. “He willhave good hunting—after his own fashion.”

“But what was the meaning of it all?” said Mowgli, who did not know anything ofa python’s powers of fascination. “I saw no more than a big snake makingfoolish 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 earsand 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,” said Baloo; “we have the man-cub again.”

“True, but he has cost us heavily in time which might have been spent in goodhunting, in wounds, in hair—I am half plucked along my back—and last of all, inhonor. For, remember, Mowgli, I, who am the Black Panther, was forced to callupon Kaa for protection, and Baloo and I were both made stupid as little birdsby the Hunger Dance. All this, man-cub, came of thy playing with theBandar-log.”

“True, it is true,” said Mowgli sorrowfully. “I am an evil man-cub, and mystomach 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 nottamper with the Law, so he mumbled: “Sorrow never stays punishment. Butremember, 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 (theywould hardly have waked one of his own cubs), but for a seven-year-old boy theyamounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid. When it was allover 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. Thereis no nagging afterward.

Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s back and slept so deeply that he neverwaked when he was put down in the home-cave.

Road-Song of the Bandar-Log

Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half-way 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.

Now we must go back to the first tale. When Mowgli left the wolf’s cave afterthe fight with the Pack at the Council Rock, he went down to the plowed landswhere the villagers lived, but he would not stop there because it was too nearto the jungle, and he knew that he had made at least one bad enemy at theCouncil. 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 acountry that he did not know. The valley opened out into a great plain dottedover with rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, andat the other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds, andstopped 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 theherds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow pariah dogs thathang about every Indian village barked. Mowgli walked on, for he was feelinghungry, and when he came to the village gate he saw the big thorn-bush that wasdrawn up before the gate at twilight, pushed to one side.

“Umph!” he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in hisnight rambles after things to eat. “So men are afraid of the People of theJungle here also.” He sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stoodup, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he wanted food. The manstared, 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 hisforehead. 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 grayape would behave as they do.” So he threw back his long hair and frowned at thecrowd.

“What is there to be afraid of?” said the priest. “Look at the marks on hisarms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child run awayfrom the jungle.”

Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped Mowgli harder thanthey intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and legs. But hewould have been the last person in the world to call these bites, for he knewwhat real biting meant.

“Arre! Arre!” said two or three women together. “To be bitten by wolves, poorchild! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire. By my honor, Messua, heis 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 isthinner, but he has the very look of my boy.”

The priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua was wife to the richestvillager in the place. So he looked up at the sky for a minute and saidsolemnly: “What the jungle has taken the jungle has restored. Take the boy intothy house, my sister, and forget not to honor the priest who sees so far intothe lives of men.”

“By the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli to himself, “but all this talking islike another looking-over by the Pack! Well, if I am a man, a man I mustbecome.”

The crowd parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to her hut, where there was a redlacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain chest with funny raised patterns onit, half a dozen copper cooking pots, an image of a Hindu god in a littlealcove, and on the wall a real looking glass, such as they sell at the countryfairs.

She gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid her hand onhis head and looked into his eyes; for she thought perhaps that he might be herreal 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 notremember the day when I gave thee thy new shoes?” She touched his foot, and itwas almost as hard as horn. “No,” she said sorrowfully, “those feet have neverworn 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 helooked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if he wanted toget 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 assilly and dumb as a man would be with us in the jungle. I must speak theirtalk.”

It was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to imitatethe challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little wild pig. 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 underanything that looked so like a panther trap as that hut, and when they shut thedoor 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 inthe 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 apoor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou smellest of wood smoke andcattle—altogether like a man already. Wake, Little Brother; I bring news.”

“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. ShereKhan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows again, for he is badlysinged. 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 isalways good. I am tired to-night,—very tired with new things, Gray Brother,—butbring 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 Iwill 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, LittleBrother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. When I come downhere again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at the edge of thegrazing-ground.”

For three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the village gate, hewas so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had to wear a clothround 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 didnot 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 thejungle life and food depend on keeping your temper; but when they made fun ofhim because he would not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronouncedsome word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little nakedcubs 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 wasweak compared with the beasts, but in the village people said that he was asstrong as a bull.

And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes betweenman and man. When the potter’s donkey slipped in the clay pit, Mowgli hauled itout by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the marketat 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 puthim on the donkey too, and the priest told Messua’s husband that Mowgli hadbetter be set to work as soon as possible; and the village head-man told Mowglithat he would have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them whilethey grazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because hehad been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to acircle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great fig-tree. Itwas the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and the barber, whoknew all the gossip of the village, and old Buldeo, the village hunter, who hada Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in the upperbranches, and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived, and hehad his little platter of milk every night because he was sacred; and the oldmen sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big huqas (thewater-pipes) till far into the night. They told wonderful tales of gods and menand ghosts; and Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts inthe jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged outof their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was alwaysat their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now andagain the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within sight of the villagegates.

The village club

Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of, had tocover his face not to show that he was laughing, while Buldeo, the Tower musketacross his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story to another, and Mowgli’sshoulders shook.

Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away Messua’s son was aghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked, oldmoney-lender, who had died some years ago. “And I know that this is true,” hesaid, “because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he got in a riotwhen 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 moontalk?” said Mowgli.

“Are all these tales such cobwebs and moontalk?” said Mowgli. “That tigerlimps because he was born lame, as everyone knows. To talk of the soul of amoney-lender in a beast that never had the courage of a jackal is child’stalk.”

Buldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the head-man stared.

“Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?” said Buldeo. “If thou art so wise, betterbring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government has set a hundred rupees onhis life. Better still, talk not when thy elders speak.”

Mowgli rose to go. “All the evening I have lain here listening,” he called backover his shoulder, “and, except once or twice, Buldeo has not said one word oftruth concerning the jungle, which is at his very doors. How, then, shall Ibelieve 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 head-man, while Buldeopuffed and snorted at Mowgli’s impertinence.

The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the cattle andbuffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back at night. Thevery cattle that would trample a white man to death allow themselves to bebanged and bullied and shouted at by children that hardly come up to theirnoses. So long as the boys keep with the herds they are safe, for not even thetiger will charge a mob of cattle. But if they straggle to pick flowers or huntlizards, they are sometimes carried off. Mowgli went through the village streetin the dawn, sitting on the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-bluebuffaloes, with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose outtheir byres, one by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to thechildren 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 bythemselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be very careful not tostray away from the herd.

An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and littleravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The buffaloes generallykeep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing or basking in thewarm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them on to the edge of the plain where theWaingunga came out of the jungle; then he dropped from Rama’s neck, trotted offto a bamboo clump, and found Gray Brother. “Ah,” said Gray Brother, “I havewaited 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 ofShere 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 fourbrothers 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 dhâktree in thecenter 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 thebuffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest things inthe world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move on again, andthey do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes very seldom sayanything, but get down into the muddy pools one after another, and work theirway into the mud till only their noses and staring china-blue eyes show abovethe surface, and then they lie like logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in theheat, and the herd children hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost outof sight overhead, and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kitewould 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 ascore of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and wake and sleepagain, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put grasshoppers in them; orcatch two praying mantises and make them fight; or string a necklace of red andblack jungle nuts; or watch a lizard basking on a rock, or a snake hunting afrog near the wallows. Then they sing long, long songs with odd native quaversat 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 andbuffaloes, and put reeds into the men’s hands, and pretend that they are kingsand the figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. Thenevening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of thesticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other, and theyall string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village lights.

Day after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and dayafter day he would see Gray Brother’s back a mile and a half away across theplain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day after day hewould lie on the grass listening to the noises round him, and dreaming of olddays in the jungle. If Shere Khan had made a false step with his lame paw up inthe jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would have heard him in those long, stillmornings.

At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal place, and helaughed and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the dhk tree, which was allcovered with golden-red flowers. There sat Gray Brother, every bristle on hisback lifted.

“He has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He crossed the rangeslast night with Tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail,” said the Wolf, panting.

Mowgli frowned. “I am not afraid of Shere Khan, but Tabaqui is very cunning.”

“Have no fear,” said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little. “I met Tabaqui inthe dawn. Now he is telling all his wisdom to the kites, but he told meeverything before I broke his back. Shere Khan’s plan is to wait for thee atthe village gate this evening—for thee and for no one else. He is lying up now,in the big dry ravine of the Waingunga.”

“Has he eaten today, or does he hunt empty?” said Mowgli, for the answer meantlife and death to him.

“He killed at dawn,—a pig,—and he has drunk too. Remember, Shere Khan couldnever fast, even for the sake of revenge.”

“Oh! Fool, fool! What a cub’s cub it is! Eaten and drunk too, and he thinksthat I shall wait till he has slept! Now, where does he lie up? If there werebut ten of us we might pull him down as he lies. These buffaloes will notcharge unless they wind him, and I cannot speak their language. Can we getbehind his track so that they may smell it?”

“He swam far down the Waingunga to cut that off,” said Gray Brother.

“Tabaqui told him that, I know. He would never have thought of it alone.”Mowgli stood with his finger in his mouth, thinking. “The big ravine of theWaingunga. That opens out on the plain not half a mile from here. I can takethe herd round through the jungle to the head of the ravine and then sweepdown—but he would slink out at the foot. We must block that end. Gray Brother,canst thou cut the herd in two for me?”

“Not I, perhaps—but I have brought a wise helper.” Gray Brother trotted off anddropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a huge gray head that Mowgli knewwell, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry of all thejungle—the hunting howl of a wolf at midday.

“Akela! Akela!” said Mowgli, clapping his hands. “I might have known that thouwouldst not forget me. We have a big work in hand. Cut the herd in two, Akela.Keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls and the plow buffaloes bythemselves.”

The two wolves ran, ladies’-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, whichsnorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps. In one, thecow-buffaloes stood with their calves in the center, and glared and pawed,ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and trample the life outof him. In the other, the bulls and the young bulls snorted and stamped, butthough they looked more imposing they were much less dangerous, for they had nocalves to protect. No six men could have divided the herd so neatly.

“What orders!” panted Akela. “They are trying to join again.”

Mowgli slipped on to Rama’s back. “Drive the bulls away to the left, Akela.Gray Brother, when we are gone, hold the cows together, and drive them into thefoot of the ravine.”

“How far?” said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.

“Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump,” shouted Mowgli. “Keepthem there till we come down.” The bulls swept off as Akela bayed, and GrayBrother stopped in front of the cows. They charged down on him, and he ran justbefore them to the foot of the ravine, as Akela drove the bulls far to theleft.

“Well done! Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful, now—careful,Akela. A snap too much and the bulls will charge. Hujah! This is wilder workthan driving black-buck. Didst thou think these creatures could move soswiftly?” Mowgli called.

“I have—have hunted these too in my time,” gasped Akela in the dust. “Shall Iturn them into the jungle?”

“Ay! Turn. Swiftly turn them! Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I could only tellhim what I need of him to-day.”

The bulls were turned, to the right this time, and crashed into the standingthicket. The other herd children, watching with the cattle half a mile away,hurried to the village as fast as their legs could carry them, crying that thebuffaloes had gone mad and run away.

But Mowgli’s plan was simple enough. All he wanted to do was to make a bigcircle uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the bulls downit and catch Shere Khan between the bulls and the cows; for he knew that aftera meal and a full drink Shere Khan would not be in any condition to fight or toclamber up the sides of the ravine. He was soothing the buffaloes now by voice,and Akela had dropped far to the rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurrythe rear-guard. It was a long, long circle, for they did not wish to get toonear the ravine and give Shere Khan warning. At last Mowgli rounded up thebewildered herd at the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeplydown to the ravine itself. From that height you could see across the tops ofthe trees down to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides ofthe ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearlystraight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung over them wouldgive no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out.

“Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding up his hand. “They have not windedhim yet. Let them breathe. I must tell Shere Khan who comes. We have him in thetrap.”

He put his hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine—it was almost likeshouting down a tunnel—and the echoes jumped from rock to rock.

After a long time there came back the drawling, sleepy snarl of a full-fedtiger just wakened.

“Who calls?” said Shere Khan, and a splendid peacock fluttered up out of theravine screeching.

“I, Mowgli. Cattle thief, it is time to come to the Council Rock! Down—hurrythem down, Akela! Down, Rama, down!”

The herd paused for an instant at the edge of the slope, but Akela gave tonguein the full hunting-yell, and they pitched over one after the other, just assteamers shoot rapids, the sand and stones spurting up round them. Oncestarted, there was no chance of stopping, and before they were fairly in thebed of the ravine Rama winded Shere Khan and bellowed.

Shere Khan in the jungle

“Ha! Ha!” said Mowgli, on his back. “Now thou knowest!” and the torrent ofblack horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the ravine just asboulders go down in floodtime; the weaker buffaloes being shouldered out to thesides of the ravine where they tore through the creepers. They knew what thebusiness was before them—the terrible charge of the buffalo herd against whichno tiger can hope to stand. Shere Khan heard the thunder of their hoofs, pickedhimself up, and lumbered down the ravine, looking from side to side for someway of escape, but the walls of the ravine were straight and he had to hold on,heavy with his dinner and his drink, willing to do anything rather than fight.The herd splashed through the pool he had just left, bellowing till the narrowcut rang. Mowgli heard an answering bellow from the foot of the ravine, sawShere Khan turn (the tiger knew if the worst came to the worst it was better tomeet the bulls than the cows with their calves), and then Rama tripped,stumbled, and went on again over something soft, and, with the bulls at hisheels, crashed full into the other herd, while the weaker buffaloes were liftedclean off their feet by the shock of the meeting. That charge carried bothherds out into the plain, goring and stamping and snorting. Mowgli watched histime, and slipped off Rama’s neck, laying about him right and left with hisstick.

“Quick, Akela! Break them up. Scatter them, or they will be fighting oneanother. Drive them away, Akela. Hai, Rama! Hai, hai, hai! my children. Softlynow, softly! It is all over.”

Akela and Gray Brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes’ legs, and thoughthe herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, Mowgli managed to turnRama, and the others followed him to the wallows.

Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were coming forhim already.

“Brothers, that was a dog’s death,” said Mowgli, feeling for the knife healways carried in a sheath round his neck now that he lived with men. “But hewould never have shown fight. His hide will look well on the Council Rock. Wemust get to work swiftly.”

A boy trained among men would never have dreamed of skinning a ten-foot tigeralone, but Mowgli knew better than anyone else how an animal’s skin is fittedon, and how it can be taken off. But it was hard work, and Mowgli slashed andtore and grunted for an hour, while the wolves lolled out their tongues, orcame forward and tugged as he ordered them. Presently a hand fell on hisshoulder, and looking up he saw Buldeo with the Tower musket. The children hadtold the village about the buffalo stampede, and Buldeo went out angrily, onlytoo anxious to correct Mowgli for not taking better care of the herd. Thewolves dropped out of sight as soon as they saw the man coming.

“What is this folly?” said Buldeo angrily. “To think that thou canst skin atiger! Where did the buffaloes kill him? It is the Lame Tiger too, and there isa hundred rupees on his head. Well, well, we will overlook thy letting the herdrun off, and perhaps I will give thee one of the rupees of the reward when Ihave taken the skin to Khanhiwara.” He fumbled in his waist cloth for flint andsteel, and stooped down to singe Shere Khan’s whiskers. Most native huntersalways singe a tiger’s whiskers to prevent his ghost from haunting them.

“Hum!” said Mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin of a forepaw.“So thou wilt take the hide to Khanhiwara for the reward, and perhaps give meone rupee? Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for my own use. Heh! Oldman, take away that fire!”

“What talk is this to the chief hunter of the village? Thy luck and thestupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. The tiger has justfed, or he would have gone twenty miles by this time. Thou canst not even skinhim properly, little beggar brat, and forsooth I, Buldeo, must be told not tosinge his whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give thee one anna of the reward, butonly a very big beating. Leave the carcass!”

“By the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli, who was trying to get at theshoulder, “must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon? Here, Akela, this manplagues me.”

Buldeo, who was still stooping over Shere Khan’s head, found himself sprawlingon the grass, with a gray wolf standing over him, while Mowgli went on skinningas though he were alone in all India.

“Ye-es,” he said, between his teeth. “Thou art altogether right, Buldeo. Thouwilt never give me one anna of the reward. There is an old war between thislame tiger and myself—a very old war, and—I have won.”

To do Buldeo justice, if he had been ten years younger he would have taken hischance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf who obeyed theorders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating tigers was not a commonanimal. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind, thought Buldeo, and hewondered whether the amulet round his neck would protect him. He lay as stillas still, expecting every minute to see Mowgli turn into a tiger too.

Buldeo lay as still, expecting every minute to see Mowgliturn into a tiger too.

“Maharaj! Great King,” he said at last in a husky whisper.

“Yes,” said Mowgli, without turning his head, chuckling a little.

“I am an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a herdsboy.May I rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to pieces?”

“Go, and peace go with thee. Only, another time do not meddle with my game. Lethim go, Akela.”

Buldeo hobbled away to the village as fast as he could, looking back over hisshoulder in case Mowgli should change into something terrible. When he got tothe village he told a tale of magic and enchantment and sorcery that made thepriest look very grave.

Mowgli went on with his work, but it was nearly twilight before he and thewolves had drawn the great gay skin clear of the body.

The return of the buffalo herd

“Now we must hide this and take the buffaloes home! Help me to herd them,Akela.”

The herd rounded up in the misty twilight, and when they got near the villageMowgli saw lights, and heard the conches and bells in the temple blowing andbanging. Half the village seemed to be waiting for him by the gate. “That isbecause I have killed Shere Khan,” he said to himself. But a shower of stoneswhistled about his ears, and the villagers shouted: “Sorcerer! Wolf’s brat!Jungle demon! Go away! Get hence quickly or the priest will turn thee into awolf again. Shoot, Buldeo, shoot!”

The old Tower musket went off with a bang, and a young buffalo bellowed inpain.

“More sorcery!” shouted the villagers. “He can turn bullets. Buldeo, that wasthy buffalo.”

“Now what is this?” said Mowgli, bewildered, as the stones flew thicker.

“They are not unlike the Pack, these brothers of thine,” said Akela, sittingdown composedly. “It is in my head that, if bullets mean anything, they wouldcast thee out.”

“Wolf! Wolf’s cub! Go away!” shouted the priest, waving a sprig of the sacredtulsi plant.

“Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is because I am awolf. Let us go, Akela.”

A woman—it was Messua—ran across to the herd, and cried: “Oh, my son, my son!They say thou art a sorcerer who can turn himself into a beast at will. I donot believe, but go away or they will kill thee. Buldeo says thou art a wizard,but I know thou hast avenged Nathoo’s death.”

“Come back, Messua!” shouted the crowd. “Come back, or we will stone thee.”

Mowgli laughed a little short ugly laugh, for a stone had hit him in the mouth.“Run back, Messua. This is one of the foolish tales they tell under the bigtree at dusk. I have at least paid for thy son’s life. Farewell; and runquickly, for I shall send the herd in more swiftly than their brickbats. I amno wizard, Messua. Farewell!”

“Now, once more, Akela,” he cried. “Bring the herd in.”

The buffaloes were anxious enough to get to the village. They hardly neededAkela’s yell, but charged through the gate like a whirlwind, scattering thecrowd right and left.

“Keep count!” shouted Mowgli scornfully. “It may be that I have stolen one ofthem. Keep count, for I will do your herding no more. Fare you well, childrenof men, and thank Messua that I do not come in with my wolves and hunt you upand down your street.”

He turned on his heel and walked away with the Lone Wolf, and as he looked upat the stars he felt happy. “No more sleeping in traps for me, Akela. Let usget Shere Khan’s skin and go away. No, we will not hurt the village, for Messuawas kind to me.”

When the moon rose over the plain the villagers saw Mowglitrotting across, with two wolves at his heels

When the moon rose over the plain, making it look all milky, the horrifiedvillagers saw Mowgli, with two wolves at his heels and a bundle on his head,trotting across at the steady wolf’s trot that eats up the long miles likefire. Then they banged the temple bells and blew the conches louder than ever.And Messua cried, and Buldeo embroidered the story of his adventures in thejungle, till he ended by saying that Akela stood up on his hind legs and talkedlike a man.

The moon was just going down when Mowgli and the two wolves came to the hill ofthe Council Rock, and they stopped at Mother Wolf’s cave.

“They have cast me out from the Man-Pack, Mother,” shouted Mowgli, “but I comewith the hide of Shere Khan to keep my word.”

Mother Wolf walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind her, and her eyesglowed as she saw the skin.

“I told him on that day, when he crammed his head and shoulders into this cave,hunting for thy life, Little Frog—I told him that the hunter would be thehunted. It is well done.”

“Little Brother, it is well done,” said a deep voice in the thicket. “We werelonely in the jungle without thee,” and Bagheera came running to Mowgli’s barefeet. They clambered up the Council Rock together, and Mowgli spread the skinout on the flat stone where Akela used to sit, and pegged it down with fourslivers of bamboo, and Akela lay down upon it, and called the old call to theCouncil, “Look—look well, O Wolves,” exactly as he had called when Mowgli wasfirst brought there.

They clambered up the Council Rock together, and Mowglispread the skin out on the flat stone

Ever since Akela had been deposed, the Pack had been without a leader, huntingand fighting at their own pleasure. But they answered the call from habit; andsome of them were lame from the traps they had fallen into, and some limpedfrom shot wounds, and some were mangy from eating bad food, and many weremissing. But they came to the Council Rock, all that were left of them, and sawShere Khan’s striped hide on the rock, and the huge claws dangling at the endof the empty dangling feet. It was then that Mowgli made up a song that came upinto his throat all by itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down onthe rattling skin, and beating time with his heels till he had no more breathleft, while Gray Brother and Akela howled between the verses.

“Look well, O Wolves. Have I kept my word?” said Mowgli. And the wolves bayed“Yes,” and one tattered wolf howled:

“Lead us again, O Akela. Lead us again, O Man-cub, for we be sick of thislawlessness, and we would be the Free People once more.”

“Nay,” purred Bagheera, “that may not be. When ye are full-fed, the madness maycome upon you again. Not for nothing are ye called the Free People. Ye foughtfor freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves.”

“Man-Pack and Wolf-Pack have cast me out,” said Mowgli. “Now I will hunt alonein the jungle.”

“And we will hunt with thee,” said the four cubs.

So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that dayon. But he was not always alone, because, years afterward, he became a man andmarried.

But that is a story for grown-ups.

Mowgli’s Song

THAT HE SANG AT THE COUNCIL ROCK WHEN HE DANCED ON SHERE KHAN’S HIDE

The Song of Mowgli—I, Mowgli, am singing. Let the jungle listen to the things Ihave done.
Shere Khan said he would kill—would kill! At the gates in the twilight he wouldkill Mowgli, the Frog!
He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou drink again?Sleep and dream of the kill.
I am alone on the grazing-grounds. Gray Brother, come to me! Come to me, LoneWolf, for there is big game afoot!
Bring up the great bull buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd bulls with the angryeyes. Drive them to and fro as I order.
Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, oh, wake! Here come I, and the bulls arebehind.
Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with his foot. Waters of theWaingunga, whither went Shere Khan?
He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Peacock, that he should fly. He isnot Mang the Bat, to hang in the branches. Little bamboos that creak together,tell me where he ran?
Ow!He is there. Ahoo!He is there. Under the feet of Rama liesthe Lame One! Up, Shere Khan!
Up and kill! Here is meat; break the necks of the bulls!
Hsh!He is asleep. We will not wake him, for his strength is very great.The kites have come down to see it. The black ants have come up to know it.There is a great assembly in his honor.
Alala!I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites will see that I am naked. Iam ashamed to meet all these people.
Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I may go to theCouncil Rock.
By the Bull that bought me I made a promise—a little promise. Only thy coat islacking before I keep my word.
With the knife, with the knife that men use, with the knife of the hunter, Iwill stoop down for my gift.
Waters of the Waingunga, Shere Khan gives me his coat for the love that hebears me. Pull, Gray Brother! Pull, Akela! Heavy is the hide of ShereKhan.
The Man Pack are angry. They throw stones and talk child’s talk. My mouth isbleeding. Let me run away.
Through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly with me, my brothers. Wewill leave the lights of the village and go to the low moon.
Waters of the Waingunga, the Man-Pack have cast me out. I did them no harm, butthey were afraid of me. Why?
Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jungle is shut to me and the villagegates are shut. Why?
As Mang flies between the beasts and birds, so fly I between the village andthe jungle. Why?
I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my heart is very heavy. My mouth is cutand wounded with the stones from the village, but my heart is very light,because I have come back to the jungle. Why?
These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring. Thewater comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it falls. Why?
I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under my feet.
All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere Khan. Look—look well, OWolves!
Ahae!My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand.

The White Seal

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
    And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
    At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
    Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
    Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!

Seal Lullaby

All these things happened several years ago at a place called Novastoshnah, orNorth East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away and away in the Bering Sea.Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when he was blown on to therigging of a steamer going to Japan, and I took him down into my cabin andwarmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to St.Paul’s again. Limmershin is a very quaint little bird, but he knows how to tellthe truth.

Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only people who haveregular business there are the seals. They come in the summer months byhundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea. For NovastoshnahBeach has the finest accommodation for seals of any place in all the world.

Sea Catch knew that, and every spring would swim from whatever place hehappened to be in—would swim like a torpedo-boat straight for Novastoshnah andspend a month fighting with his companions for a good place on the rocks, asclose to the sea as possible. Sea Catch was fifteen years old, a huge gray furseal with almost a mane on his shoulders, and long, wicked dog teeth. When heheaved himself up on his front flippers he stood more than four feet clear ofthe ground, and his weight, if anyone had been bold enough to weigh him, wasnearly seven hundred pounds. He was scarred all over with the marks of savagefights, but he was always ready for just one fight more. He would put his headon one side, as though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face; then hewould shoot it out like lightning, and when the big teeth were firmly fixed onthe other seal’s neck, the other seal might get away if he could, but Sea Catchwould not help him.

Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the Rules of theBeach. He only wanted room by the sea for his nursery. But as there were fortyor fifty thousand other seals hunting for the same thing each spring, thewhistling, bellowing, roaring, and blowing on the beach was somethingfrightful.

From a little hill called Hutchinson’s Hill, you could look over three and ahalf miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted allover with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of thefighting. They fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they foughton the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries, for they were just as stupidand unaccommodating as men. Their wives never came to the island until late inMay or early in June, for they did not care to be torn to pieces; and the youngtwo-, three-, and four-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping wentinland about half a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played about onthe sand dunes in droves and legions, and rubbed off every single green thingthat grew. They were called the holluschickie—the bachelors—and there wereperhaps two or three hundred thousand of them at Novastoshnah alone.

Sea Catch had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring when Matkah, hissoft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife, came up out of the sea, and he caught her by thescruff of the neck and dumped her down on his reservation, saying gruffly:“Late as usual. Where have you been?”

It was not the fashion for Sea Catch to eat anything during the four months hestayed on the beaches, and so his temper was generally bad. Matkah knew betterthan to answer back. She looked round and cooed: “How thoughtful of you. You’vetaken the old place again.”

“I should think I had,” said Sea Catch. “Look at me!”

He was scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was almost out, and hissides were torn to ribbons.

“Oh, you men, you men!” Matkah said, fanning herself with her hind flipper.“Why can’t you be sensible and settle your places quietly? You look as thoughyou had been fighting with the Killer Whale.”

“I haven’t been doing anything but fight since the middle of May. The beach isdisgracefully crowded this season. I’ve met at least a hundred seals fromLukannon Beach, house hunting. Why can’t people stay where they belong?”

“I’ve often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at Otter Islandinstead of this crowded place,” said Matkah.

“Bah! Only the holluschickie go to Otter Island. If we went there they wouldsay we were afraid. We must preserve appearances, my dear.”

Sea Catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and pretended to goto sleep for a few minutes, but all the time he was keeping a sharp lookout fora fight. Now that all the seals and their wives were on the land, you couldhear their clamor miles out to sea above the loudest gales. At the lowestcounting there were over a million seals on the beach—old seals, mother seals,tiny babies, and holluschickie, fighting, scuffling, bleating, crawling, andplaying together—going down to the sea and coming up from it in gangs andregiments, lying over every foot of ground as far as the eye could reach, andskirmishing about in brigades through the fog. It is nearly always foggy atNovastoshnah, except when the sun comes out and makes everything look allpearly and rainbow-colored for a little while.

Kotick, Matkah’s baby, was born in the middle of that confusion, and he was allhead and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny seals must be, butthere was something about his coat that made his mother look at him veryclosely.

“Sea Catch,” she said, at last, “our baby’s going to be white!”

“Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!” snorted Sea Catch. “There never has beensuch a thing in the world as a white seal.”

“I can’t help that,” said Matkah; “there’s going to be now.” And she sang thelow, crooning seal song that all the mother seals sing to their babies:

You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old,
    Or your head will be sunk by your heels;
And summer gales and Killer Whales
    Are bad for baby seals.

Are bad for baby seals, dear rat,
    As bad as bad can be;
But splash and grow strong,
And you can’t be wrong.
    Child of the Open Sea!

Of course the little fellow did not understand the words at first. He paddledand scrambled about by his mother’s side, and learned to scuffle out of the waywhen his father was fighting with another seal, and the two rolled and roaredup and down the slippery rocks. Matkah used to go to sea to get things to eat,and the baby was fed only once in two days, but then he ate all he could andthrove upon it.

The first thing he did was to crawl inland, and there he met tens of thousandsof babies of his own age, and they played together like puppies, went to sleepon the clean sand, and played again. The old people in the nurseries took nonotice of them, and the holluschickie kept to their own grounds, and the babieshad a beautiful playtime.

When Matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight to theirplayground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until she heardKotick bleat. Then she would take the straightest of straight lines in hisdirection, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters headover heels right and left. There were always a few hundred mothers hunting fortheir children through the playgrounds, and the babies were kept lively. But,as Matkah told Kotick, “So long as you don’t lie in muddy water and get mange,or rub the hard sand into a cut or scratch, and so long as you never goswimming when there is a heavy sea, nothing will hurt you here.”

Little seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappy tillthey learn. The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wave carried himout beyond his depth, and his big head sank and his little hind flippers flewup exactly as his mother had told him in the song, and if the next wave had notthrown him back again he would have drowned.

After that, he learned to lie in a beach pool and let the wash of the wavesjust cover him and lift him up while he paddled, but he always kept his eyeopen for big waves that might hurt. He was two weeks learning to use hisflippers; and all that while he floundered in and out of the water, and coughedand grunted and crawled up the beach and took catnaps on the sand, and wentback again, until at last he found that he truly belonged to the water.

Then you can imagine the times that he had with his companions, ducking underthe rollers; or coming in on top of a comber and landing with a swash and asplutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or standing up on histail and scratching his head as the old people did; or playing “I’m the King ofthe Castle” on slippery, weedy rocks that just stuck out of the wash. Now andthen he would see a thin fin, like a big shark’s fin, drifting along close toshore, and he knew that that was the Killer Whale, the Grampus, who eats youngseals when he can get them; and Kotick would head for the beach like an arrow,and the fin would jig off slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at all.

Late in October the seals began to leave St. Paul’s for the deep sea, byfamilies and tribes, and there was no more fighting over the nurseries, and theholluschickie played anywhere they liked. “Next year,” said Matkah to Kotick,“you will be a holluschickie; but this year you must learn how to catch fish.”

They set out together across the Pacific, and Matkah showed Kotick how to sleepon his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and his little nose justout of the water. No cradle is so comfortable as the long, rocking swell of thePacific. When Kotick felt his skin tingle all over, Matkah told him he waslearning the “feel of the water,” and that tingly, prickly feelings meant badweather coming, and he must swim hard and get away.

Ten fathoms deep

“In a little time,” she said, “you’ll know where to swim to, but just now we’llfollow Sea Pig, the Porpoise, for he is very wise.” A school of porpoises wereducking and tearing through the water, and little Kotick followed them as fastas he could. “How do you know where to go to?” he panted. The leader of theschool rolled his white eye and ducked under. “My tail tingles, youngster,” hesaid. “That means there’s a gale behind me. Come along! When you’re south ofthe Sticky Water [he meant the Equator] and your tail tingles, that meansthere’s a gale in front of you and you must head north. Come along! The waterfeels bad here.”

This was one of very many things that Kotick learned, and he was alwayslearning. Matkah taught him to follow the cod and the halibut along theunder-sea banks and wrench the rockling out of his hole among the weeds; how toskirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water and dart like a riflebullet in at one porthole and out at another as the fishes ran; how to dance onthe top of the waves when the lightning was racing all over the sky, and wavehis flipper politely to the stumpy-tailed Albatross and the Man-of-war Hawk asthey went down the wind; how to jump three or four feet clear of the water likea dolphin, flippers close to the side and tail curved; to leave the flying fishalone because they are all bony; to take the shoulder-piece out of a cod atfull speed ten fathoms deep, and never to stop and look at a boat or a ship,but particularly a row-boat. At the end of six months what Kotick did not knowabout deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing. And all that time he neverset flipper on dry ground.

One day, however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm water somewhere offthe Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint and lazy all over, just as humanpeople do when the spring is in their legs, and he remembered the good firmbeaches of Novastoshnah seven thousand miles away, the games his companionsplayed, the smell of the seaweed, the seal roar, and the fighting. That veryminute he turned north, swimming steadily, and as he went on he met scores ofhis mates, all bound for the same place, and they said: “Greeting, Kotick! Thisyear we are all holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakersoff Lukannon and play on the new grass. But where did you get that coat?”

Kotick’s fur was almost pure white now, and though he felt very proud of it, heonly said, “Swim quickly! My bones are aching for the land.” And so they allcame to the beaches where they had been born, and heard the old seals, theirfathers, fighting in the rolling mist.

That night Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the yearling seals. The sea isfull of fire on summer nights all the way down from Novastoshnah to Lukannon,and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him and a flaming flashwhen he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescent streaks and swirls.Then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds and rolled up and down inthe new wild wheat and told stories of what they had done while they had beenat sea. They talked about the Pacific as boys would talk about a wood that theyhad been nutting in, and if anyone had understood them he could have gone awayand made such a chart of that ocean as never was. The three- and four-year-oldholluschickie romped down from Hutchinson’s Hill crying: “Out of the way,youngsters! The sea is deep and you don’t know all that’s in it yet. Wait tillyou’ve rounded the Horn. Hi, you yearling, where did you get that white coat?”

“I didn’t get it,” said Kotick. “It grew.” And just as he was going to roll thespeaker over, a couple of black-haired men with flat red faces came from behinda sand dune, and Kotick, who had never seen a man before, coughed and loweredhis head. The holluschickie just bundled off a few yards and sat staringstupidly. The men were no less than Kerick Booterin, the chief of theseal-hunters on the island, and Patalamon, his son. They came from the littlevillage not half a mile from the sea nurseries, and they were deciding whatseals they would drive up to the killing pens—for the seals were driven justlike sheep—to be turned into seal-skin jackets later on.

“Ho!” said Patalamon. “Look! There’s a white seal!”

Kerick Booterin turned nearly white under his oil and smoke, for he was anAleut, and Aleuts are not clean people. Then he began to mutter a prayer.“Don’t touch him, Patalamon. There has never been a white seal since—since Iwas born. Perhaps it is old Zaharrof’s ghost. He was lost last year in the biggale.”

“I’m not going near him,” said Patalamon. “He’s unlucky. Do you really think heis old Zaharrof come back? I owe him for some gulls’ eggs.”

“Don’t look at him,” said Kerick. “Head off that drove of four-year-olds. Themen ought to skin two hundred to-day, but it’s the beginning of the season andthey are new to the work. A hundred will do. Quick!”

Patalamon rattled a pair of seal’s shoulder bones in front of a herd ofholluschickie and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing. Then he stepped nearand the seals began to move, and Kerick headed them inland, and they nevertried to get back to their companions. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands ofseals watched them being driven, but they went on playing just the same. Kotickwas the only one who asked questions, and none of his companions could tell himanything, except that the men always drove seals in that way for six weeks ortwo months of every year.

“I am going to follow,” he said, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head ashe shuffled along in the wake of the herd.

“The white seal is coming after us,” cried Patalamon. “That’s the first time aseal has ever come to the killing-grounds alone.”

“Hsh! Don’t look behind you,” said Kerick. “It is Zaharrof’s ghost! I mustspeak to the priest about this.”

The distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took an hourto cover, because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that they would getheated and then their fur would come off in patches when they were skinned. Sothey went on very slowly, past Sea Lion’s Neck, past Webster House, till theycame to the Salt House just beyond the sight of the seals on the beach. Kotickfollowed, panting and wondering. He thought that he was at the world’s end, butthe roar of the seal nurseries behind him sounded as loud as the roar of atrain in a tunnel. Then Kerick sat down on the moss and pulled out a heavypewter watch and let the drove cool off for thirty minutes, and Kotick couldhear the fog-dew dripping off the brim of his cap. Then ten or twelve men, eachwith an iron-bound club three or four feet long, came up, and Kerick pointedout one or two of the drove that were bitten by their companions or too hot,and the men kicked those aside with their heavy boots made of the skin of awalrus’s throat, and then Kerick said, “Let go!” and then the men clubbed theseals on the head as fast as they could.

Ten minutes later little Kotick did not recognize his friends any more, fortheir skins were ripped off from the nose to the hind flippers, whipped off andthrown down on the ground in a pile. That was enough for Kotick. He turned andgalloped (a seal can gallop very swiftly for a short time) back to the sea; hislittle new mustache bristling with horror. At Sea Lion’s Neck, where the greatsea lions sit on the edge of the surf, he flung himself flipper-overhead intothe cool water and rocked there, gasping miserably. “What’s here?” said a sealion gruffly, for as a rule the sea lions keep themselves to themselves.

“Scoochnie! Ochen scoochnie!” (“I’m lonesome, very lonesome!”) said Kotick.“They’re killing all the holluschickie on all the beaches!”

The Sea Lion turned his head inshore. “Nonsense!” he said. “Your friends aremaking as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Kerick polishing off adrove. He’s done that for thirty years.”

“It’s horrible,” said Kotick, backing water as a wave went over him, andsteadying himself with a screw stroke of his flippers that brought him allstanding within three inches of a jagged edge of rock.

“Well done for a yearling!” said the Sea Lion, who could appreciate goodswimming. “I suppose it is rather awful from your way of looking at it, but ifyou seals will come here year after year, of course the men get to know of it,and unless you can find an island where no men ever come you will always bedriven.”

“Isn’t there any such island?” began Kotick.

“I’ve followed the poltoos [the halibut] for twenty years, and I can’t say I’vefound it yet. But look here—you seem to have a fondness for talking to yourbetters—suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to Sea Vitch. He may knowsomething. Don’t flounce off like that. It’s a six-mile swim, and if I were youI should haul out and take a nap first, little one.”

Kotick thought that that was good advice, so he swam round to his own beach,hauled out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all over, as seals will. Thenhe headed straight for Walrus Islet, a little low sheet of rocky island almostdue northeast from Novastoshnah, all ledges and rock and gulls’ nests, wherethe walrus herded by themselves.

He landed close to old Sea Vitch—the big, ugly, bloated, pimpled, fat-necked,long-tusked walrus of the North Pacific, who has no manners except when he isasleep—as he was then, with his hind flippers half in and half out of the surf.

“Wake up!” barked Kotick, for the gulls were making a great noise.

“Hah! Ho! Hmph! What’s that?” said Sea Vitch, and he struck the next walrus ablow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck the next, and so ontill they were all awake and staring in every direction but the right one.

They were all awake and staring in every direction but theright one.

“Hi! It’s me,” said Kotick, bobbing in the surf and looking like a little whiteslug.

“Well! May I be—skinned!” said Sea Vitch, and they all looked at Kotick as youcan fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen would look at a little boy.Kotick did not care to hear any more about skinning just then; he had seenenough of it. So he called out: “Isn’t there any place for seals to go wheremen don’t ever come?”

“Go and find out,” said Sea Vitch, shutting his eyes. “Run away. We’re busyhere.”

Kotick made his dolphin-jump in the air and shouted as loud as he could:“Clam-eater! Clam-eater!” He knew that Sea Vitch never caught a fish in hislife but always rooted for clams and seaweed; though he pretended to be a veryterrible person. Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies and theEpatkas—the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the Puffins, who arealways looking for a chance to be rude, took up the cry, and—so Limmershin toldme—for nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun fired on WalrusIslet. All the population was yelling and screaming “Clam-eater! Stareek [oldman]!” while Sea Vitch rolled from side to side grunting and coughing.

“Now will you tell?” said Kotick, all out of breath.

“Go and ask Sea Cow,” said Sea Vitch. “If he is living still, he’ll be able totell you.”

“How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?” said Kotick, sheering off.

“He’s the only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch,” screamed a Burgomastergull, wheeling under Sea Vitch’s nose. “Uglier, and with worse manners!Stareek!”

Kotick swam back to Novastoshnah, leaving the gulls to scream. There he foundthat no one sympathized with him in his little attempt to discover a quietplace for the seals. They told him that men had always driven theholluschickie—it was part of the day’s work—and that if he did not like to seeugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds. But none of theother seals had seen the killing, and that made the difference between him andhis friends. Besides, Kotick was a white seal.

“What you must do,” said old Sea Catch, after he had heard his son’sadventures, “is to grow up and be a big seal like your father, and have anursery on the beach, and then they will leave you alone. In another five yearsyou ought to be able to fight for yourself.” Even gentle Matkah, his mother,said: “You will never be able to stop the killing. Go and play in the sea,Kotick.” And Kotick went off and danced the Fire-dance with a very heavy littleheart.

That autumn he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off alone because ofa notion in his bullet-head. He was going to find Sea Cow, if there was such aperson in the sea, and he was going to find a quiet island with good firmbeaches for seals to live on, where men could not get at them. So he exploredand explored by himself from the North to the South Pacific, swimming as muchas three hundred miles in a day and a night. He met with more adventures thancan be told, and narrowly escaped being caught by the Basking Shark, and theSpotted Shark, and the Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffiansthat loaf up and down the seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarletspotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and growvery proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he never found an island thathe could fancy.

If the beach was good and hard, with a slope behind it for seals to play on,there was always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon, boiling down blubber,and Kotick knew what that meant. Or else he could see that seals had oncevisited the island and been killed off, and Kotick knew that where men had comeonce they would come again.

He picked up with an old stumpy-tailed albatross, who told him that KerguelenIsland was the very place for peace and quiet, and when Kotick went down therehe was all but smashed to pieces against some wicked black cliffs in a heavysleet-storm with lightning and thunder. Yet as he pulled out against the galehe could see that even there had once been a seal nursery. And it was so in allthe other islands that he visited.

Limmershin gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick spent five seasonsexploring, with a four months’ rest each year at Novastoshnah, when theholluschickie used to make fun of him and his imaginary islands. He went to theGallapagos, a horrid dry place on the Equator, where he was nearly baked todeath; he went to the Georgia Islands, the Orkneys, Emerald Island, LittleNightingale Island, Gough’s Island, Bouvet’s Island, the Crossets, and even toa little speck of an island south of the Cape of Good Hope. But everywhere thePeople of the Sea told him the same things. Seals had come to those islandsonce upon a time, but men had killed them all off. Even when he swam thousandsof miles out of the Pacific and got to a place called Cape Corrientes (that waswhen he was coming back from Gough’s Island), he found a few hundred mangyseals on a rock and they told him that men came there too.

That nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn back to his ownbeaches; and on his way north he hauled out on an island full of green trees,where he found an old, old seal who was dying, and Kotick caught fish for himand told him all his sorrows. “Now,” said Kotick, “I am going back toNovastoshnah, and if I am driven to the killing-pens with the holluschickie Ishall not care.”

The old seal said, “Try once more. I am the last of the Lost Rookery ofMasafuera, and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousand there wasa story on the beaches that some day a white seal would come out of the Northand lead the seal people to a quiet place. I am old, and I shall never live tosee that day, but others will. Try once more.”

And Kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty) and said, “I am the onlywhite seal that has ever been born on the beaches, and I am the only seal,black or white, who ever thought of looking for new islands.”

This cheered him immensely; and when he came back to Novastoshnah that summer,Matkah, his mother, begged him to marry and settle down, for he was no longer aholluschick but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly white mane on hisshoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his father. “Give me anotherseason,” he said. “Remember, Mother, it is always the seventh wave that goesfarthest up the beach.”

Curiously enough, there was another seal who thought that she would put offmarrying till the next year, and Kotick danced the Fire-dance with her all downLukannon Beach the night before he set off on his last exploration. This timehe went westward, because he had fallen on the trail of a great shoal ofhalibut, and he needed at least one hundred pounds of fish a day to keep him ingood condition. He chased them till he was tired, and then he curled himself upand went to sleep on the hollows of the ground swell that sets in to CopperIsland. He knew the coast perfectly well, so about midnight, when he felthimself gently bumped on a weed-bed, he said, “Hm, tide’s running strongtonight,” and turning over under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched.Then he jumped like a cat, for he saw huge things nosing about in the shoalwater and browsing on the heavy fringes of the weeds.

“By the Great Combers of Magellan!” he said, beneath his mustache. “Who in theDeep Sea are these people?”

They were like no walrus, sea lion, seal, bear, whale, shark, fish, squid, orscallop that Kotick had ever seen before. They were between twenty and thirtyfeet long, and they had no hind flippers, but a shovel-like tail that looked asif it had been whittled out of wet leather. Their heads were the mostfoolish-looking things you ever saw, and they balanced on the ends of theirtails in deep water when they weren’t grazing, bowing solemnly to each otherand waving their front flippers as a fat man waves his arm.

“Ahem!” said Kotick. “Good sport, gentlemen?” The big things answered by bowingand waving their flippers like the Frog Footman. When they began feeding againKotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces that they couldtwitch apart about a foot and bring together again with a whole bushel ofseaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff into their mouths and chumpedsolemnly.

“Messy style of feeding, that,” said Kotick. They bowed again, and Kotick beganto lose his temper. “Very good,” he said. “If you do happen to have an extrajoint in your front flipper you needn’t show off so. I see you bow gracefully,but I should like to know your names.” The split lips moved and twitched; andthe glassy green eyes stared, but they did not speak.

“Well!” said Kotick. “You’re the only people I’ve ever met uglier than SeaVitch—and with worse manners.”

Then he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster gull had screamed to himwhen he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet, and he tumbled backward in thewater, for he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.

The sea cows went on schlooping and grazing and chumping in the weed, andKotick asked them questions in every language that he had picked up in histravels; and the Sea People talk nearly as many languages as human beings. Butthe sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot talk. He has only six bonesin his neck where he ought to have seven, and they say under the sea that thatprevents him from speaking even to his companions. But, as you know, he has anextra joint in his foreflipper, and by waving it up and down and about he makeswhat answers to a sort of clumsy telegraphic code.

By daylight Kotick’s mane was standing on end and his temper was gone where thedead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began to travel northward very slowly, stoppingto hold absurd bowing councils from time to time, and Kotick followed them,saying to himself, “People who are such idiots as these are would have beenkilled long ago if they hadn’t found out some safe island. And what is goodenough for the Sea Cow is good enough for the Sea Catch. All the same, I wishthey’d hurry.”

It was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more than forty or fiftymiles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept close to the shore all thetime; while Kotick swam round them, and over them, and under them, but he couldnot hurry them up one-half mile. As they went farther north they held a bowingcouncil every few hours, and Kotick nearly bit off his mustache with impatiencetill he saw that they were following up a warm current of water, and then herespected them more.

One night they sank through the shiny water—sank like stones—and for the firsttime since he had known them began to swim quickly. Kotick followed, and thepace astonished him, for he never dreamed that Sea Cow was anything of aswimmer. They headed for a cliff by the shore—a cliff that ran down into deepwater, and plunged into a dark hole at the foot of it, twenty fathoms under thesea. It was a long, long swim, and Kotick badly wanted fresh air before he wasout of the dark tunnel they led him through.

“My wig!” he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into open water at thefarther end. “It was a long dive, but it was worth it.”

The sea cows had separated and were browsing lazily along the edges of thefinest beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There were long stretches ofsmooth-worn rock running for miles, exactly fitted to make seal-nurseries, andthere were play-grounds of hard sand sloping inland behind them, and there wererollers for seals to dance in, and long grass to roll in, and sand dunes toclimb up and down, and, best of all, Kotick knew by the feel of the water,which never deceives a true sea catch, that no men had ever come there.

The first thing he did was to assure himself that the fishing was good, andthen he swam along the beaches and counted up the delightful low sandy islandshalf hidden in the beautiful rolling fog. Away to the northward, out to sea,ran a line of bars and shoals and rocks that would never let a ship come withinsix miles of the beach, and between the islands and the mainland was a stretchof deep water that ran up to the perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below thecliffs was the mouth of the tunnel.

“It’s Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better,” said Kotick. “Sea Cowmust be wiser than I thought. Men can’t come down the cliffs, even if therewere any men; and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship to splinters. If anyplace in the sea is safe, this is it.”

He began to think of the seal he had left behind him, but though he was in ahurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he thoroughly explored the new country, sothat he would be able to answer all questions.

Then he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and raced through tothe southward. No one but a sea cow or a seal would have dreamed of there beingsuch a place, and when he looked back at the cliffs even Kotick could hardlybelieve that he had been under them.

He was six days going home, though he was not swimming slowly; and when hehauled out just above Sea Lion’s Neck the first person he met was the seal whohad been waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyes that he had foundhis island at last.

But the holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all the other sealslaughed at him when he told them what he had discovered, and a young seal abouthis own age said, “This is all very well, Kotick, but you can’t come from noone knows where and order us off like this. Remember we’ve been fighting forour nurseries, and that’s a thing you never did. You preferred prowling aboutin the sea.”

The other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began twisting his headfrom side to side. He had just married that year, and was making a great fussabout it.

“I’ve no nursery to fight for,” said Kotick. “I only want to show you all aplace where you will be safe. What’s the use of fighting?”

“Oh, if you’re trying to back out, of course I’ve no more to say,” said theyoung seal with an ugly chuckle.

“Will you come with me if I win?” said Kotick. And a green light came into hiseye, for he was very angry at having to fight at all.

“Very good,” said the young seal carelessly. “If you win, I’ll come.”

He had no time to change his mind, for Kotick’s head was out and his teeth sunkin the blubber of the young seal’s neck. Then he threw himself back on hishaunches and hauled his enemy down the beach, shook him, and knocked him over.Then Kotick roared to the seals: “I’ve done my best for you these five seasonspast. I’ve found you the island where you’ll be safe, but unless your heads aredragged off your silly necks you won’t believe. I’m going to teach you now.Look out for yourselves!”

Limmershin told me that never in his life—and Limmershin sees ten thousand bigseals fighting every year—never in all his little life did he see anything likeKotick’s charge into the nurseries. He flung himself at the biggest sea catchhe could find, caught him by the throat, choked him and bumped him and bangedhim till he grunted for mercy, and then threw him aside and attacked the next.You see, Kotick had never fasted for four months as the big seals did everyyear, and his deep-sea swimming trips kept him in perfect condition, and, bestof all, he had never fought before. His curly white mane stood up with rage,and his eyes flamed, and his big dog teeth glistened, and he was splendid tolook at. Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing past, hauling the grizzledold seals about as though they had been halibut, and upsetting the youngbachelors in all directions; and Sea Catch gave a roar and shouted: “He may bea fool, but he is the best fighter on the beaches! Don’t tackle your father, myson! He’s with you!”

Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in with his mustache on end,blowing like a locomotive, while Matkah and the seal that was going to marryKotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. It was a gorgeous fight, forthe two fought as long as there was a seal that dared lift up his head, andwhen there were none they paraded grandly up and down the beach side by side,bellowing.

At night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and flashing through thefog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scattered nurseries andthe torn and bleeding seals. “Now,” he said, “I’ve taught you your lesson.”

“My wig!” said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for he was fearfullymauled. “The Killer Whale himself could not have cut them up worse. Son, I’mproud of you, and what’s more, I’ll come with you to your island—if there issuch a place.”

“Hear you, fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to the Sea Cow’s tunnel?Answer, or I shall teach you again,” roared Kotick.

There was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down the beaches. “Wewill come,” said thousands of tired voices. “We will follow Kotick, the WhiteSeal.”

Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyes proudly.He was not a white seal any more, but red from head to tail. All the same hewould have scorned to look at or touch one of his wounds.

A week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie and old seals)went away north to the Sea Cow’s tunnel, Kotick leading them, and the sealsthat stayed at Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next spring, when they allmet off the fishing banks of the Pacific, Kotick’s seals told such tales of thenew beaches beyond Sea Cow’s tunnel that more and more seals left Novastoshnah.Of course it was not all done at once, for the seals are not very clever, andthey need a long time to turn things over in their minds, but year after yearmore seals went away from Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other nurseries,to the quiet, sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all the summer through,getting bigger and fatter and stronger each year, while the holluschickie playaround him, in that sea where no man comes.

Lukannon

This is the great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals sing when they areheading back to their beaches in the summer. It is a sort of very sad sealNational Anthem.

I met my mates in the morning (and, oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers’ song—
The Beaches of Lukannon—two million voices strong.

The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,
The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame—
The Beaches of Lukannon—before the sealers came!

I met my mates in the morning (I’ll never meet them more!);
They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.
And o’er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach
We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.

The Beaches of Lukannon—the winter wheat so tall—
The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!
The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!
The Beaches of Lukannon—the home where we were born!

I met my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.
Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;
Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,
And still we sing Lukannon—before the sealers came.

Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska, go!
And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe;
Ere, empty as the shark’s egg the tempest flings ashore,
The Beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”

At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
“Nag, come up and dance with death!”

Eye to eye and head to head,
    (Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
    (At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist—
    (Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
    (Woe betide thee, Nag!)

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed,through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, theTailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the muskrat, who never comes out intothe middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice,but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quitelike a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restlessnose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg,front or back, that he chose to use. He could fluff up his tail till it lookedlike a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled through the long grass was:“Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”

One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived withhis father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down a roadsideditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till helost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle ofa garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying, “Here’s a deadmongoose. Let’s have a funeral.”

“No,” said his mother, “let’s take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn’t reallydead.”

They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his fingerand thumb and said he was not dead but half choked. So they wrapped him incotton wool, and warmed him over a little fire, and he opened his eyes andsneezed.

“Now,” said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into thebungalow), “don’t frighten him, and we’ll see what he’ll do.”

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he iseaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose familyis “Run and find out,” and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at thecotton wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, satup and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy’sshoulder.

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s collar and neck

“Don’t be frightened, Teddy,” said his father. “That’s his way of makingfriends.”

“Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,” said Teddy.

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s collar and neck, snuffed at his ear,and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose.

“Good gracious,” said Teddy’s mother, “and that’s a wild creature! I supposehe’s so tame because we’ve been kind to him.”

“All mongooses are like that,” said her husband. “If Teddy doesn’t pick him upby the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he’ll run in and out of the house allday long. Let’s give him something to eat.”

They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, andwhen it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine andfluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better.

He put his nose into the ink

“There are more things to find out about in this house,” he said to himself,“than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stayand find out.”

He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in thebath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing table, and burned it on theend of the big man’s cigar, for he climbed up in the big man’s lap to see howwriting was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy’s nursery to watch howkerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed uptoo. But he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend toevery noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy’s motherand father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki wasawake on the pillow. “I don’t like that,” said Teddy’s mother. “He may bite thechild.” “He’ll do no such thing,” said the father. “Teddy’s safer with thatlittle beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into thenursery now—”

Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow.

But Teddy’s mother wouldn’t think of anything so awful.

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda ridingon Teddy’s shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg. He sat onall their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoosealways hopes to be a house mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in;and Rikki-tikki’s mother (she used to live in the general’s house at Segowlee)had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.

He came to breakfast riding on Teddy’s shoulder.

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. It was alarge garden, only half cultivated, with bushes, as big as summer-houses, ofMarshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets ofhigh grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. “This is a splendid hunting-ground,”he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttledup and down the garden, snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowfulvoices in a thorn-bush.

It was Darzee, the Tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest bypulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibers,and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to andfro, as they sat on the rim and cried.

“We are very miserable,” said Darzee.

“What is the matter?” asked Rikki-tikki.

“We are very miserable,” said Darzee. “One of our babies fell out of the nestyesterday and Nag ate him.”

“H’m!” said Rikki-tikki, “that is very sad—but I am a stranger here. Who isNag?”

Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for fromthe thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss—a horrid coldsound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out ofthe grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and hewas five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himselfclear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion tuftbalances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake’s eyesthat never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.

“Who is Nag?” said he. “I am Nag. The great God Brahm put his mark upon all ourpeople, when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as heslept. Look, and be afraid!”

“I am Nag,” said the cobra: “Look, and be afraid!”But at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid.

He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-markon the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eyefastening. He was afraid for the minute, but it is impossible for a mongoose tostay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met alive cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all agrown mongoose’s business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew thattoo and, at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Nag

“Well,” said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, “marks or nomarks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a nest?”

Nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in thegrass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in the garden meant deathsooner or later for him and his family, but he wanted to get Rikki-tikki offhis guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it on one side.

“Let us talk,” he said. “You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?”

“Behind you! Look behind you!” sang Darzee.

He jumped up in the air, and just under him whizzed by thehead of Nagaina.

Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in the airas high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina,Nag’s wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was talking, to make anend of him. He heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed. He came down almostacross her back, and if he had been an old mongoose he would have known thatthen was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of theterrible lashing return stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bitelong enough, and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn andangry.

“Wicked, wicked Darzee!” said Nag, lashing up as high as he could reach towardthe nest in the thorn-bush. But Darzee had built it out of reach of snakes, andit only swayed to and fro.

Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose’s eyes grow red,he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo,and looked all round him, and chattered with rage. But Nag and Nagaina haddisappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never saysanything or gives any sign of what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did notcare to follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could manage two snakesat once. So he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down tothink. It was a serious matter for him.

If you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that whenthe mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eatssome herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter ofquickness of eye and quickness of foot—snake’s blow against mongoose’s jump—andas no eye can follow the motion of a snake’s head when it strikes, this makesthings much more wonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a youngmongoose, and it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed toescape a blow from behind. It gave him confidence in himself, and when Teddycame running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.

But just as Teddy was stooping, something wriggled a little in the dust, and atiny voice said: “Be careful. I am Death!” It was Karait, the dusty brownsnakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerousas the cobra’s. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he doesthe more harm to people.

Rikki-tikki’s eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the peculiarrocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from his family. It looks veryfunny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can fly off from it atany angle you please, and in dealing with snakes this is an advantage. IfRikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much more dangerous thing thanfighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can turn so quickly, that unlessRikki bit him close to the back of the head, he would get the return stroke inhis eye or his lip. But Rikki did not know. His eyes were all red, and herocked back and forth, looking for a good place to hold. Karait struck out.Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty grayhead lashed within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over thebody, and the head followed his heels close.

Teddy shouted to the house: “Oh, look here! Our mongoose is killing a snake.”And Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy’s mother. His father ran out with astick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once too far, andRikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake’s back, dropped his head farbetween his forelegs, bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, androlled away. That bite paralyzed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eathim up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when heremembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if he wanted all hisstrength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.

He went away for a dust bath under the castor-oil bushes, while Teddy’s fatherbeat the dead Karait. “What is the use of that?” thought Rikki-tikki. “I havesettled it all;” and then Teddy’s mother picked him up from the dust and huggedhim, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Teddy’s father said that hewas a providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki wasrather amused at all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy’smother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Rikki wasthoroughly enjoying himself.

That night at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the table,he might have stuffed himself three times over with nice things. But heremembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted andpetted by Teddy’s mother, and to sit on Teddy’s shoulder, his eyes would getred from time to time, and he would go off into his long war cry of“Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”

In the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the muskrat.

Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under hischin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddywas asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark heran up against Chuchundra, the muskrat, creeping around by the wall.Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. He whimpers and cheeps all thenight, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room. But henever gets there.

“Don’t kill me,” said Chuchundra, almost weeping. “Rikki-tikki, don’t kill me!”

“Do you think a snake-killer kills muskrats?” said Rikki-tikki scornfully.

“Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,” said Chuchundra, more sorrowfullythan ever. “And how am I to be sure that Nag won’t mistake me for you some darknight?”

“There’s not the least danger,” said Rikki-tikki. “But Nag is in the garden,and I know you don’t go there.”

“My cousin Chua, the rat, told me—” said Chuchundra, and then he stopped.

“Told you what?”

“H’sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua in thegarden.”

“I didn’t—so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I’ll bite you!”

Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers. “I am avery poor man,” he sobbed. “I never had spirit enough to run out into themiddle of the room. H’sh! I mustn’t tell you anything. Can’t you hear,Rikki-tikki?”

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he couldjust catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world—a noise as faint as thatof a wasp walking on a window-pane—the dry scratch of a snake’s scales onbrick-work.

“That’s Nag or Nagaina,” he said to himself, “and he is crawling into thebath-room sluice. You’re right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua.”

He stole off to Teddy’s bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then toTeddy’s mother’s bathroom. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was abrick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as Rikki-tikki stolein by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagainawhispering together outside in the moonlight.

“When the house is emptied of people,” said Nagaina to her husband, “he willhave to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. Go in quietly, andremember that the big man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then comeout and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.”

“But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the people?”said Nag.

“Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have anymongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queenof the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon bed hatch (asthey may tomorrow), our children will need room and quiet.”

“I had not thought of that,” said Nag. “I will go, but there is no need that weshould hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife,and the child if I can, and come away quietly. Then the bungalow will be empty,and Rikki-tikki will go.”

Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then Nag’s headcame through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body followed it. Angry ashe was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the size of the big cobra.Nag coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bathroom in thedark, and Rikki could see his eyes glitter.

“Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on the openfloor, the odds are in his favor. What am I to do?” said Rikki-tikki-tavi.

Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the biggestwater-jar that was used to fill the bath. “That is good,” said the snake. “Now,when Karait was killed, the big man had a stick. He may have that stick still,but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. I shallwait here till he comes. Nagaina—do you hear me?—I shall wait here in the cooltill daytime.”

There was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone away.Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of thewater jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he began tomove, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki-tikki lookedat his big back, wondering which would be the best place for a good hold. “If Idon’t break his back at the first jump,” said Rikki, “he can still fight. Andif he fights—O Rikki!” He looked at the thickness of the neck below the hood,but that was too much for him; and a bite near the tail would only make Nagsavage.

“It must be the head”’ he said at last; “the head above the hood. And, when Iam once there, I must not let go.”

Then Rikki-tikki was battered to and fro as a rat is shakenby a dog.

Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water jar, under thecurve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge ofthe red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him just one second’spurchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a ratis shaken by a dog—to and fro on the floor, up and down, and around in greatcircles, but his eyes were red and he held on as the body cart-whipped over thefloor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap dish and the flesh brush, andbanged against the tin side of the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighterand tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honorof his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy,aching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclapjust behind him. A hot wind knocked him senseless and red fire singed his fur.The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of ashotgun into Nag just behind the hood.

Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite sure he was dead.But the head did not move, and the big man picked him up and said, “It’s themongoose again, Alice. The little chap has saved our lives now.”

Then Teddy’s mother came in with a very white face, and saw what was left ofNag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself to Teddy’s bedroom and spent half the restof the night shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he really was brokeninto forty pieces, as he fancied.

When morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his doings. “Now Ihave Nagaina to settle with, and she will be worse than five Nags, and there’sno knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness! I must go and seeDarzee,” he said.

Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the thornbush where Darzeewas singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag’s deathwas all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on therubbish-heap.

“Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!” said Rikki-tikki angrily. “Is this the timeto sing?”

“Nag is dead—is dead—is dead!” sang Darzee. “The valiant Rikki-tikki caught himby the head and held fast. The big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell intwo pieces! He will never eat my babies again.”

“All that’s true enough. But where’s Nagaina?” said Rikki-tikki, lookingcarefully round him.

“Nagaina came to the bathroom sluice and called for Nag,” Darzee went on, “andNag came out on the end of a stick—the sweeper picked him up on the end of astick and threw him upon the rubbish heap. Let us sing about the great, thered-eyed Rikki-tikki!” And Darzee filled his throat and sang.

“If I could get up to your nest, I’d roll your babies out!” said Rikki-tikki.“You don’t know when to do the right thing at the right time. You’re safeenough in your nest there, but it’s war for me down here. Stop singing aminute, Darzee.”

“For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki’s sake I will stop,” said Darzee.“What is it, O Killer of the terrible Nag?”

“Where is Nagaina, for the third time?”

“On the rubbish heap by the stables, mourning for Nag. Great is Rikki-tikkiwith the white teeth.”

“Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?”

“In the melon bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes nearlyall day. She hid them there weeks ago.”

“And you never thought it worth while to tell me? The end nearest the wall, yousaid?”

“Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?”

Darzee’s wife pretends to have a broken wing

“Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off tothe stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let Nagaina chase youaway to this bush. I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went there now she’dsee me.”

Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than oneidea at a time in his head. And just because he knew that Nagaina’s childrenwere born in eggs like his own, he didn’t think at first that it was fair tokill them. But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra’s eggsmeant young cobras later on. So she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee tokeep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee wasvery like a man in some ways.

She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap and cried out, “Oh, mywing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it.” Thenshe fluttered more desperately than ever.

Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, “You warned Rikki-tikki when I wouldhave killed him. Indeed and truly, you’ve chosen a bad place to be lame in.”And she moved toward Darzee’s wife, slipping along over the dust.

“The boy broke it with a stone!” shrieked Darzee’s wife.

“Well! It may be some consolation to you when you’re dead to know that I shallsettle accounts with the boy. My husband lies on the rubbish heap this morning,but before night the boy in the house will lie very still. What is the use ofrunning away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at me!”

Darzee’s wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a snake’seyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. Darzee’s wife fluttered on,piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina quickened herpace.

Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced for theend of the melon patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter above themelons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of abantam’s eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell.

“I was not a day too soon,” he said, for he could see the baby cobras curled upinside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched they could eachkill a man or a mongoose. He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could,taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter from time totime to see whether he had missed any. At last there were only three eggs left,and Rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee’s wifescreaming:

“Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into theveranda, and—oh, come quickly—she means killing!”

Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed with thethird egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the veranda as hard as he could putfoot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were there at earlybreakfast, but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. They satstone-still, and their faces were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the mattingby Teddy’s chair, within easy striking distance of Teddy’s bare leg, and shewas swaying to and fro, singing a song of triumph.

“Son of the big man that killed Nag,” she hissed, “stay still. I am not readyyet. Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three! If you move I strike, andif you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!”

Teddy’s eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was towhisper, “Sit still, Teddy. You mustn’t move. Teddy, keep still.”

Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried, “Turn round, Nagaina. Turn and fight!”

“All in good time,” said she, without moving her eyes. “I will settle myaccount with you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are stilland white. They are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer Istrike.”

“Look at your eggs,” said Rikki-tikki, “in the melon bed near the wall. Go andlook, Nagaina!”

The big snake turned half around, and saw the egg on the veranda. “Ah-h! Giveit to me,” she said.

Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes wereblood-red. “What price for a snake’s egg? For a young cobra? For a young kingcobra? For the last—the very last of the brood? The ants are eating all theothers down by the melon bed.”

Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the sake of the one egg.Rikki-tikki saw Teddy’s father shoot out a big hand, catch Teddy by theshoulder, and drag him across the little table with the tea-cups, safe and outof reach of Nagaina.

“Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tck-tck!” chuckled Rikki-tikki. “The boy issafe, and it was I—I—I that caught Nag by the hood last night in the bathroom.”Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet together, his head close tothe floor. “He threw me to and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was deadbefore the big man blew him in two. I did it! Rikki-tikki-tck-tck! Come then,Nagaina. Come and fight with me. You shall not be a widow long.”

Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and the egg laybetween Rikki-tikki’s paws. “Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last ofmy eggs, and I will go away and never come back,” she said, lowering her hood.

“Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back. For you will go to therubbish heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!”

Nagaina flew down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her.

Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach of herstroke, his little eyes like hot coals. Nagaina gathered herself together andflung out at him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and again and againshe struck, and each time her head came with a whack on the matting of theveranda and she gathered herself together like a watch spring. Then Rikki-tikkidanced in a circle to get behind her, and Nagaina spun round to keep her headto his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded like dryleaves blown along by the wind.

He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and Nagaina came nearerand nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, shecaught it in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and flew like an arrowdown the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When the cobra runs for her life,she goes like a whip-lash flicked across a horse’s neck.

Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin again.She headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was runningRikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of triumph. ButDarzee’s wife was wiser. She flew off her nest as Nagaina came along, andflapped her wings about Nagaina’s head. If Darzee had helped they might haveturned her, but Nagaina only lowered her hood and went on. Still, the instant’sdelay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole whereshe and Nag used to live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, andhe went down with her—and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be,care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and Rikki-tikkinever knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike athim. He held on savagely, and stuck out his feet to act as brakes on the darkslope of the hot, moist earth.

Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said, “It isall over with Rikki-tikki! We must sing his death song. Valiant Rikki-tikki isdead! For Nagaina will surely kill him underground.”

So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the minute, andjust as he got to the most touching part, the grass quivered again, andRikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg by leg,licking his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki shooksome of the dust out of his fur and sneezed. “It is all over,” he said. “Thewidow will never come out again.” And the red ants that live between the grassstems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he hadspoken the truth.

Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was—slept andslept till it was late in the afternoon, for he had done a hard day’s work.

“Now,” he said, when he awoke, “I will go back to the house. Tell theCoppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that Nagaina is dead.”

It is all over.

The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of alittle hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it is becausehe is the town crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the news toeverybody who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the path, he heard his“attention” notes like a tiny dinner gong, and then the steady “Ding-dong-tock!Nag is dead—dong! Nagaina is dead! Ding-dong-tock!” That set all the birds inthe garden singing, and the frogs croaking, for Nag and Nagaina used to eatfrogs as well as little birds.

When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy’s mother (she looked very whitestill, for she had been fainting) and Teddy’s father came out and almost criedover him; and that night he ate all that was given him till he could eat nomore, and went to bed on Teddy’s shoulder, where Teddy’s mother saw him whenshe came to look late at night.

“He saved our lives and Teddy’s life,” she said to her husband. “Just think, hesaved all our lives.”

Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are light sleepers.

“Oh, it’s you,” said he. “What are you bothering for? All the cobras are dead.And if they weren’t, I’m here.”

Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself. But he did not grow too proud,and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump andspring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.

Darzee’s Chant

(Sung in honor of Rikki-tikki-tavi)

Singer and tailor am I—
    Doubled the joys that I know—
Proud of my lilt to the sky,
    Proud of the house that I sew—
Over and under, so weave I my music—so weave I the house that I sew.

Sing to your fledglings again,
    Mother, oh lift up your head!
Evil that plagued us is slain,
    Death in the garden lies dead.
Terror that hid in the roses is impotent—flung on the dung-hill and dead!

Who has delivered us, who?
    Tell me his nest and his name.
Rikki, the valiant, the true,
    Tikki, with eyeballs of flame,
Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame!

Give him the Thanks of the Birds,
    Bowing with tail feathers spread!
Praise him with nightingale words—
    Nay, I will praise him instead.
Hear! I will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed Rikki, with eyeballs ofred!

(Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost.)

Toomai of the Elephants

I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain—
    I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.
I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane:
    I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.

I will go out until the day, until the morning break—
    Out to the wind’s untainted kiss, the water’s clean caress;
I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.
    I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!

Kala Nag, which means Black Snake, had served the Indian Government in everyway that an elephant could serve it for forty-seven years, and as he was fullytwenty years old when he was caught, that makes him nearly seventy—a ripe agefor an elephant. He remembered pushing, with a big leather pad on his forehead,at a gun stuck in deep mud, and that was before the Afghan War of 1842, and hehad not then come to his full strength.

His mother Radha Pyari,—Radha the darling,—who had been caught in the samedrive with Kala Nag, told him, before his little milk tusks had dropped out,that elephants who were afraid always got hurt. Kala Nag knew that that advicewas good, for the first time that he saw a shell burst he backed, screaming,into a stand of piled rifles, and the bayonets pricked him in all his softestplaces. So, before he was twenty-five, he gave up being afraid, and so he wasthe best-loved and the best-looked-after elephant in the service of theGovernment of India. He had carried tents, twelve hundred pounds’ weight oftents, on the march in Upper India. He had been hoisted into a ship at the endof a steam crane and taken for days across the water, and made to carry amortar on his back in a strange and rocky country very far from India, and hadseen the Emperor Theodore lying dead in Magdala, and had come back again in thesteamer entitled, so the soldiers said, to the Abyssinian War medal. He hadseen his fellow elephants die of cold and epilepsy and starvation and sunstrokeup at a place called Ali Musjid, ten years later; and afterward he had beensent down thousands of miles south to haul and pile big balks of teak in thetimberyards at Moulmein. There he had half killed an insubordinate youngelephant who was shirking his fair share of work.

Kala Nag was the best-loved elephant in the service.

After that he was taken off timber-hauling, and employed, with a few scoreother elephants who were trained to the business, in helping to catch wildelephants among the Garo hills. Elephants are very strictly preserved by theIndian Government. There is one whole department which does nothing else buthunt them, and catch them, and break them in, and send them up and down thecountry as they are needed for work.

Kala Nag stood ten fair feet at the shoulders, and his tusks had been cut offshort at five feet, and bound round the ends, to prevent them splitting, withbands of copper; but he could do more with those stumps than any untrainedelephant could do with the real sharpened ones. When, after weeks and weeks ofcautious driving of scattered elephants across the hills, the forty or fiftywild monsters were driven into the last stockade, and the big drop gate, madeof tree trunks lashed together, jarred down behind them, Kala Nag, at the wordof command, would go into that flaring, trumpeting pandemonium (generally atnight, when the flicker of the torches made it difficult to judge distances),and, picking out the biggest and wildest tusker of the mob, would hammer himand hustle him into quiet while the men on the backs of the other elephantsroped and tied the smaller ones.

There was nothing in the way of fighting that Kala Nag, the old wise BlackSnake, did not know, for he had stood up more than once in his time to thecharge of the wounded tiger, and, curling up his soft trunk to be out of harm’sway, had knocked the springing brute sideways in mid-air with a quick sicklecut of his head, that he had invented all by himself; had knocked him over, andkneeled upon him with his huge knees till the life went out with a gasp and ahowl, and there was only a fluffy striped thing on the ground for Kala Nag topull by the tail.

“Yes,” said Big Toomai, his driver, the son of Black Toomai who had taken himto Abyssinia, and grandson of Toomai of the Elephants who had seen him caught,“there is nothing that the Black Snake fears except me. He has seen threegenerations of us feed him and groom him, and he will live to see four.”

“He is afraid of me also,” said Little Toomai, standing up to his full heightof four feet, with only one rag upon him. He was ten years old, the eldest sonof Big Toomai, and, according to custom, he would take his father’s place onKala Nag’s neck when he grew up, and would handle the heavy iron ankus, theelephant goad, that had been worn smooth by his father, and his grandfather,and his great-grandfather.

Kala Nag

He knew what he was talking of; for he had been born under Kala Nag’s shadow,had played with the end of his trunk before he could walk, had taken him downto water as soon as he could walk, and Kala Nag would no more have dreamed ofdisobeying his shrill little orders than he would have dreamed of killing himon that day when Big Toomai carried the little brown baby under Kala Nag’stusks, and told him to salute his master that was to be.

“Yes,” said Little Toomai, “he is afraid of me,” and he took long strides up toKala Nag, called him a fat old pig, and made him lift up his feet one after theother.

“Wah!” said Little Toomai, “thou art a big elephant,” and he wagged his fluffyhead, quoting his father. “The Government may pay for elephants, but theybelong to us mahouts. When thou art old, Kala Nag, there will come some richrajah, and he will buy thee from the Government, on account of thy size and thymanners, and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold earrings inthy ears, and a gold howdah on thy back, and a red cloth covered with gold onthy sides, and walk at the head of the processions of the King. Then I shallsit on thy neck, O Kala Nag, with a silver ankus, and men will run before uswith golden sticks, crying, `Room for the King’s elephant!’ That will be good,Kala Nag, but not so good as this hunting in the jungles.”

“Umph!” said Big Toomai. “Thou art a boy, and as wild as a buffalo-calf. Thisrunning up and down among the hills is not the best Government service. I amgetting old, and I do not love wild elephants. Give me brick elephant lines,one stall to each elephant, and big stumps to tie them to safely, and flat,broad roads to exercise upon, instead of this come-and-go camping. Aha, theCawnpore barracks were good. There was a bazaar close by, and only three hours’work a day.”

Little Toomai remembered the Cawnpore elephant-lines and said nothing. He verymuch preferred the camp life, and hated those broad, flat roads, with the dailygrubbing for grass in the forage reserve, and the long hours when there wasnothing to do except to watch Kala Nag fidgeting in his pickets.

What Little Toomai liked was to scramble up bridle paths that only an elephantcould take; the dip into the valley below; the glimpses of the wild elephantsbrowsing miles away; the rush of the frightened pig and peacock under KalaNag’s feet; the blinding warm rains, when all the hills and valleys smoked; thebeautiful misty mornings when nobody knew where they would camp that night; thesteady, cautious drive of the wild elephants, and the mad rush and blaze andhullabaloo of the last night’s drive, when the elephants poured into thestockade like boulders in a landslide, found that they could not get out, andflung themselves at the heavy posts only to be driven back by yells and flaringtorches and volleys of blank cartridge.

Even a little boy could be of use there, and Toomai was as useful as threeboys. He would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the best. But thereally good time came when the driving out began, and the Keddah—that is, thestockade—looked like a picture of the end of the world, and men had to makesigns to one another, because they could not hear themselves speak. Then LittleToomai would climb up to the top of one of the quivering stockade posts, hissun-bleached brown hair flying loose all over his shoulders, and he lookinglike a goblin in the torch-light. And as soon as there was a lull you couldhear his high-pitched yells of encouragement to Kala Nag, above the trumpetingand crashing, and snapping of ropes, and groans of the tethered elephants.“Mael, mael, Kala Nag! (Go on, go on, Black Snake!) Dant do! (Give him thetusk!) Somalo! Somalo! (Careful, careful!) Maro! Mar! (Hit him, hit him!) Mindthe post! Arre! Arre! Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah!” he would shout, and the big fightbetween Kala Nag and the wild elephant would sway to and fro across the Keddah,and the old elephant catchers would wipe the sweat out of their eyes, and findtime to nod to Little Toomai wriggling with joy on the top of the posts.

He did more than wriggle. One night he slid down from the post and slipped inbetween the elephants and threw up the loose end of a rope, which had dropped,to a driver who was trying to get a purchase on the leg of a kicking young calf(calves always give more trouble than full-grown animals). Kala Nag saw him,caught him in his trunk, and handed him up to Big Toomai, who slapped him thenand there, and put him back on the post.

Next morning he gave him a scolding and said, “Are not good brick elephantlines and a little tent carrying enough, that thou must needs go elephantcatching on thy own account, little worthless? Now those foolish hunters, whosepay is less than my pay, have spoken to Petersen Sahib of the matter.” LittleToomai was frightened. He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahibwas the greatest white man in the world to him. He was the head of all theKeddah operations—the man who caught all the elephants for the Government ofIndia, and who knew more about the ways of elephants than any living man.

“What—what will happen?” said Little Toomai.

“Happen! The worst that can happen. Petersen Sahib is a madman. Else why shouldhe go hunting these wild devils? He may even require thee to be an elephantcatcher, to sleep anywhere in these fever-filled jungles, and at last to betrampled to death in the Keddah. It is well that this nonsense ends safely.Next week the catching is over, and we of the plains are sent back to ourstations. Then we will march on smooth roads, and forget all this hunting. But,son, I am angry that thou shouldst meddle in the business that belongs to thesedirty Assamese jungle folk. Kala Nag will obey none but me, so I must go withhim into the Keddah, but he is only a fighting elephant, and he does not helpto rope them. So I sit at my ease, as befits a mahout,—not a mere hunter,—amahout, I say, and a man who gets a pension at the end of his service. Is thefamily of Toomai of the Elephants to be trodden underfoot in the dirt of aKeddah? Bad one! Wicked one! Worthless son! Go and wash Kala Nag and attend tohis ears, and see that there are no thorns in his feet. Or else Petersen Sahibwill surely catch thee and make thee a wild hunter—a follower of elephant’sfoot tracks, a jungle bear. Bah! Shame! Go!”

Little Toomai went off without saying a word, but he told Kala Nag all hisgrievances while he was examining his feet. “No matter,” said Little Toomai,turning up the fringe of Kala Nag’s huge right ear. “They have said my name toPetersen Sahib, and perhaps—and perhaps—and perhaps—who knows? Hai! That is abig thorn that I have pulled out!”

The next few days were spent in getting the elephants together, in walking thenewly caught wild elephants up and down between a couple of tame ones toprevent them giving too much trouble on the downward march to the plains, andin taking stock of the blankets and ropes and things that had been worn out orlost in the forest.

Petersen Sahib came in on his clever she-elephant Pudmini; he had been payingoff other camps among the hills, for the season was coming to an end, and therewas a native clerk sitting at a table under a tree, to pay the drivers theirwages. As each man was paid he went back to his elephant, and joined the linethat stood ready to start. The catchers, and hunters, and beaters, the men ofthe regular Keddah, who stayed in the jungle year in and year out, sat on thebacks of the elephants that belonged to Petersen Sahib’s permanent force, orleaned against the trees with their guns across their arms, and made fun of thedrivers who were going away, and laughed when the newly caught elephants brokethe line and ran about.

Big Toomai went up to the clerk with Little Toomai behind him, and Machua Appa,the head tracker, said in an undertone to a friend of his, “There goes onepiece of good elephant stuff at least. ’Tis a pity to send that youngjungle-cock to molt in the plains.”

Now Petersen Sahib had ears all over him, as a man must have who listens to themost silent of all living things—the wild elephant. He turned where he waslying all along on Pudmini’s back and said, “What is that? I did not know of aman among the plains-drivers who had wit enough to rope even a dead elephant.”

“This is not a man, but a boy. He went into the Keddah at the last drive, andthrew Barmao there the rope, when we were trying to get that young calf withthe blotch on his shoulder away from his mother.”

Machua Appa pointed at Little Toomai, and Petersen Sahib looked, and LittleToomai bowed to the earth.

“He throw a rope? He is smaller than a picket-pin. Little one, what is thyname?” said Petersen Sahib.

Little Toomai was too frightened to speak, but Kala Nag was behind him, andToomai made a sign with his hand, and the elephant caught him up in his trunkand held him level with Pudmini’s forehead, in front of the great PetersenSahib. Then Little Toomai covered his face with his hands, for he was only achild, and except where elephants were concerned, he was just as bashful as achild could be.

“Oho!” said Petersen Sahib, smiling underneath his mustache, “and why didstthou teach thy elephant that trick? Was it to help thee steal green corn fromthe roofs of the houses when the ears are put out to dry?”

“Not green corn, Protector of the Poor,—melons,” said LittleToomai.

“Not green corn, Protector of the Poor,—melons,” said Little Toomai, and allthe men sitting about broke into a roar of laughter. Most of them had taughttheir elephants that trick when they were boys. Little Toomai was hanging eightfeet up in the air, and he wished very much that he were eight feetunderground.

“He is Toomai, my son, Sahib,” said Big Toomai, scowling. “He is a very badboy, and he will end in a jail, Sahib.”

“Of that I have my doubts,” said Petersen Sahib. “A boy who can face a fullKeddah at his age does not end in jails. See, little one, here are four annasto spend in sweetmeats because thou hast a little head under that great thatchof hair. In time thou mayest become a hunter too.” Big Toomai scowled more thanever. “Remember, though, that Keddahs are not good for children to play in,”Petersen Sahib went on.

“Must I never go there, Sahib?” asked Little Toomai with a big gasp.

“Yes.” Petersen Sahib smiled again. “When thou hast seen the elephants dance.That is the proper time. Come to me when thou hast seen the elephants dance,and then I will let thee go into all the Keddahs.”

There was another roar of laughter, for that is an old joke amongelephant-catchers, and it means just never. There are great cleared flat placeshidden away in the forests that are called elephants’ ball-rooms, but eventhese are only found by accident, and no man has ever seen the elephants dance.When a driver boasts of his skill and bravery the other drivers say, “And whendidst thou see the elephants dance?”

Kala Nag put Little Toomai down, and he bowed to the earth again and went awaywith his father, and gave the silver four-anna piece to his mother, who wasnursing his baby brother, and they all were put up on Kala Nag’s back, and theline of grunting, squealing elephants rolled down the hill path to the plains.It was a very lively march on account of the new elephants, who gave trouble atevery ford, and needed coaxing or beating every other minute.

Big Toomai prodded Kala Nag spitefully, for he was very angry, but LittleToomai was too happy to speak. Petersen Sahib had noticed him, and given himmoney, so he felt as a private soldier would feel if he had been called out ofthe ranks and praised by his commander-in-chief.

“What did Petersen Sahib mean by the elephant dance?” he said, at last, softlyto his mother.

Big Toomai heard him and grunted. “That thou shouldst never be one of thesehill buffaloes of trackers. That was what he meant. Oh, you in front, what isblocking the way?”

An Assamese driver, two or three elephants ahead, turned round angrily, crying:“Bring up Kala Nag, and knock this youngster of mine into good behavior. Whyshould Petersen Sahib have chosen me to go down with you donkeys of the ricefields? Lay your beast alongside, Toomai, and let him prod with his tusks. Byall the Gods of the Hills, these new elephants are possessed, or else they cansmell their companions in the jungle.” Kala Nag hit the new elephant in theribs and knocked the wind out of him, as Big Toomai said, “We have swept thehills of wild elephants at the last catch. It is only your carelessness indriving. Must I keep order along the whole line?”

“Hear him!” said the other driver. “We have swept the hills! Ho! Ho! You arevery wise, you plains people. Anyone but a mud-head who never saw the junglewould know that they know that the drives are ended for the season. Thereforeall the wild elephants to-night will—but why should I waste wisdom on ariver-turtle?”

“What will they do?” Little Toomai called out.

“Ohe, little one. Art thou there? Well, I will tell thee, for thou hast a coolhead. They will dance, and it behooves thy father, who has swept all the hillsof all the elephants, to double-chain his pickets to-night.”

“What talk is this?” said Big Toomai. “For forty years, father and son, we havetended elephants, and we have never heard such moonshine about dances.”

“Yes; but a plainsman who lives in a hut knows only the four walls of his hut.Well, leave thy elephants unshackled tonight and see what comes. As for theirdancing, I have seen the place where—Bapree-bap! How many windings has theDihang River? Here is another ford, and we must swim the calves. Stop still,you behind there.”

And in this way, talking and wrangling and splashing through the rivers, theymade their first march to a sort of receiving camp for the new elephants. Butthey lost their tempers long before they got there.

Then the elephants were chained by their hind legs to their big stumps ofpickets, and extra ropes were fitted to the new elephants, and the fodder waspiled before them, and the hill drivers went back to Petersen Sahib through theafternoon light, telling the plains drivers to be extra careful that night, andlaughing when the plains drivers asked the reason.

Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag’s supper, and as evening fell, wanderedthrough the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a tom-tom. When an Indianchild’s heart is full, he does not run about and make a noise in an irregularfashion. He sits down to a sort of revel all by himself. And Little Toomai hadbeen spoken to by Petersen Sahib! If he had not found what he wanted, I believehe would have been ill. But the sweetmeat seller in the camp lent him a littletom-tom—a drum beaten with the flat of the hand—and he sat down, cross-legged,before Kala Nag as the stars began to come out, the tom-tom in his lap, and hethumped and he thumped and he thumped, and the more he thought of the greathonor that had been done to him, the more he thumped, all alone among theelephant fodder. There was no tune and no words, but the thumping made himhappy.

The new elephants strained at their ropes, and squealed and trumpeted from timeto time, and he could hear his mother in the camp hut putting his small brotherto sleep with an old, old song about the great God Shiv, who once told all theanimals what they should eat. It is a very soothing lullaby, and the firstverse says:

Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,
Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,
Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,
From the King upon the guddeeto the Beggar at the gate.
    All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.
    Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all—
    Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,
    And mother’s heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!

Little Toomai came in with a joyous tunk-a-tunk at the end of each verse, tillhe felt sleepy and stretched himself on the fodder at Kala Nag’s side. At lastthe elephants began to lie down one after another as is their custom, till onlyKala Nag at the right of the line was left standing up; and he rocked slowlyfrom side to side, his ears put forward to listen to the night wind as it blewvery slowly across the hills. The air was full of all the night noises that,taken together, make one big silence—the click of one bamboo stem against theother, the rustle of something alive in the undergrowth, the scratch and squawkof a half-waked bird (birds are awake in the night much more often than weimagine), and the fall of water ever so far away. Little Toomai slept for sometime, and when he waked it was brilliant moonlight, and Kala Nag was stillstanding up with his ears cocked. Little Toomai turned, rustling in the fodder,and watched the curve of his big back against half the stars in heaven, andwhile he watched he heard, so far away that it sounded no more than a pinholeof noise pricked through the stillness, the “hoot-toot” of a wild elephant.

All the elephants in the lines jumped up as if they had been shot, and theirgrunts at last waked the sleeping mahouts, and they came out and drove in thepicket pegs with big mallets, and tightened this rope and knotted that till allwas quiet. One new elephant had nearly grubbed up his picket, and Big Toomaitook off Kala Nag’s leg chain and shackled that elephant fore-foot tohind-foot, but slipped a loop of grass string round Kala Nag’s leg, and toldhim to remember that he was tied fast. He knew that he and his father and hisgrandfather had done the very same thing hundreds of times before. Kala Nag didnot answer to the order by gurgling, as he usually did. He stood still, lookingout across the moonlight, his head a little raised and his ears spread likefans, up to the great folds of the Garo hills.

“Tend to him if he grows restless in the night,” said Big Toomai to LittleToomai, and he went into the hut and slept. Little Toomai was just going tosleep, too, when he heard the coir string snap with a little “tang,” and KalaNag rolled out of his pickets as slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls out ofthe mouth of a valley. Little Toomai pattered after him, barefooted, down theroad in the moonlight, calling under his breath, “Kala Nag! Kala Nag! Take mewith you, O Kala Nag!” The elephant turned, without a sound, took three stridesback to the boy in the moonlight, put down his trunk, swung him up to his neck,and almost before Little Toomai had settled his knees, slipped into the forest.

There was one blast of furious trumpeting from the lines, and then the silenceshut down on everything, and Kala Nag began to move. Sometimes a tuft of highgrass washed along his sides as a wave washes along the sides of a ship, andsometimes a cluster of wild-pepper vines would scrape along his back, or abamboo would creak where his shoulder touched it. But between those times hemoved absolutely without any sound, drifting through the thick Garo forest asthough it had been smoke. He was going uphill, but though Little Toomai watchedthe stars in the rifts of the trees, he could not tell in what direction.

Then Kala Nag reached the crest of the ascent and stopped for a minute, andLittle Toomai could see the tops of the trees lying all speckled and furryunder the moonlight for miles and miles, and the blue-white mist over the riverin the hollow. Toomai leaned forward and looked, and he felt that the forestwas awake below him—awake and alive and crowded. A big brown fruit-eating batbrushed past his ear; a porcupine’s quills rattled in the thicket; and in thedarkness between the tree stems he heard a hog-bear digging hard in the moistwarm earth, and snuffing as it digged.

Then the branches closed over his head again, and Kala Nag began to go downinto the valley—not quietly this time, but as a runaway gun goes down a steepbank—in one rush. The huge limbs moved as steadily as pistons, eight feet toeach stride, and the wrinkled skin of the elbow points rustled. The undergrowthon either side of him ripped with a noise like torn canvas, and the saplingsthat he heaved away right and left with his shoulders sprang back again andbanged him on the flank, and great trails of creepers, all matted together,hung from his tusks as he threw his head from side to side and plowed out hispathway. Then Little Toomai laid himself down close to the great neck lest aswinging bough should sweep him to the ground, and he wished that he were backin the lines again.

The grass began to get squashy, and Kala Nag’s feet sucked and squelched as heput them down, and the night mist at the bottom of the valley chilled LittleToomai. There was a splash and a trample, and the rush of running water, andKala Nag strode through the bed of a river, feeling his way at each step. Abovethe noise of the water, as it swirled round the elephant’s legs, Little Toomaicould hear more splashing and some trumpeting both upstream and down—greatgrunts and angry snortings, and all the mist about him seemed to be full ofrolling, wavy shadows.

“Ai!” he said, half aloud, his teeth chattering. “The elephant-folk are outtonight. It is the dance, then!”

Kala Nag swashed out of the water, blew his trunk clear, and began anotherclimb. But this time he was not alone, and he had not to make his path. Thatwas made already, six feet wide, in front of him, where the bent jungle-grasswas trying to recover itself and stand up. Many elephants must have gone thatway only a few minutes before. Little Toomai looked back, and behind him agreat wild tusker with his little pig’s eyes glowing like hot coals was justlifting himself out of the misty river. Then the trees closed up again, andthey went on and up, with trumpetings and crashings, and the sound of breakingbranches on every side of them.

Elephant-dance

At last Kala Nag stood still between two tree-trunks at the very top of thehill. They were part of a circle of trees that grew round an irregular space ofsome three or four acres, and in all that space, as Little Toomai could see,the ground had been trampled down as hard as a brick floor. Some trees grew inthe center of the clearing, but their bark was rubbed away, and the white woodbeneath showed all shiny and polished in the patches of moonlight. There werecreepers hanging from the upper branches, and the bells of the flowers of thecreepers, great waxy white things like convolvuluses, hung down fast asleep.But within the limits of the clearing there was not a single blade ofgreen—nothing but the trampled earth.

The moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some elephants stood uponit, and their shadows were inky black. Little Toomai looked, holding hisbreath, with his eyes starting out of his head, and as he looked, more and moreand more elephants swung out into the open from between the tree trunks. LittleToomai could only count up to ten, and he counted again and again on hisfingers till he lost count of the tens, and his head began to swim. Outside theclearing he could hear them crashing in the undergrowth as they worked theirway up the hillside, but as soon as they were within the circle of the treetrunks they moved like ghosts.

There were white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lyingin the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears; fat, slow-footedshe-elephants, with restless, little pinky black calves only three or four feethigh running under their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks justbeginning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy old-maid elephants,with their hollow anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; savage old bullelephants, scarred from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of bygonefights, and the caked dirt of their solitary mud baths dropping from theirshoulders; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of thefull-stroke, the terrible drawing scrape, of a tiger’s claws on his side.

They were standing head to head, or walking to and fro across the ground incouples, or rocking and swaying all by themselves—scores and scores ofelephants.

Toomai knew that so long as he lay still on Kala Nag’s neck nothing wouldhappen to him, for even in the rush and scramble of a Keddah drive a wildelephant does not reach up with his trunk and drag a man off the neck of a tameelephant. And these elephants were not thinking of men that night. Once theystarted and put their ears forward when they heard the chinking of a leg ironin the forest, but it was Pudmini, Petersen Sahib’s pet elephant, her chainsnapped short off, grunting, snuffling up the hillside. She must have brokenher pickets and come straight from Petersen Sahib’s camp; and Little Toomai sawanother elephant, one that he did not know, with deep rope galls on his backand breast. He, too, must have run away from some camp in the hills about.

At last there was no sound of any more elephants moving in the forest, and KalaNag rolled out from his station between the trees and went into the middle ofthe crowd, clucking and gurgling, and all the elephants began to talk in theirown tongue, and to move about.

Little Toomai looked down upon scores and scores of broadbacks.

Still lying down, Little Toomai looked down upon scores and scores of broadbacks, and wagging ears, and tossing trunks, and little rolling eyes. He heardthe click of tusks as they crossed other tusks by accident, and the dry rustleof trunks twined together, and the chafing of enormous sides and shoulders inthe crowd, and the incessant flick and hissh of the great tails. Then a cloudcame over the moon, and he sat in black darkness. But the quiet, steadyhustling and pushing and gurgling went on just the same. He knew that therewere elephants all round Kala Nag, and that there was no chance of backing himout of the assembly; so he set his teeth and shivered. In a Keddah at leastthere was torchlight and shouting, but here he was all alone in the dark, andonce a trunk came up and touched him on the knee.

Then an elephant trumpeted, and they all took it up for five or ten terribleseconds. The dew from the trees above spattered down like rain on the unseenbacks, and a dull booming noise began, not very loud at first, and LittleToomai could not tell what it was. But it grew and grew, and Kala Nag lifted upone forefoot and then the other, and brought them down on the ground—one-two,one-two, as steadily as trip-hammers. The elephants were stamping all togethernow, and it sounded like a war drum beaten at the mouth of a cave. The dew fellfrom the trees till there was no more left to fall, and the booming went on,and the ground rocked and shivered, and Little Toomai put his hands up to hisears to shut out the sound. But it was all one gigantic jar that ran throughhim—this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet on the raw earth. Once or twice hecould feel Kala Nag and all the others surge forward a few strides, and thethumping would change to the crushing sound of juicy green things beingbruised, but in a minute or two the boom of feet on hard earth began again. Atree was creaking and groaning somewhere near him. He put out his arm and feltthe bark, but Kala Nag moved forward, still tramping, and he could not tellwhere he was in the clearing. There was no sound from the elephants, exceptonce, when two or three little calves squeaked together. Then he heard a thumpand a shuffle, and the booming went on. It must have lasted fully two hours,and Little Toomai ached in every nerve, but he knew by the smell of the nightair that the dawn was coming.

The morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green hills, and thebooming stopped with the first ray, as though the light had been an order.Before Little Toomai had got the ringing out of his head, before even he hadshifted his position, there was not an elephant in sight except Kala Nag,Pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls, and there was neither sign norrustle nor whisper down the hillsides to show where the others had gone.

Little Toomai stared again and again. The clearing, as he remembered it, hadgrown in the night. More trees stood in the middle of it, but the undergrowthand the jungle grass at the sides had been rolled back. Little Toomai staredonce more. Now he understood the trampling. The elephants had stamped out moreroom—had stamped the thick grass and juicy cane to trash, the trash intoslivers, the slivers into tiny fibers, and the fibers into hard earth.

“Wah!” said Little Toomai, and his eyes were very heavy. “Kala Nag, my lord,let us keep by Pudmini and go to Petersen Sahib’s camp, or I shall drop fromthy neck.”

The third elephant watched the two go away, snorted, wheeled round, and tookhis own path. He may have belonged to some little native king’s establishment,fifty or sixty or a hundred miles away.

Two hours later, as Petersen Sahib was eating early breakfast, his elephants,who had been double chained that night, began to trumpet, and Pudmini, mired tothe shoulders, with Kala Nag, very footsore, shambled into the camp. LittleToomai’s face was gray and pinched, and his hair was full of leaves anddrenched with dew, but he tried to salute Petersen Sahib, and cried faintly:“The dance—the elephant dance! I have seen it, and—I die!” As Kala Nag satdown, he slid off his neck in a dead faint.

But, since native children have no nerves worth speaking of, in two hours hewas lying very contentedly in Petersen Sahib’s hammock with Petersen Sahib’sshooting-coat under his head, and a glass of warm milk, a little brandy, with adash of quinine, inside of him, and while the old hairy, scarred hunters of thejungles sat three deep before him, looking at him as though he were a spirit,he told his tale in short words, as a child will, and wound up with:

“Now, if I lie in one word, send men to see, and they will find that theelephant folk have trampled down more room in their dance-room, and they willfind ten and ten, and many times ten, tracks leading to that dance-room. Theymade more room with their feet. I have seen it. Kala Nag took me, and I saw.Also Kala Nag is very leg-weary!”

Little Toomai lay back and slept all through the long afternoon and into thetwilight, and while he slept Petersen Sahib and Machua Appa followed the trackof the two elephants for fifteen miles across the hills. Petersen Sahib hadspent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he had only once before foundsuch a dance-place. Machua Appa had no need to look twice at the clearing tosee what had been done there, or to scratch with his toe in the packed, rammedearth.

“The child speaks truth,” said he. “All this was done last night, and I havecounted seventy tracks crossing the river. See, Sahib, where Pudmini’s leg-ironcut the bark of that tree! Yes; she was there too.”

They looked at one another and up and down, and they wondered. For the ways ofelephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom.

“Forty years and five,” said Machua Appa, “have I followed my lord, theelephant, but never have I heard that any child of man had seen what this childhas seen. By all the Gods of the Hills, it is—what can we say?” and he shookhis head.

When they got back to camp it was time for the evening meal. Petersen Sahib atealone in his tent, but he gave orders that the camp should have two sheep andsome fowls, as well as a double ration of flour and rice and salt, for he knewthat there would be a feast.

Toomai of the elephants

Big Toomai had come up hotfoot from the camp in the plains to search for hisson and his elephant, and now that he had found them he looked at them asthough he were afraid of them both. And there was a feast by the blazingcampfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants, and Little Toomai wasthe hero of it all. And the big brown elephant catchers, the trackers anddrivers and ropers, and the men who know all the secrets of breaking thewildest elephants, passed him from one to the other, and they marked hisforehead with blood from the breast of a newly killed jungle-cock, to show thathe was a forester, initiated and free of all the jungles.

And at last, when the flames died down, and the red light of the logs made theelephants look as though they had been dipped in blood too, Machua Appa, thehead of all the drivers of all the Keddahs—Machua Appa, Petersen Sahib’s otherself, who had never seen a made road in forty years: Machua Appa, who was sogreat that he had no other name than Machua Appa,—leaped to his feet, withLittle Toomai held high in the air above his head, and shouted: “Listen, mybrothers. Listen, too, you my lords in the lines there, for I, Machua Appa, amspeaking! This little one shall no more be called Little Toomai, but Toomai ofthe Elephants, as his great-grandfather was called before him. What never manhas seen he has seen through the long night, and the favor of the elephant-folkand of the Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall become a great tracker. Heshall become greater than I, even I, Machua Appa! He shall follow the newtrail, and the stale trail, and the mixed trail, with a clear eye! He shalltake no harm in the Keddah when he runs under their bellies to rope the wildtuskers; and if he slips before the feet of the charging bull elephant, thebull elephant shall know who he is and shall not crush him. Aihai! my lords inthe chains,”—he whirled up the line of pickets—“here is the little one that hasseen your dances in your hidden places,—the sight that never man saw! Give himhonor, my lords! Salaam karo, my children. Make your salute to Toomai of theElephants! Gunga Pershad, ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi Guj, Kuttar Guj, ahaa!Pudmini,—thou hast seen him at the dance, and thou too, Kala Nag, my pearlamong elephants!—ahaa! Together! To Toomai of the Elephants. Barrao!”

To Toomai of the elephants. Barrao!

And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the tipstouched their foreheads, and broke out into the full salute—the crashingtrumpet-peal that only the Viceroy of India hears, the Salaamut of the Keddah.

But it was all for the sake of Little Toomai, who had seen what never man hadseen before—the dance of the elephants at night and alone in the heart of theGaro hills!

Shiv and the Grasshopper

(The song that Toomai’s mother sang to the baby)

Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,
Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,
Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,
From the King upon the guddeeto the Beggar at the gate.
    All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.
    Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all,—
    Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,
    And mother’s heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!

Wheat he gave to rich folk, millet to the poor,
Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door;
Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite,
And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night.
Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low—
Parbati beside him watched them come and go;
Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest—
Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast.
    So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver.
    Mahadeo! Mahadeo! Turn and see.
    Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine,
    But this was Least of Little Things, O little son of mine!

When the dole was ended, laughingly she said,
“Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?”
Laughing, Shiv made answer, “All have had their part,
Even he, the little one, hidden ’neath thy heart.”
From her breast she plucked it, Parbati the thief,
Saw the Least of Little Things gnawed a new-grown leaf!
Saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to Shiv,
Who hath surely given meat to all that live.
    All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.
    Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all,—
    Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,
    And mother’s heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!

Her Majesty’s Servants

You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three,
But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee.
You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop,
But the way of Pilly Winky’s not the way of Winkie Pop!

It had been raining heavily for one whole month—raining on a camp of thirtythousand men and thousands of camels, elephants, horses, bullocks, and mulesall gathered together at a place called Rawal Pindi, to be reviewed by theViceroy of India. He was receiving a visit from the Amir of Afghanistan—a wildking of a very wild country. The Amir had brought with him for a bodyguardeight hundred men and horses who had never seen a camp or a locomotive beforein their lives—savage men and savage horses from somewhere at the back ofCentral Asia. Every night a mob of these horses would be sure to break theirheel ropes and stampede up and down the camp through the mud in the dark, orthe camels would break loose and run about and fall over the ropes of thetents, and you can imagine how pleasant that was for men trying to go to sleep.My tent lay far away from the camel lines, and I thought it was safe. But onenight a man popped his head in and shouted, “Get out, quick! They’re coming! Mytent’s gone!”

I knew who “they” were, so I put on my boots and waterproof and scuttled outinto the slush. Little Vixen, my fox terrier, went out through the other side;and then there was a roaring and a grunting and bubbling, and I saw the tentcave in, as the pole snapped, and begin to dance about like a mad ghost. Acamel had blundered into it, and wet and angry as I was, I could not helplaughing. Then I ran on, because I did not know how many camels might have gotloose, and before long I was out of sight of the camp, plowing my way throughthe mud.

A camel had blundered into my tent.

At last I fell over the tail-end of a gun, and by that knew I was somewherenear the artillery lines where the cannon were stacked at night. As I did notwant to plowter about any more in the drizzle and the dark, I put my waterproofover the muzzle of one gun, and made a sort of wigwam with two or three rammersthat I found, and lay along the tail of another gun, wondering where Vixen hadgot to, and where I might be.

Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle of harness and agrunt, and a mule passed me shaking his wet ears. He belonged to a screw-gunbattery, for I could hear the rattle of the straps and rings and chains andthings on his saddle pad. The screw-guns are tiny little cannon made in twopieces, that are screwed together when the time comes to use them. They aretaken up mountains, anywhere that a mule can find a road, and they are veryuseful for fighting in rocky country.

Behind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet squelching andslipping in the mud, and his neck bobbing to and fro like a strayed hen’s.Luckily, I knew enough of beast language—not wild-beast language, butcamp-beast language, of course—from the natives to know what he was saying.

He must have been the one that flopped into my tent, for he called to the mule,“What shall I do? Where shall I go? I have fought with a white thing thatwaved, and it took a stick and hit me on the neck.” (That was my broken tentpole, and I was very glad to know it.) “Shall we run on?”

“Oh, it was you,” said the mule, “you and your friends, that have beendisturbing the camp? All right. You’ll be beaten for this in the morning. But Imay as well give you something on account now.”

I heard the harness jingle as the mule backed and caught the camel two kicks inthe ribs that rang like a drum. “Another time,” he said, “you’ll know betterthan to run through a mule battery at night, shouting `Thieves and fire!’ Sitdown, and keep your silly neck quiet.”

The camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot rule, and sat downwhimpering. There was a regular beat of hoofs in the darkness, and a bigtroop-horse cantered up as steadily as though he were on parade, jumped a guntail, and landed close to the mule.

“It’s disgraceful,” he said, blowing out his nostrils. “Those camels haveracketed through our lines again—the third time this week. How’s a horse tokeep his condition if he isn’t allowed to sleep. Who’s here?”

“I’m the breech-piece mule of number two gun of the First Screw Battery,” saidthe mule, “and the other’s one of your friends. He’s waked me up too. Who areyou?”

“Number Fifteen, E troop, Ninth Lancers—Dick Cunliffe’s horse. Stand over alittle, there.”

“Oh, beg your pardon,” said the mule. “It’s too dark to see much. Aren’t thesecamels too sickening for anything? I walked out of my lines to get a littlepeace and quiet here.”

“My lords,” said the camel humbly, “we dreamed bad dreams in the night, and wewere very much afraid. I am only a baggage camel of the 39th Native Infantry,and I am not as brave as you are, my lords.”

“Then why didn’t you stay and carry baggage for the 39th Native Infantry,instead of running all round the camp?” said the mule.

“They were such very bad dreams,” said the camel. “I am sorry. Listen! What isthat? Shall we run on again?”

“Sit down,” said the mule, “or you’ll snap your long stick-legs between theguns.” He cocked one ear and listened. “Bullocks!” he said. “Gun bullocks. Onmy word, you and your friends have waked the camp very thoroughly. It takes agood deal of prodding to put up a gun-bullock.”

I heard a chain dragging along the ground, and a yoke of the great sulky whitebullocks that drag the heavy siege guns when the elephants won’t go any nearerto the firing, came shouldering along together. And almost stepping on thechain was another battery mule, calling wildly for “Billy.”

“That’s one of our recruits,” said the old mule to the troop horse. “He’scalling for me. Here, youngster, stop squealing. The dark never hurt anybodyyet.”

The gun-bullocks lay down together and began chewing the cud, but the youngmule huddled close to Billy.

“Things!” he said. “Fearful and horrible, Billy! They came into our lines whilewe were asleep. D’you think they’ll kill us?”

“I’ve a very great mind to give you a number-one kicking,” said Billy. “Theidea of a fourteen-hand mule with your training disgracing the battery beforethis gentleman!”

“Gently, gently!” said the troop-horse. “Remember they are always like this tobegin with. The first time I ever saw a man (it was in Australia when I was athree-year-old) I ran for half a day, and if I’d seen a camel, I should havebeen running still.”

Nearly all our horses for the English cavalry are brought to India fromAustralia, and are broken in by the troopers themselves.

“True enough,” said Billy. “Stop shaking, youngster. The first time they putthe full harness with all its chains on my back I stood on my forelegs andkicked every bit of it off. I hadn’t learned the real science of kicking then,but the battery said they had never seen anything like it.”

“But this wasn’t harness or anything that jingled,” said the young mule. “Youknow I don’t mind that now, Billy. It was Things like trees, and they fell upand down the lines and bubbled; and my head-rope broke, and I couldn’t find mydriver, and I couldn’t find you, Billy, so I ran off with—with thesegentlemen.”

“H’m!” said Billy. “As soon as I heard the camels were loose I came away on myown account. When a battery—a screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks gentlemen, hemust be very badly shaken up. Who are you fellows on the ground there?”

The gun bullocks rolled their cuds, and answered both together: “The seventhyoke of the first gun of the Big Gun Battery. We were asleep when the camelscame, but when we were trampled on we got up and walked away. It is better tolie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding. We told your friendhere that there was nothing to be afraid of, but he knew so much that hethought otherwise. Wah!”

They went on chewing.

“That comes of being afraid,” said Billy. “You get laughed at by gun-bullocks.I hope you like it, young un.”

The young mule’s teeth snapped, and I heard him say something about not beingafraid of any beefy old bullock in the world. But the bullocks only clickedtheir horns together and went on chewing.

“Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night,”said the troop-horse

“Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind ofcowardice,” said the troop-horse. “Anybody can be forgiven for being scared inthe night, I think, if they see things they don’t understand. We’ve broken outof our pickets, again and again, four hundred and fifty of us, just because anew recruit got to telling tales of whip snakes at home in Australia till wewere scared to death of the loose ends of our head-ropes.”

“That’s all very well in camp,” said Billy. “I’m not above stampeding myself,for the fun of the thing, when I haven’t been out for a day or two. But what doyou do on active service?”

“Oh, that’s quite another set of new shoes,” said the troop horse. “DickCunliffe’s on my back then, and drives his knees into me, and all I have to dois to watch where I am putting my feet, and to keep my hind legs well under me,and be bridle-wise.”

“What’s bridle-wise?” said the young mule.

“By the Blue Gums of the Back Blocks,” snorted the troop-horse, “do you mean tosay that you aren’t taught to be bridle-wise in your business? How can you doanything, unless you can spin round at once when the rein is pressed on yourneck? It means life or death to your man, and of course that’s life and deathto you. Get round with your hind legs under you the instant you feel the reinon your neck. If you haven’t room to swing round, rear up a little and comeround on your hind legs. That’s being bridle-wise.”

“We aren’t taught that way,” said Billy the mule stiffly. “We’re taught to obeythe man at our head: step off when he says so, and step in when he says so. Isuppose it comes to the same thing. Now, with all this fine fancy business andrearing, which must be very bad for your hocks, what do you do?”

“That depends,” said the troop-horse. “Generally I have to go in among a lot ofyelling, hairy men with knives—long shiny knives, worse than the farrier’sknives—and I have to take care that Dick’s boot is just touching the next man’sboot without crushing it. I can see Dick’s lance to the right of my right eye,and I know I’m safe. I shouldn’t care to be the man or horse that stood up toDick and me when we’re in a hurry.”

“Don’t the knives hurt?” said the young mule.

“Well, I got one cut across the chest once, but that wasn’t Dick’s fault—”

“A lot I should have cared whose fault it was, if it hurt!” said the youngmule.

“You must,” said the troop horse. “If you don’t trust your man, you may as wellrun away at once. That’s what some of our horses do, and I don’t blame them. AsI was saying, it wasn’t Dick’s fault. The man was lying on the ground, and Istretched myself not to tread on him, and he slashed up at me. Next time I haveto go over a man lying down I shall step on him—hard.”

The man was lying on the ground, and I stretched myself notto tread on him, and he slashed up at me.

“H’m!” said Billy. “It sounds very foolish. Knives are dirty things at anytime. The proper thing to do is to climb up a mountain with a well-balancedsaddle, hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and creep and crawl andwriggle along, till you come out hundreds of feet above anyone else on a ledgewhere there’s just room enough for your hoofs. Then you stand still and keepquiet—never ask a man to hold your head, young un—keep quiet while the guns arebeing put together, and then you watch the little poppy shells drop down intothe tree-tops ever so far below.”

“Don’t you ever trip?” said the troop-horse.

“They say that when a mule trips you can split a hen’s ear,” said Billy. “Nowand again perhaps a badly packed saddle will upset a mule, but it’s veryseldom. I wish I could show you our business. It’s beautiful. Why, it took methree years to find out what the men were driving at. The science of the thingis never to show up against the sky line, because, if you do, you may get firedat. Remember that, young un. Always keep hidden as much as possible, even ifyou have to go a mile out of your way. I lead the battery when it comes to thatsort of climbing.”

“Fired at without the chance of running into the people who are firing!” saidthe troop-horse, thinking hard. “I couldn’t stand that. I should want tocharge—with Dick.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. You know that as soon as the guns are in positionthey’ll do all the charging. That’s scientific and neat. But knives—pah!”

The baggage-camel had been bobbing his head to and fro for some time past,anxious to get a word in edgewise. Then I heard him say, as he cleared histhroat, nervously:

“I—I—I have fought a little, but not in that climbing way or that running way.”

“No. Now you mention it,” said Billy, “you don’t look as though you were madefor climbing or running—much. Well, how was it, old Hay-bales?”

“The proper way,” said the camel. “We all sat down—”

“Oh, my crupper and breastplate!” said the troop-horse under his breath. “Satdown!”

“We sat down—a hundred of us,” the camel went on, “in a big square, and the menpiled our packs and saddles, outside the square, and they fired over our backs,the men did, on all sides of the square.”

“What sort of men? Any men that came along?” said the troop-horse. “They teachus in riding school to lie down and let our masters fire across us, but DickCunliffe is the only man I’d trust to do that. It tickles my girths, and,besides, I can’t see with my head on the ground.”

“What does it matter who fires across you?” said the camel. “There are plentyof men and plenty of other camels close by, and a great many clouds of smoke. Iam not frightened then. I sit still and wait.”

“And yet,” said Billy, “you dream bad dreams and upset the camp at night. Well,well! Before I’d lie down, not to speak of sitting down, and let a man fireacross me, my heels and his head would have something to say to each other. Didyou ever hear anything so awful as that?”

There was a long silence, and then one of the gun bullocks lifted up his bighead and said, “This is very foolish indeed. There is only one way offighting.”

“Oh, go on,” said Billy. “Please don’t mind me. I suppose you fellows fightstanding on your tails?”

“Only one way,” said the two together. (They must have been twins.) “This isthat way. To put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon as Two Tailstrumpets.” (“Two Tails” is camp slang for the elephant.)

“What does Two Tails trumpet for?” said the young mule.

“To show that he is not going any nearer to the smoke on the other side. TwoTails is a great coward. Then we tug the big gun all together—Heya—Hullah!Heeyah! Hullah! We do not climb like cats nor run like calves. We go across thelevel plain, twenty yoke of us, till we are unyoked again, and we graze whilethe big guns talk across the plain to some town with mud walls, and pieces ofthe wall fall out, and the dust goes up as though many cattle were cominghome.”

“Oh! And you choose that time for grazing?” said the young mule.

“That time or any other. Eating is always good. We eat till we are yoked upagain and tug the gun back to where Two Tails is waiting for it. Sometimesthere are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of us are killed, andthen there is all the more grazing for those that are left. This is Fate. Nonethe less, Two Tails is a great coward. That is the proper way to fight. We arebrothers from Hapur. Our father was a sacred bull of Shiva. We have spoken.”

“Well, I’ve certainly learned something tonight,” said the troop-horse. “Do yougentlemen of the screw-gun battery feel inclined to eat when you are beingfired at with big guns, and Two Tails is behind you?”

“About as much as we feel inclined to sit down and let men sprawl all over us,or run into people with knives. I never heard such stuff. A mountain ledge, awell-balanced load, a driver you can trust to let you pick your own way, andI’m your mule. But—the other things—no!” said Billy, with a stamp of his foot.

“Of course,” said the troop horse, “everyone is not made in the same way, and Ican quite see that your family, on your father’s side, would fail to understanda great many things.”

“Never you mind my family on my father’s side,” said Billy angrily, for everymule hates to be reminded that his father was a donkey. “My father was aSouthern gentleman, and he could pull down and bite and kick into rags everyhorse he came across. Remember that, you big brown Brumby!”

Brumby means wild horse without any breeding. Imagine the feelings of Sunol ifa car-horse called her a “skate,” and you can imagine how the Australian horsefelt. I saw the white of his eye glitter in the dark.

“See here, you son of an imported Malaga jackass,” he said between his teeth,“I’d have you know that I’m related on my mother’s side to Carbine, winner ofthe Melbourne Cup, and where I come from we aren’t accustomed to being riddenover roughshod by any parrot-mouthed, pig-headed mule in a pop-gun pea-shooterbattery. Are you ready?”

“On your hind legs!” squealed Billy. They both reared up facing each other, andI was expecting a furious fight, when a gurgly, rumbly voice, called out of thedarkness to the right—“Children, what are you fighting about there? Be quiet.”

Both beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor mulecan bear to listen to an elephant’s voice.

“It’s Two Tails!” said the troop-horse. “I can’t stand him. A tail at each endisn’t fair!”

“My feelings exactly,” said Billy, crowding into the troop-horse for company.“We’re very alike in some things.”

“I suppose we’ve inherited them from our mothers,” said the troop horse. “It’snot worth quarreling about. Hi! Two Tails, are you tied up?”

“Yes,” said Two Tails, with a laugh all up his trunk. “I’m picketed for thenight. I’ve heard what you fellows have been saying. But don’t be afraid. I’mnot coming over.”

The bullocks and the camel said, half aloud, “Afraid of Two Tails—whatnonsense!” And the bullocks went on, “We are sorry that you heard, but it istrue. Two Tails, why are you afraid of the guns when they fire?”

“Well,” said Two Tails, rubbing one hind leg against the other, exactly like alittle boy saying a poem, “I don’t quite know whether you’d understand.”

“We don’t, but we have to pull the guns,” said the bullocks.

“I know it, and I know you are a good deal braver than you think you are. Butit’s different with me. My battery captain called me a PachydermatousAnachronism the other day.”

“That’s another way of fighting, I suppose?” said Billy, who was recovering hisspirits.

“You don’t know what that means, of course, but I do. It means betwixt andbetween, and that is just where I am. I can see inside my head what will happenwhen a shell bursts, and you bullocks can’t.”

“I can,” said the troop-horse. “At least a little bit. I try not to think aboutit.”

“I can see more than you, and I do think about it. I know there’s a great dealof me to take care of, and I know that nobody knows how to cure me when I’msick. All they can do is to stop my driver’s pay till I get well, and I can’ttrust my driver.”

“Ah!” said the troop horse. “That explains it. I can trust Dick.”

“You could put a whole regiment of Dicks on my back without making me feel anybetter. I know just enough to be uncomfortable, and not enough to go on inspite of it.”

“We do not understand,” said the bullocks.

“I know you don’t. I’m not talking to you. You don’t know what blood is.”

“We do,” said the bullocks. “It is red stuff that soaks into the ground andsmells.”

The troop-horse gave a kick and a bound and a snort.

“Don’t talk of it,” he said. “I can smell it now, just thinking of it. It makesme want to run—when I haven’t Dick on my back.”

“But it is not here,” said the camel and the bullocks. “Why are you so stupid?”

“It’s vile stuff,” said Billy. “I don’t want to run, but I don’t want to talkabout it.”

“There you are!” said Two Tails, waving his tail to explain.

“Surely. Yes, we have been here all night,” said the bullocks.

Two Tails stamped his foot till the iron ring on it jingled. “Oh, I’m nottalking to you. You can’t see inside your heads.”

“No. We see out of our four eyes,” said the bullocks. “We see straight in frontof us.”

“If I could do that and nothing else, you wouldn’t be needed to pull the bigguns at all. If I was like my captain—he can see things inside his head beforethe firing begins, and he shakes all over, but he knows too much to run away—ifI was like him I could pull the guns. But if I were as wise as all that Ishould never be here. I should be a king in the forest, as I used to be,sleeping half the day and bathing when I liked. I haven’t had a good bath for amonth.”

“That’s all very fine,” said Billy. “But giving a thing a long name doesn’tmake it any better.”

“H’sh!” said the troop horse. “I think I understand what Two Tails means.”

“You’ll understand better in a minute,” said Two Tails angrily. “Now you justexplain to me why you don’t like this!”

He began trumpeting furiously at the top of his trumpet.

“Stop that!” said Billy and the troop horse together, and I could hear themstamp and shiver. An elephant’s trumpeting is always nasty, especially on adark night.

“I shan’t stop,” said Two Tails. “Won’t you explain that, please? Hhrrmph!Rrrt! Rrrmph! Rrrhha!” Then he stopped suddenly, and I heard a little whimperin the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last. She knew as well as Idid that if there is one thing in the world the elephant is more afraid of thananother it is a little barking dog. So she stopped to bully Two Tails in hispickets, and yapped round his big feet. Two Tails shuffled and squeaked. “Goaway, little dog!” he said. “Don’t snuff at my ankles, or I’ll kick at you.Good little dog—nice little doggie, then! Go home, you yelping little beast!Oh, why doesn’t someone take her away? She’ll bite me in a minute.”

“Seems to me,” said Billy to the troop horse, “that our friend Two Tails isafraid of most things. Now, if I had a full meal for every dog I’ve kickedacross the parade-ground I should be as fat as Two Tails nearly.”

I whistled, and Vixen ran up to me, muddy all over, and licked my nose, andtold me a long tale about hunting for me all through the camp. I never let herknow that I understood beast talk, or she would have taken all sorts ofliberties. So I buttoned her into the breast of my overcoat, and Two Tailsshuffled and stamped and growled to himself.

“Extraordinary! Most extraordinary!” he said. “It runs in our family. Now,where has that nasty little beast gone to?”

I heard him feeling about with his trunk.

“We all seem to be affected in various ways,” he went on, blowing his nose.“Now, you gentlemen were alarmed, I believe, when I trumpeted.”

“Not alarmed, exactly,” said the troop-horse, “but it made me feel as though Ihad hornets where my saddle ought to be. Don’t begin again.”

“I’m frightened of a little dog, and the camel here is frightened by bad dreamsin the night.”

“It is very lucky for us that we haven’t all got to fight in the same way,”said the troop-horse.

“What I want to know,” said the young mule, who had been quiet for a longtime—“what I want to know is, why we have to fight at all.”

“Because we’re told to,” said the troop-horse, with a snort of contempt.

“Orders,” said Billy the mule, and his teeth snapped.

“Hukm hai!” (It is an order!), said the camel with a gurgle, and Two Tails andthe bullocks repeated, “Hukm hai!”

“Yes, but who gives the orders?” said the recruit-mule.

“The man who walks at your head—Or sits on your back—Or holds the nose rope—Ortwists your tail,” said Billy and the troop-horse and the camel and thebullocks one after the other.

“But who gives them the orders?”

“Now you want to know too much, young un,” said Billy, “and that is one way ofgetting kicked. All you have to do is to obey the man at your head and ask noquestions.”

“He’s quite right,” said Two Tails. “I can’t always obey, because I’m betwixtand between. But Billy’s right. Obey the man next to you who gives the order,or you’ll stop all the battery, besides getting a thrashing.”

The gun-bullocks got up to go. “Morning is coming,” they said. “We will go backto our lines. It is true that we only see out of our eyes, and we are not veryclever. But still, we are the only people to-night who have not been afraid.Good-night, you brave people.”

Nobody answered, and the troop-horse said, to change the conversation, “Where’sthat little dog? A dog means a man somewhere about.”

“Here I am,” yapped Vixen, “under the gun tail with my man. You big, blunderingbeast of a camel you, you upset our tent. My man’s very angry.”

“Phew!” said the bullocks. “He must be white!”

“Of course he is,” said Vixen. “Do you suppose I’m looked after by a blackbullock-driver?”

“Huah! Ouach! Ugh!” said the bullocks. “Let us get away quickly.”

They plunged forward in the mud, and managed somehow to run their yoke on thepole of an ammunition wagon, where it jammed.

“Now you have done it,” said Billy calmly. “Don’t struggle. You’re hung up tilldaylight. What on earth’s the matter?”

The bullocks went off into the long hissing snorts that Indian cattle give, andpushed and crowded and slued and stamped and slipped and nearly fell down inthe mud, grunting savagely.

“You’ll break your necks in a minute,” said the troop-horse. “What’s the matterwith white men? I live with ’em.”

“They—eat—us! Pull!” said the near bullock. The yoke snapped with a twang, andthey lumbered off together.

I never knew before what made Indian cattle so scared of Englishmen. We eatbeef—a thing that no cattle-driver touches—and of course the cattle do not likeit.

“May I be flogged with my own pad-chains! Who’d have thought of two big lumpslike those losing their heads?” said Billy.

“Never mind. I’m going to look at this man. Most of the white men, I know, havethings in their pockets,” said the troop-horse.

“I’ll leave you, then. I can’t say I’m over-fond of ’em myself. Besides, whitemen who haven’t a place to sleep in are more than likely to be thieves, andI’ve a good deal of Government property on my back. Come along, young un, andwe’ll go back to our lines. Good-night, Australia! See you on parade to-morrow,I suppose. Good-night, old Hay-bale!—try to control your feelings, won’t you?Good-night, Two Tails! If you pass us on the ground tomorrow, don’t trumpet. Itspoils our formation.”

Billy the Mule stumped off with the swaggering limp of an old campaigner, asthe troop-horse’s head came nuzzling into my breast, and I gave him biscuits,while Vixen, who is a most conceited little dog, told him fibs about the scoresof horses that she and I kept.

“I’m coming to the parade to-morrow in my dog-cart,” she said. “Where will yoube?”

“On the left hand of the second squadron. I set the time for all my troop,little lady,” he said politely. “Now I must go back to Dick. My tail’s allmuddy, and he’ll have two hours’ hard work dressing me for parade.”

The big parade of all the thirty thousand men was held that afternoon, andVixen and I had a good place close to the Viceroy and the Amir of Afghanistan,with high, big black hat of astrakhan wool and the great diamond star in thecenter. The first part of the review was all sunshine, and the regiments wentby in wave upon wave of legs all moving together, and guns all in a line, tillour eyes grew dizzy. Then the cavalry came up, to the beautiful cavalry canterof “Bonnie Dundee,” and Vixen cocked her ear where she sat on the dog-cart. Thesecond squadron of the Lancers shot by, and there was the troop-horse, with histail like spun silk, his head pulled into his breast, one ear forward and oneback, setting the time for all his squadron, his legs going as smoothly aswaltz music. Then the big guns came by, and I saw Two Tails and two otherelephants harnessed in line to a forty-pounder siege gun, while twenty yoke ofoxen walked behind. The seventh pair had a new yoke, and they looked ratherstiff and tired. Last came the screw guns, and Billy the mule carried himselfas though he commanded all the troops, and his harness was oiled and polishedtill it winked. I gave a cheer all by myself for Billy the mule, but he neverlooked right or left.

The rain began to fall again, and for a while it was too misty to see what thetroops were doing. They had made a big half circle across the plain, and werespreading out into a line. That line grew and grew and grew till it wasthree-quarters of a mile long from wing to wing—one solid wall of men, horses,and guns. Then it came on straight toward the Viceroy and the Amir, and as itgot nearer the ground began to shake, like the deck of a steamer when theengines are going fast.

Unless you have been there you cannot imagine what a frightening effect thissteady come-down of troops has on the spectators, even when they know it isonly a review. I looked at the Amir. Up till then he had not shown the shadowof a sign of astonishment or anything else. But now his eyes began to getbigger and bigger, and he picked up the reins on his horse’s neck and lookedbehind him. For a minute it seemed as though he were going to draw his swordand slash his way out through the English men and women in the carriages at theback. Then the advance stopped dead, the ground stood still, the whole linesaluted, and thirty bands began to play all together. That was the end of thereview, and the regiments went off to their camps in the rain, and an infantryband struck up with—

The animals went in two by two,
    Hurrah!
The animals went in two by two,
The elephant and the battery mul’,
and they all got into the Ark
    For to get out of the rain!

Then I heard an old grizzled, long-haired Central Asian chief, who had comedown with the Amir, asking questions of a native officer.

“Now,” said he, “in what manner was this wonderful thing done?”

And the officer answered, “An order was given, and they obeyed.”

“But are the beasts as wise as the men?” said the chief.

“They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys hisdriver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and thelieutenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel,and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier thegeneral, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the Empress. Thus it isdone.”

“Would it were so in Afghanistan!” said the chief, “for there we obey only ourown wills.”

“And for that reason,” said the native officer, twirling his mustache, “yourAmir whom you do not obey must come here and take orders from our Viceroy.”

Parade Song of the Camp Animals

ELEPHANTS OF THE GUN TEAMS

We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,
The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees;
We bowed our necks to service: they ne’er were loosed again,—
Make way there—way for the ten-foot teams
    Of the Forty-Pounder train!

GUN BULLOCKS

Those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball,
And what they know of powder upsets them one and all;
Then we come into action and tug the guns again—
Make way there—way for the twenty yoke
    Of the Forty-Pounder train!

CAVALRY HORSES

By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes
Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons,
And it’s sweeter than “Stables” or “Water” to me—
The Cavalry Canter of “Bonnie Dundee”!

Then feed us and break us and handle and groom,
And give us good riders and plenty of room,
And launch us in column of squadron and see
The way of the war-horse to “Bonnie Dundee”!

SCREW-GUN MULES

As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill,
The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still;
For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,
Oh, it’s our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare!

Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road;
Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load:
For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,
Oh, it’s our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare!

COMMISSARIAT CAMELS

We haven’t a camelty tune of our own
To help us trollop along,
But every neck is a hair trombone
(Rtt-ta-ta-ta!is a hair trombone!)
And this our marching-song:
Can’t! Don’t! Sha’n’t! Won’t!
Pass it along the line!
Somebody’s pack has slid from his back,
Wish it were only mine!
Somebody’s load has tipped off in the road—
Cheer for a halt and a row!
Urrr! Yarrh! Grr! Arrh!
Somebody’s catching it now!

ALL THE BEASTS TOGETHER

Children of the Camp are we,
Serving each in his degree;
Children of the yoke and goad,
Pack and harness, pad and load.
See our line across the plain,
Like a heel-rope bent again,
Reaching, writhing, rolling far,
Sweeping all away to war!
While the men that walk beside,
Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed,
Cannot tell why we or they
March and suffer day by day.
    Children of the Camp are we,
    Serving each in his degree;
    Children of the yoke and goad,
    Pack and harness, pad and load!

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