автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Jungle Book

Joseph Rudyard Kipling

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

Mowgli’s Brothers

It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched him­self, yawned, and spread out his paws one af­ter the other to get rid of the sleepy feel­ing in the tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tum­bling, squeal­ing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. “Au­grh!” said Father Wolf, “it is time to hunt again”; and he was go­ing to spring down­hill when a lit­tle shadow with a bushy tail crossed the thresh­old and whined: “Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with the no­ble chil­dren, that they may never for­get the hun­gry in this world.”

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of In­dia de­spise Tabaqui be­cause he runs about mak­ing mis­chief, and telling tales, and eat­ing rags and pieces of leather from the vil­lage rub­bish-heaps. They are afraid of him too, be­cause Tabaqui, more than any­one else in the jun­gle, is apt to go mad, and then he for­gets that he was ever afraid of any­one, and runs through the for­est bit­ing ev­ery­thing in his way. Even the tiger hides when lit­tle Tabaqui goes mad, for mad­ness is the most dis­grace­ful thing that can over­take a wild crea­ture. We call it hy­dropho­bia, but they call it de­wa­nee—the mad­ness—and run.

“En­ter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf, stiffly; “but there is no food here.”

“For a wolf, no,” said Tabaqui; “but for so mean a per­son as my­self a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the Jackal Peo­ple], to pick and choose?” He scut­tled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat crack­ing the end mer­rily.

“All thanks for this good meal,” he said, lick­ing his lips. “How beau­ti­ful are the no­ble chil­dren! How large are their eyes! And so young too! In­deed, in­deed, I might have re­mem­bered that the chil­dren of kings are men from the be­gin­ning.”

Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any­one else that there is noth­ing so un­lucky as to com­pli­ment chil­dren to their faces; and it pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look un­com­fort­able.

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

“Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunt­ing-grounds. He will hunt among these hills dur­ing the next moon, so he has told me.”

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Wain­gunga River, twenty miles away.

“He has no right!” Father Wolf be­gan an­grily. “By the Law of the Jun­gle he has no right to change his quar­ters with­out fair warn­ing. He will frighten ev­ery head of game within ten miles; and I—I have to kill for two, these days.”

“His mother did not call him Lun­gri [the Lame One] for noth­ing,” said Mother Wolf, qui­etly. “He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed cat­tle. Now the vil­lagers of the Wain­gunga are an­gry with him, and he has come here to make our vil­lagers an­gry. They will scour the jun­gle for him when he is far away, and we and our chil­dren must run when the grass is set alight. In­deed, we are very grate­ful to Shere Khan!”

“Shall I tell him of your grat­i­tude?” said Tabaqui.

“Out!” snapped Father Wolf. “Out, and hunt with thy mas­ter. Thou hast done harm enough for one night.”

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

Father Wolf lis­tened, and in the dark val­ley that ran down to a lit­tle river, he heard the dry, an­gry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught noth­ing and does not care if all the jun­gle knows it.

“The fool!” said Father Wolf. “To be­gin a night’s work with that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat Wain­gunga bul­locks?”

“H’sh! It is nei­ther bul­lock nor buck that he hunts tonight,” said Mother Wolf; “it is Man.” The whine had changed to a sort of hum­ming purr that seemed to roll from ev­ery quar­ter of the com­pass. It was the noise that be­wil­ders wood­cut­ters, and gip­sies sleep­ing in the open, and makes them run some­times into the very mouth of the tiger.

“Man!” said Father Wolf, show­ing all his white teeth. “Faugh! Are there not enough bee­tles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man—and on our ground too!”

The Law of the Jun­gle, which never or­ders any­thing with­out a rea­son, for­bids ev­ery beast to eat Man ex­cept when he is killing to show his chil­dren how to kill, and then he must hunt out­side the hunt­ing-grounds of his pack or tribe. The real rea­son for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the ar­rival of white men on ele­phants, with guns, and hun­dreds of brown men with gongs and rock­ets and torches. Then ev­ery­body in the jun­gle suf­fers. The rea­son the beasts give among them­selves is that Man is the weak­est and most de­fense­less of all liv­ing things, and it is un­sports­man­like to touch him. They say too—and it is true—that man-eaters be­come mangy, and lose their teeth.

The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated “Aaarh!” of the tiger’s charge.

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

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

“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a wood­cut­ters’ camp­fire, so he has burned his feet,” said Father Wolf, with a grunt. “Tabaqui is with him.”

“Some­thing is com­ing up­hill,” said Mother Wolf, twitch­ing one ear. “Get ready.”

The bushes rus­tled a lit­tle in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped with his haunches un­der him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watch­ing, you would have seen the most won­der­ful thing in the world—the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound be­fore he saw what it was he was jump­ing at, and then he tried to stop him­self. The re­sult was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, land­ing al­most where he left ground.

“Man!” he snapped. “A man’s cub. Look!”

Directly in front of him, hold­ing on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft and as dim­pled a lit­tle thing as ever came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face and laughed.

“Is that a man’s cub?” said Mother Wolf. “I have never seen one. Bring it here.”

A wolf ac­cus­tomed to mov­ing his own cubs can, if nec­es­sary, mouth an egg with­out break­ing it, and though Father Wolf’s jaws closed right on the child’s back not a tooth even scratched the skin, as he laid it down among the cubs.

“How lit­tle! How naked, and—how bold!” said Mother Wolf, softly. The baby was push­ing his way be­tween the cubs to get close to the warm hide. “Ahai! He is tak­ing his meal with the oth­ers. And so this is a man’s cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man’s cub among her chil­dren?”

“I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our pack or in my time,” said Father Wolf. “He is al­to­gether with­out hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not afraid.”

The moon­light was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan’s great square head and shoul­ders were thrust into the en­trance. Tabaqui, be­hind him, was squeak­ing: “My Lord, my Lord, it went in here!”

“Shere Khan does us great honor,” said Father Wolf, but his eyes were very an­gry. “What does Shere Khan need?”

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

Shere Khan had jumped at a wood­cut­ter’s camp­fire, as Father Wolf had said, and was fu­ri­ous from the pain of his burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too nar­row for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan’s shoul­ders and fore paws were cramped for want of room, as a man’s would be if he tried to fight in a bar­rel.

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

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

The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thun­der. Mother Wolf shook her­self clear of the cubs and sprang for­ward, her eyes, like two green moons in the dark­ness, fac­ing the blaz­ing eyes of Shere Khan.

“And it is I, Rak­sha [the De­mon], who an­swer. The man’s cub is mine, Lun­gri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of lit­tle naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer, he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by the Samb­hur that I killed (I eat no starved cat­tle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jun­gle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!”

Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had al­most for­got­ten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not called the De­mon for com­pli­ment’s sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the ad­van­tage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave-mouth growl­ing, and when he was clear he shouted:

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

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

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

“Keep him!” she gasped. “He came naked, by night, alone and very hun­gry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side al­ready. And that lame butcher would have killed him, and would have run off to the Wain­gunga while the vil­lagers here hunted through all our lairs in re­venge! Keep him? As­suredly I will keep him. Lie still, lit­tle frog. O thou Mowgli—for Mowgli, the Frog, I will call thee—the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee!”

“But what will our Pack say?” said Father Wolf.

The Law of the Jun­gle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he mar­ries, with­draw from the Pack he be­longs to; but as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Coun­cil, which is gen­er­ally held once a month at full moon, in or­der that the other wolves may iden­tify them. After that in­spec­tion the cubs are free to run where they please, and un­til they have killed their first buck no ex­cuse is ac­cepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The pun­ish­ment is death where the mur­derer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a lit­tle, and then on the night of the Pack Meet­ing took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf to the Coun­cil Rock—a hill­top cov­ered with stones and boul­ders where a hun­dred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cun­ning, lay out at full length on his rock, and be­low him sat forty or more wolves of ev­ery size and color, from bad­ger-col­ored vet­er­ans who could han­dle a buck alone, to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf-trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the man­ners and cus­toms of men.

There was very lit­tle talk­ing at the Rock. The cubs tum­bled over one an­other in the cen­ter of the cir­cle where their moth­ers and fa­thers sat, and now and again a se­nior wolf would go qui­etly up to a cub, look at him care­fully, and re­turn to his place on noise­less feet. Some­times a mother would push her cub far out into the moon­light, to be sure that he had not been over­looked. Akela from his rock would cry: “Ye know the Law—ye know the Law! Look well, O Wolves!” And the anx­ious moth­ers would take up the call: “Look—look well, O Wolves!”

At last—and Mother Wolf’s neck-bris­tles lifted as the time came—Father Wolf pushed “Mowgli, the Frog,” as they called him, into the cen­ter, where he sat laugh­ing and play­ing with some peb­bles that glis­tened in the moon­light.

Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the mo­not­o­nous cry, “Look well!” A muf­fled roar came up from be­hind the rocks—the voice of Shere Khan cry­ing, “The cub is mine; give him to me. What have the Free Peo­ple to do with a man’s cub?”

Akela never even twitched his ears. All he said was, “Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free Peo­ple to do with the or­ders of any save the Free Peo­ple? Look well!”

There was a cho­rus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth year flung back Shere Khan’s ques­tion to Akela: “What have the Free Peo­ple to do with a man’s cub?”

Now the Law of the Jun­gle lays down that if there is any dis­pute as to the right of a cub to be ac­cepted by the Pack, he must be spo­ken for by at least two mem­bers of the Pack who are not his fa­ther and mother.

“Who speaks for this cub?” said Akela. “Among the Free Peo­ple, who speaks?” There was no an­swer, and Mother Wolf got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to fight­ing.

Then the only other crea­ture who is al­lowed at the Pack Coun­cil—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jun­gle; old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases be­cause he eats only nuts and roots and honey—rose up on his hind quar­ters and grunted.

“The man’s cub—the man’s cub?” he said. “I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be en­tered with the oth­ers. I my­self will teach him.”

“We need yet an­other,” said Akela. “Baloo has spo­ken, and he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks be­sides Baloo?”

A black shadow dropped down into the cir­cle. It was Bagheera, the Black Pan­ther, inky black all over, but with the pan­ther mark­ings show­ing up in cer­tain lights like the pat­tern of wa­tered silk. Every­body knew Bagheera, and no­body cared to cross his path; for he was as cun­ning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buf­falo, and as reck­less as the wounded ele­phant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey drip­ping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.

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

“Good! good!” said the young wolves, who are al­ways hun­gry. “Lis­ten to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law.”

“Know­ing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave.”

“Speak then,” cried twenty voices.

“To kill a naked cub is shame. Be­sides, he may make bet­ter sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spo­ken in his be­half. Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will ac­cept the man’s cub ac­cord­ing to the Law. Is it dif­fi­cult?”

There was a clamor of scores of voices, say­ing: “What mat­ter? He will die in the win­ter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be ac­cepted.” And then came Akela’s deep bay, cry­ing: “Look well—look well, O Wolves!”

Mowgli was still play­ing with the peb­bles, and he did not no­tice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was very an­gry that Mowgli had not been handed over to him.

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

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

“Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the Pack for­ever,” said Bagheera.

Akela said noth­ing. He was think­ing of the time that comes to ev­ery leader of ev­ery pack when his strength goes from him and he gets fee­bler and fee­bler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up—to be killed in his turn.

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

And that is how Mowgli was en­tered into the Seeonee wolf-pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo’s good word.

Now you must be con­tent to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only guess at all the won­der­ful life that Mowgli led among the wolves, be­cause if it were writ­ten out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs, though they of course were grown wolves al­most be­fore he was a child, and Father Wolf taught him his busi­ness, and the mean­ing of things in the jun­gle, till ev­ery rus­tle in the grass, ev­ery breath of the warm night air, ev­ery note of the owls above his head, ev­ery scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and ev­ery splash of ev­ery lit­tle fish jump­ing in a pool, meant just as much to him as the work of his of­fice means to a busi­ness man. When he was not learn­ing he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate, and went to sleep again; when he felt dirty or hot he swam in the for­est pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleas­ant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do.

Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, “Come along, Lit­tle Brother,” and at first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but af­ter­ward he would fling him­self through the branches al­most as boldly as the gray ape. He took his place at the Coun­cil Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he dis­cov­ered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun.

At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends, for wolves suf­fer ter­ri­bly from thorns and burs in their coats. He would go down the hill­side into the cul­ti­vated lands by night, and look very cu­ri­ously at the vil­lagers in their huts, but he had a mis­trust of men be­cause Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop-gate so cun­ningly hid­den in the jun­gle that he nearly walked into it, and told him it was a trap.

He loved bet­ter than any­thing else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the for­est, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt hun­gry, and so did Mowgli—with one ex­cep­tion. As soon as he was old enough to un­der­stand things, Bagheera told him that he must never touch cat­tle be­cause he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull’s life. “All the jun­gle is thine,” said Bagheera, “and thou canst kill ev­ery­thing that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cat­tle young or old. That is the Law of the Jun­gle.” Mowgli obeyed faith­fully.

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

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

Shere Khan was al­ways cross­ing his path in the jun­gle, for as Akela grew older and fee­bler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolves of the Pack, who fol­lowed him for scraps, a thing Akela would never have al­lowed if he had dared to push his au­thor­ity to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flat­ter them and won­der that such fine young hunters were con­tent to be led by a dy­ing wolf and a man’s cub. “They tell me,” Shere Khan would say, “that at Coun­cil ye dare not look him be­tween the eyes”; and the young wolves would growl and bris­tle.

Bagheera, who had eyes and ears ev­ery­where, knew some­thing of this, and once or twice he told Mowgli in so many words that Shere Khan would kill him some day; and Mowgli would laugh and an­swer: “I have the Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?”

It was one very warm day that a new no­tion came to Bagheera—born of some­thing that he had heard. Per­haps Ikki, the Por­cu­pine, had told him; but he said to Mowgli when they were deep in the jun­gle, as the boy lay with his head on Bagheera’s beau­ti­ful black skin: “Lit­tle Brother, how of­ten have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy en­emy?”

“As many times as there are nuts on that palm,” said Mowgli, who, nat­u­rally, could not count. “What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk, like Mao, the Pea­cock.”

“But this is no time for sleep­ing. Baloo knows it, I know it, the Pack know it, and even the fool­ish, fool­ish deer know. Tabaqui has told thee too.”

“Ho! ho!” said Mowgli. “Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some rude talk that I was a naked man’s cub, and not fit to dig pignuts; but I caught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him bet­ter man­ners.”

“That was fool­ish­ness; for though Tabaqui is a mis­chief-maker, he would have told thee of some­thing that con­cerned thee closely. Open those eyes, Lit­tle Brother! Shere Khan dares not kill thee in the jun­gle for fear of those that love thee; but re­mem­ber, Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he can­not kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. Many of the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Coun­cil first are old too, and the young wolves be­lieve, as Shere Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack. In a lit­tle time thou wilt be a man.”

“And what is a man that he should not run with his broth­ers?” said Mowgli. “I was born in the jun­gle; I have obeyed the Law of the Jun­gle; and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my broth­ers!”

Bagheera stretched him­self at full length and half shut his eyes. “Lit­tle Brother,” said he, “feel un­der my jaw.”

Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just un­der Bagheera’s silky chin, where the gi­ant rolling mus­cles were all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a lit­tle bald spot.

“There is no one in the jun­gle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark—the mark of the col­lar; and yet, Lit­tle Brother, I was born among men, and it was among men that my mother died—in the cages of the King’s Palace at Oodey­pore. It was be­cause of this that I paid the price for thee at the Coun­cil when thou wast a lit­tle naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jun­gle. They fed me be­hind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera, the Pan­ther, and no man’s play­thing, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw, and came away; and be­cause I had learned the ways of men, I be­came more ter­ri­ble in the jun­gle than Shere Khan. Is it not so?”

“Yes,” said Mowgli; “all the jun­gle fear Bagheera—all ex­cept Mowgli.”

“Oh, thou art a man’s cub,” said the Black Pan­ther, very ten­derly; “and even as I re­turned to my jun­gle, so thou must go back to men at last—to the men who are thy broth­ers—if thou art not killed in the Coun­cil.”

“But why—but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli.

“Look at me,” said Bagheera; and Mowgli looked at him steadily be­tween the eyes. The big pan­ther turned his head away in half a minute.

“That is why,” he said, shift­ing his paw on the leaves. “Not even I can look thee be­tween the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love thee, Lit­tle Brother. The oth­ers they hate thee be­cause their eyes can­not meet thine; be­cause thou art wise; be­cause thou hast pulled out thorns from their feet—be­cause thou art a man.”

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

“What is the Law of the Jun­gle? Strike first and then give tongue. By thy very care­less­ness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck—the Pack will turn against him and against thee. They will hold a jun­gle Coun­cil at the Rock, and then—and then … I have it!” said Bagheera, leap­ing up. “Go thou down quickly to the men’s huts in the val­ley, and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.”

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no crea­ture in the jun­gle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and in­vents a hun­dred ways of de­scrib­ing it.

“The Red Flower?” said Mowgli. “That grows out­side their huts in the twi­light. I will get some.”

“There speaks the man’s cub,” said Bagheera, proudly. “Re­mem­ber that it grows in lit­tle pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for time of need.”

“Good!” said Mowgli. “I go. But art thou sure, O my Bagheera”—he slipped his arm round the splen­did neck, and looked deep into the big eyes—“art thou sure that all this is Shere Khan’s do­ing?”

“By the Bro­ken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Lit­tle Brother.”

“Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full tale for this, and it may be a lit­tle over,” said Mowgli; and he bounded away.

“That is a man. That is all a man,” said Bagheera to him­self, ly­ing down again. “Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunt­ing than that frog-hunt of thine ten years ago!”

Mowgli was far and far through the for­est, run­ning hard, and his heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down the val­ley. The cubs were out, but Mother Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breath­ing that some­thing was trou­bling her frog.

“What is it, Son?” she said.

“Some bat’s chat­ter of Shere Khan,” he called back. “I hunt among the plowed fields tonight”; and he plunged down­ward through the bushes, to the stream at the bot­tom of the val­ley. There he checked, for he heard the yell of the Pack hunt­ing, heard the bel­low of a hunted Samb­hur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there were wicked, bit­ter howls from the young wolves: “Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show his strength. Room for the leader of our Pack! Spring, Akela!”

The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Samb­hur knocked him over with his fore foot.

He did not wait for any­thing more, but dashed on; and the yells grew fainter be­hind him as he ran into the crop-lands where the vil­lagers lived.

“Bagheera spoke truth,” he panted, as he nes­tled down in some cat­tle-fod­der by the win­dow of a hut. “To­mor­row is one day for Akela and for me.”

Then he pressed his face close to the win­dow and watched the fire on the hearth. He saw the hus­band­man’s wife get up and feed it in the night with black lumps; and when the morn­ing came and the mists were all white and cold, he saw the man’s child pick up a wicker pot plas­tered in­side with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot char­coal, put it un­der his blan­ket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre.

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

“They are very like me,” said Mowgli, blow­ing into the pot, as he had seen the woman do. “This thing will die if I do not give it things to eat”; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway up the hill he met Bagheera with the morn­ing dew shin­ing like moon­stones on his coat.

“Akela has missed,” said the pan­ther. “They would have killed him last night, but they needed thee also. They were look­ing for thee on the hill.”

“I was among the plowed lands. I am ready. Look!” Mowgli held up the fire-pot.

“Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and presently the Red Flower blos­somed at the end of it. Art thou not afraid?”

“No. Why should I fear? I re­mem­ber now—if it is not a dream—how, be­fore I was a wolf, I lay be­side the Red Flower, and it was warm and pleas­ant.”

All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tend­ing his fire-pot and dip­ping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that sat­is­fied him, and in the evening when Tabaqui came to the cave and told him, rudely enough, that he was wanted at the Coun­cil Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran away. Then Mowgli went to the Coun­cil, still laugh­ing.

Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the lead­er­ship of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his fol­low­ing of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly, be­ing flat­tered. Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the fire-pot was be­tween Mowgli’s knees. When they were all gath­ered to­gether, Shere Khan be­gan to speak—a thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.

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

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

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

“By whom?” said Mowgli. “Are we all jack­als, to fawn on this cat­tle-butcher? The lead­er­ship of the Pack is with the Pack alone.”

There were yells of “Si­lence, thou man’s cub!” “Let him speak; he has kept our law!” And at last the se­niors of the Pack thun­dered: “Let the Dead Wolf speak!”

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule.

Akela raised his old head wearily:

“Free Peo­ple, and ye too, jack­als of Shere Khan, for twelve sea­sons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an un­tried buck to make my weak­ness known. It was clev­erly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Coun­cil Rock now. There­fore I ask, ‘Who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf?’ For it is my right, by the Law of the Jun­gle, that ye come one by one.”

There was a long hush, for no sin­gle wolf cared to fight Akela to the death. Then Shere Khan roared: “Bah! What have we to do with this tooth­less fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free Peo­ple, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has trou­bled the jun­gle for ten sea­sons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here al­ways, and not give you one bone! He is a man—a man’s child, and from the mar­row of my bones I hate him!”

Then more than half the Pack yelled: “A man—a man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.”

“And turn all the peo­ple of the vil­lages against us?” snarled Shere Khan. “No; give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him be­tween the eyes.”

Akela lifted his head again, and said: “He has eaten our food; he has slept with us; he has driven game for us; he has bro­ken no word of the Law of the Jun­gle.”

“Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was ac­cepted. The worth of a bull is lit­tle, but Bagheera’s honor is some­thing that he will per­haps fight for,” said Bagheera in his gen­tlest voice.

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

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

“No man’s cub can run with the peo­ple of the jun­gle!” roared Shere Khan. “Give him to me.”

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

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

“Now the busi­ness is in thy hands,” said Bagheera to Mowgli. “We can do no more ex­cept fight.”

Mowgli stood up­right—the fire-pot in his hands. Then he stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Coun­cil; but he was fu­ri­ous with rage and sor­row, for, wolf-like, the wolves had never told him how they hated him.

“Lis­ten, you!” he cried. “There is no need for this dog’s jab­ber. Ye have told me so of­ten tonight that I am a man (though in­deed I would have been a wolf with you to my life’s end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my broth­ers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. That mat­ter is with me; and that we may see the mat­ter more plainly, I, the man, have brought here a lit­tle of the Red Flower which ye, dogs, fear.”

He flung the fire-pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up as all the Coun­cil drew back in ter­ror be­fore the leap­ing flames.

Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit and crack­led, and whirled it above his head among the cow­er­ing wolves.

“Thou art the mas­ter,” said Bagheera, in an un­der­tone. “Save Akela from the death. He was ever thy friend.”

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

“Good!” said Mowgli, star­ing around slowly, and thrust­ing out his lower lip. “I see that ye are dogs. I go from you to my own peo­ple—if they be my own peo­ple. The jun­gle is shut to me, and I must for­get your talk and your com­pan­ion­ship; but I will be more mer­ci­ful than ye are. Be­cause I was all but your brother in blood, I prom­ise that when I am a man among men I will not be­tray ye to men as ye have be­trayed me.” He kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. “There shall be no war be­tween any of us and the Pack. But here is a debt to pay be­fore I go.” He strode for­ward to where Shere Khan sat blink­ing stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin. Bagheera fol­lowed close, in case of ac­ci­dents. “Up, dog!” Mowgli cried. “Up, when a man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze!”

Shere Khan’s ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes, for the blaz­ing branch was very near.

“This cat­tle-killer said he would kill me in the Coun­cil be­cause he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men! Stir a whisker, Lun­gri, and I ram the Red Flower down thy gul­let!” He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whim­pered and whined in an agony of fear.

“Pah! Singed jun­gle-cat—go now! But re­mem­ber when next I come to the Coun­cil Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan’s hide on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will not kill him, be­cause that is not my will. Nor do I think that ye will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though ye were some­bod­ies, in­stead of dogs whom I drive out—thus! Go!”

The fire was burn­ing fu­ri­ously at the end of the branch, and Mowgli struck right and left round the cir­cle, and the wolves ran howl­ing with the sparks burn­ing their fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and per­haps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli’s part. Then some­thing be­gan to hurt Mowgli in­side him, as he had never been hurt in his life be­fore, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.

“What is it? What is it?” he said. “I do not wish to leave the jun­gle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dy­ing, Bagheera?”

“No, Lit­tle Brother. Those are only tears such as men use,” said Bagheera. “Now I know thou art a man, and a man’s cub no longer. The jun­gle is shut in­deed to thee hence­for­ward. Let them fall, Mowgli; they are only tears.” So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life be­fore.

“Now,” he said, “I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to my mother”; and he went to the cave where she lived with Father Wolf, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled mis­er­ably.

“Ye will not for­get me?” said Mowgli.

“Never while we can fol­low a trail,” said the cubs. “Come to the foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we will come into the crop-lands to play with thee by night.”

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

“Come soon,” said Mother Wolf, “lit­tle naked son of mine; for, lis­ten, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs.”

“I will surely come,” said Mowgli; “and when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan’s hide upon the Coun­cil Rock. Do not for­get me! Tell them in the jun­gle never to for­get me!”

The dawn was be­gin­ning to break when Mowgli went down the hill­side alone to the crops to meet those mys­te­ri­ous things that are called men.

Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack

As the dawn was break­ing the Samb­hur belled
Once, twice, and again!
And a doe leaped up—and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scout­ing alone, be­held,
Once, twice, and again!

As the dawn was break­ing the Samb­hur belled
Once, twice, and again!
And a wolf stole back—and a wolf stole back
To carry the word to the wait­ing Pack;
And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track
Once, twice, and again!

As the dawn was break­ing the Wolf-pack yelled
Once, twice, and again!
Feet in the jun­gle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark!
Tongue—give tongue to it! Hark! O Hark!
Once, twice, and again!

Kaa’s Hunting

His spots are the joy of the Leop­ard: his horns are the Buf­falo’s pride—
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.
If ye find that the Bul­lock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Samb­hur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to in­form us: we knew it ten sea­sons be­fore.
Op­press not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sis­ter and Brother,
For though they are lit­tle and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.
“There is none like to me!” says the Cub in the pride of his ear­li­est kill;
But the Jun­gle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.

Max­ims of Baloo

All that is told here hap­pened some time be­fore Mowgli was turned out of the Seeonee wolf-pack. It was in the days when Baloo was teach­ing him the Law of the Jun­gle. The big, se­ri­ous, old brown bear was de­lighted to have so quick a pupil, for the young wolves will only learn as much of the Law of the Jun­gle as ap­plies to their own pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they can re­peat the Hunt­ing Verse: “Feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white teeth—all these things are the marks of our broth­ers ex­cept Tabaqui and the Hyena, whom we hate.” But Mowgli, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this. Some­times Bagheera, the Black Pan­ther, would come loung­ing through the jun­gle to see how his pet was get­ting on, and would purr with his head against a tree while Mowgli re­cited the day’s les­son to Baloo. The boy could climb al­most as well as he could swim, and swim al­most as well as he could run; so Baloo, the Teacher of the Law, taught him the Wood and Water laws: how to tell a rot­ten branch from a sound one; how to speak po­litely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty feet above­ground; what to say to Mang, the Bat, when he dis­turbed him in the branches at mid­day; and how to warn the wa­ter-snakes in the pools be­fore he splashed down among them. None of the Jun­gle Peo­ple like be­ing dis­turbed, and all are very ready to fly at an in­truder. Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers’ Hunt­ing Call, which must be re­peated aloud till it is an­swered, when­ever one of the Jun­gle Peo­ple hunts out­side his own grounds. It means, trans­lated: “Give me leave to hunt here be­cause I am hun­gry”; and the an­swer is: “Hunt, then, for food, but not for plea­sure.”

All this will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired of re­peat­ing the same thing a hun­dred times; but, as Baloo said to Bagheera one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and had run off in a tem­per: “A man’s cub is a man’s cub, and he must learn all the Law of the Jun­gle.”

“But think how small he is,” said the Black Pan­ther, who would have spoiled Mowgli if he had had his own way. “How can his lit­tle head carry all thy long talk?”

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

“Softly! What dost thou know of soft­ness, old Iron-feet?” Bagheera grunted. “His face is all bruised to­day by thy—soft­ness. Ugh!”

“Bet­ter he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ig­no­rance,” Baloo an­swered, very earnestly. “I am now teach­ing him the Master Words of the Jun­gle that shall pro­tect him with the Birds and the Snake Peo­ple, and all that hunt on four feet, ex­cept his own pack. He can now claim pro­tec­tion, if he will only re­mem­ber the Words, from all in the jun­gle. Is not that worth a lit­tle beat­ing?”

“Well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree-trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it”—Bagheera stretched out one paw and ad­mired the steel-blue rip­ping-chisel talons at the end of it—“Still I should like to know.”

“I will call Mowgli and he shall say them—if he will. Come, Lit­tle Brother!”

“My head is ring­ing like a bee-tree,” said a sullen voice over their heads, and Mowgli slid down a tree-trunk, very an­gry and in­dig­nant, adding, as he reached the ground: “I come for Bagheera and not for thee, fat old Baloo!”

“That is all one to me,” said Baloo, though he was hurt and grieved. “Tell Bagheera, then, the Master Words of the Jun­gle that I have taught thee this day.”

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

“A lit­tle thou know­est, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher! Not one small wolfling has come back to thank old Baloo for his teach­ings. 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 ac­cent which all the Hunt­ing Peo­ple of the Jun­gle use.

“Good! Now for the Birds.”

Mowgli re­peated, with the Kite’s whis­tle at the end of the sen­tence.

“Now for the Snake Peo­ple,” said Bagheera.

The an­swer was a per­fectly in­de­scrib­able hiss, and Mowgli kicked up his feet be­hind, clapped his hands to­gether to ap­plaud him­self, and jumped on Bagheera’s back, where he sat side­ways, drum­ming with his heels on the glossy skin and mak­ing the worst faces that he could think of at Baloo.

“There—there! That was worth a lit­tle bruise,” said the Brown Bear, ten­derly. “Some day thou wilt re­mem­ber me.” Then he turned aside to tell Bagheera how he had begged the Master Words from Hathi, the Wild Ele­phant, who knows all about these things, and how Hathi had taken Mowgli down to a pool to get the Snake Word from a wa­ter-snake, be­cause Baloo could not pro­nounce it, and how Mowgli was now rea­son­ably safe against all ac­ci­dents in the jun­gle, be­cause nei­ther snake, bird, nor beast would hurt him.

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

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

Mowgli had been try­ing to make him­self heard by pulling at Bagheera’s shoul­der-fur and kick­ing hard. When the two lis­tened to him he was shout­ing at the top of his voice: “And so I shall have a tribe of my own, and lead them through the branches all day long.”

“What is this new folly, lit­tle dreamer of dreams?” said Bagheera.

“Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old Baloo,” Mowgli went on. “They have promised me this, ah!”

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

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

Mowgli looked at Bagheera to see if the pan­ther was an­gry too, and Bagheera’s eyes were as hard as jade-stones.

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

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

“The pity of the Mon­key Peo­ple!” Baloo snorted.

“The still­ness of the moun­tain stream! The cool of the sum­mer sun! And then, man-cub?”

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

“They have no leader,” said Bagheera. “They lie. They have al­ways lied.”

“They were very kind, and bade me come again. Why have I never been taken among the Mon­key Peo­ple? They stand on their feet as I do. They do not hit me with hard paws. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I will go play with them again.”

“Lis­ten, man-cub,” said the bear, and his voice rum­bled like thun­der on a hot night. “I have taught thee all the Law of the Jun­gle for all the Peo­ples of the Jun­gle—ex­cept the Mon­key Folk who live in the trees. They have no Law. They are out­castes. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they over­hear when they lis­ten and peep and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are with­out lead­ers. They have no re­mem­brance. They boast and chat­ter and pre­tend that they are a great peo­ple about to do great af­fairs in the jun­gle, but the fall­ing of a nut turns their minds to laugh­ter, and all is for­got­ten. We of the jun­gle have no deal­ings with them. We do not drink where the mon­keys drink; we do not go where the mon­keys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard me speak of the Ban­dar-log till to­day?”

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

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

He had hardly spo­ken when a shower of nuts and twigs spat­tered down through the branches; and they could hear cough­ings and howl­ings and an­gry jump­ings high up in the air among the thin branches.

“The Mon­key Peo­ple are for­bid­den,” said Baloo, “for­bid­den to the Jun­gle Peo­ple. Re­mem­ber.”

“For­bid­den,” said Bagheera; “but I still think Baloo should have warned thee against them.”

“I—I? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. The Mon­key Peo­ple! Faugh!”

A fresh shower came down on their heads, and the two trot­ted away, tak­ing Mowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the mon­keys was per­fectly true. They be­longed to the tree­tops, and as beasts very sel­dom look up, there was no oc­ca­sion for the mon­keys and the Jun­gle Peo­ple to cross one an­other’s path. But when­ever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger or bear, the mon­keys would tor­ment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of be­ing no­ticed. Then they would howl and shriek sense­less songs, and in­vite the Jun­gle Peo­ple to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start fu­ri­ous bat­tles over noth­ing among them­selves, and leave the dead mon­keys where the Jun­gle Peo­ple could see them.

They were al­ways just go­ing to have a leader and laws and cus­toms of their own, but they never did, be­cause their mem­o­ries would not hold over from day to day, and so they set­tled things by mak­ing up a say­ing: “What the Ban­dar-log think now the Jun­gle will think later”; and that com­forted them a great deal. None of the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none of the beasts would no­tice them, and that was why they were so pleased when Mowgli came to play with them, and when they heard how an­gry Baloo was.

They never meant to do any more—the Ban­dar-log never mean any­thing at all—but one of them in­vented what seemed to him a bril­liant idea, and he told all the oth­ers that Mowgli would be a use­ful per­son to keep in the tribe, be­cause he could weave sticks to­gether for pro­tec­tion from the wind; so, if they caught him, they could make him teach them. Of course Mowgli, as a wood­cut­ter’s child, in­her­ited all sorts of in­stincts, and used to make lit­tle play-huts of fallen branches with­out think­ing how he came to do it. The Mon­key Peo­ple, watch­ing in the trees, con­sid­ered these huts most won­der­ful. This time, they said, they were re­ally go­ing to have a leader and be­come the wis­est peo­ple in the jun­gle—so wise that ev­ery­one else would no­tice and envy them. There­fore they fol­lowed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jun­gle very qui­etly till it was time for the mid­day nap, and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of him­self, slept be­tween the pan­ther and the bear, re­solv­ing to have no more to do with the Mon­key Peo­ple.

The next thing he re­mem­bered was feel­ing hands on his legs and arms—hard, strong lit­tle hands—and then a swash of branches in his face; and then he was star­ing down through the sway­ing boughs as Baloo woke the jun­gle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk with ev­ery tooth bared. The Ban­dar-log howled with tri­umph, and scuf­fled away to the up­per branches where Bagheera dared not fol­low, shout­ing: “He has no­ticed us! Bagheera has no­ticed us! All the Jun­gle Peo­ple ad­mire us for our skill and our cun­ning!” Then they be­gan their flight; and the flight of the Mon­key Peo­ple through tree-land is one of the things no­body can de­scribe. They have their reg­u­lar roads and cross­roads, up­hills and down­hills, all laid out from fifty to sev­enty or a hun­dred feet above­ground, and by these they can travel even at night if nec­es­sary.

Two of the strong­est mon­keys caught Mowgli un­der the arms and swung off with him through the tree­tops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy’s weight held them back. Sick and giddy as Mowgli was he could not help en­joy­ing the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down be­low fright­ened him, and the ter­ri­ble check and jerk at the end of the swing over noth­ing but empty air brought his heart be­tween his teeth.

His es­cort would rush him up a tree till he felt the weak top­most branches crackle and bend un­der them, and, then, with a cough and a whoop, would fling them­selves into the air out­ward and down­ward, and bring up hang­ing by their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree. Some­times he could see for miles and miles over the still green jun­gle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be al­most down to earth again.

So bound­ing and crash­ing and whoop­ing and yelling, the whole tribe of Ban­dar-log swept along the tree-roads with Mowgli their pris­oner.

For a time he was afraid of be­ing dropped; then he grew an­gry, but he knew bet­ter than to strug­gle; and then he be­gan to think. The first thing was to send back word to Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace the mon­keys were go­ing, he knew his friends would be left far be­hind. It was use­less to look down, for he could see only the top sides of the branches, so he stared up­ward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann, the Kite, bal­anc­ing and wheel­ing as he kept watch over the jun­gle wait­ing for things to die. Rann no­ticed that the mon­keys were car­ry­ing some­thing, and dropped a few hun­dred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He whis­tled with sur­prise when he saw Mowgli be­ing dragged up to a tree­top, and heard him give the Kite call for “We be of one blood, thou and I.” The waves of the branches closed over the boy, but Rann bal­anced away to the next tree in time to see the lit­tle brown face come up again. “Mark my trail!” Mowgli shouted. “Tell Baloo of the Seeonee Pack, and Bagheera of the Coun­cil Rock.”

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

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

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

“They never go far,” he said, with a chuckle. “They never do what they set out to do. Al­ways peck­ing at new things are the Ban­dar-log. This time, if I have any eye­sight, they have pecked down trou­ble for them­selves, for Baloo is no fledg­ling and Bagheera can, as I know, kill more than goats.”

Then he rocked on his wings, his feet gath­ered up un­der him, and waited.

Mean­while, Baloo and Bagheera were fu­ri­ous with rage and grief. Bagheera climbed as he had never climbed be­fore, but the branches broke be­neath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark.

“Why didst thou not warn the man-cub!” he roared to poor Baloo, who had set off at a clumsy trot in the hope of over­tak­ing the mon­keys. “What was the use of half slay­ing him with blows if thou didst not warn him?”

“Haste! O haste! We—we may catch them yet!” Baloo panted.

“At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher of the Law, cub-beater—a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee open. Sit still and think! Make a plan. This is no time for chas­ing. They may drop him if we fol­low too close.”

“Ar­rula! Whoo! They may have dropped him al­ready, be­ing tired of car­ry­ing him. Who can trust the Ban­dar-log? Put dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat! Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to death, and bury me with the hyena; for I am the most mis­er­able of bears! Aru­lala! Wa­hooa! O Mowgli, Mowgli! Why did I not warn thee against the Mon­key Folk in­stead of break­ing thy head? Now per­haps I may have knocked the day’s les­son out of his mind, and he will be alone in the jun­gle with­out the Master Words!”

Baloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro, moan­ing.

“At least he gave me all the Words cor­rectly a lit­tle time ago,” said Bagheera, im­pa­tiently. “Baloo, thou hast nei­ther mem­ory nor re­spect. What would the jun­gle think if I, the Black Pan­ther, curled my­self up like 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 of idle­ness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and well-taught, and, above all, he has the eyes that make the Jun­gle Peo­ple afraid. But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the Ban­dar-log, and they, be­cause they live in trees, have no fear of any of our peo­ple.” Bagheera licked his one fore paw thought­fully.

“Fool that I am! Oh fat, brown, root-dig­ging fool that I am!” said Baloo, un­coil­ing him­self with a jerk. “It is true what Hathi, the Wild Ele­phant, says: ‘To each his own fear’; and they, the Ban­dar-log, fear Kaa, the Rock Snake. He can climb as well as they can. He steals the young mon­keys in the night. The mere whis­per of his name makes their wicked tails cold. Let us go to Kaa.”

“What will he do for us? He is not of our tribe, be­ing foot­less and with most evil eyes,” said Bagheera.

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

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

“Then in that case, thou and I to­gether, old hunter, may make him see rea­son.” Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoul­der against the pan­ther, and they went off to look for Kaa, the Rock Python.

They found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the af­ter­noon sun, ad­mir­ing his beau­ti­ful new coat, for he had been in re­tire­ment for the last ten days chang­ing his skin, and now he was very splen­did—dart­ing his big blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twist­ing the thirty feet of his body into fan­tas­tic knots and curves, and lick­ing his lips as he thought of his din­ner to come.

“He has not eaten,” said Baloo, with a grunt of re­lief, as soon as he saw the beau­ti­fully mot­tled brown and yel­low jacket. “Be care­ful, Bagheera! He is al­ways a lit­tle blind af­ter he has changed his skin, and very quick to strike.”

Kaa was not a poi­son snake—in fact he rather de­spised the Poi­son Snakes for cow­ards; but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once lapped his huge coils round any­body there was no more to be said. “Good hunt­ing!” cried Baloo, sit­ting up on his haunches. Like all snakes of his breed Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at first. Then he curled up ready for any ac­ci­dent, his head low­ered.

“Good hunt­ing for us all,” he an­swered. “Oho, Baloo, what dost thou do here? Good hunt­ing, Bagheera. One of us at least needs food. Is there any news of game afoot? A doe now, or even a young buck? I am as empty as a dried well.”

“We are hunt­ing,” said Baloo, care­lessly. He knew that you must not hurry Kaa. He is too big.

“Give me per­mis­sion to come with you,” said Kaa. “A blow more or less is noth­ing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in a wood path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape. Pss naw! The branches are not what they were when I was young. Rot­ten twigs and dry boughs are they all.”

“Maybe thy great weight has some­thing to do with the mat­ter,” said Baloo.

“I am a fair length—a fair length,” said Kaa, with a lit­tle pride. “But for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown tim­ber. I came very near to fall­ing on my last hunt—very near in­deed—and the noise of my slip­ping, for my tail was not tight wrapped round the tree, waked the Ban­dar-log, and they called me most evil names.”

“ ‘Foot­less, yel­low earth­worm,’ ” said Bagheera un­der his whiskers, as though he were try­ing to re­mem­ber some­thing.

“Sssss! Have they ever called me that?” said Kaa.

“Some­thing of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we never no­ticed them. They will say any­thing—even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and dare not face any­thing big­ger than a kid, be­cause (they are in­deed shame­less, these Ban­dar-log)—be­cause thou art afraid of the he-goats’ horns,” Bagheera went on sweetly.

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

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

“It—it is the Ban­dar-log that we fol­low now,” said Baloo; but the words stuck in his throat, for this was the first time in his mem­ory that one of the Jun­gle Peo­ple had owned to be­ing in­ter­ested in the do­ings of the mon­keys.

“Beyond doubt, then, it is no small thing that takes two such hunters—lead­ers in their own jun­gle, I am cer­tain—on the trail of the Ban­dar-log,” Kaa replied, cour­te­ously, as he swelled with cu­rios­ity.

“In­deed,” Baloo be­gan, “I am no more than the old, and some­times very fool­ish, Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf-cubs, and Bagheera here—”

“Is Bagheera,” said the Black Pan­ther, and his jaws shut with a snap, for he did not be­lieve in be­ing hum­ble. “The trou­ble is this, Kaa. Those nut-steal­ers and pick­ers of palm-leaves have stolen away our man-cub, of whom thou hast per­haps heard.”

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

“But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was,” said Baloo. “The best and wis­est and bold­est of man-cubs. My own pupil, who shall make the name of Baloo fa­mous through all the jun­gles; and be­sides, I—we—love him, Kaa.”

“Ts! Ts!” said Kaa, shak­ing his head to and fro. “I also have known what love is. There are tales I could tell that—”

“That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise prop­erly,” said Bagheera, quickly. “Our man-cub is in the hands of the Ban­dar-log now, and we know that of all the Jun­gle Peo­ple they fear Kaa alone.”

“They fear me alone. They have good rea­son,” said Kaa. “Chat­ter­ing, fool­ish, vain—vain, fool­ish, and chat­ter­ing—are the mon­keys. But a man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day, mean­ing to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. That man­ling is not to be en­vied. They called me also—‘yel­low fish,’ was it not?”

“Worm—worm—earth­worm,” said Bagheera; “as well as other things which I can­not now say for shame.”

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

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

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

“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 was near Rann’s bed­time, but he had ranged all over the jun­gle look­ing for the bear, and missed him in the thick fo­liage.

“What is it?” said Baloo.

“I have seen Mowgli among the Ban­dar-log. He bade me tell you. I watched. The Ban­dar-log have taken him be­yond the river to the Mon­key City—to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a night, or ten nights, or an hour. I have told the bats to watch through the dark time. That is my mes­sage. Good hunt­ing, all you be­low!”

“Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann!” cried Bagheera. “I will re­mem­ber thee 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 done no 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 while he was be­ing pulled across trees!”

“It was most firmly driven into him,” said Bagheera. “But I am proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.”

They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jun­gle Peo­ple ever went there, be­cause what they called the Cold Lairs was an old de­serted city, lost and buried in the jun­gle, and beasts sel­dom use a place that men have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunt­ing-tribes do not. Be­sides, the mon­keys lived there as much as they could be said to live any­where, and no self-re­spect­ing an­i­mal would come within eye­shot of it ex­cept in times of drouth, when the half-ru­ined tanks and reser­voirs held a lit­tle wa­ter.

“It is half a night’s jour­ney—at full speed,” said Bagheera. Baloo looked very se­ri­ous. “I will go as fast as I can,” he said, anx­iously.

“We dare not wait for thee. Fol­low, Baloo. We must go on the quick-foot—Kaa and I.”

“Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four,” said Kaa, shortly.

Baloo made one ef­fort to hurry, but had to sit down pant­ing, and so they left him to come on later, while Bagheera hur­ried for­ward, at the rock­ing pan­ther-can­ter. Kaa said noth­ing, but, strive as Bagheera might, the huge Rock Python held level with him. When they came to a hill-stream, Bagheera gained, be­cause he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head and two feet of his neck clear­ing the wa­ter, but on level ground Kaa made up the dis­tance.

“By the Bro­ken Lock that freed me,” said Bagheera, when twi­light had fallen, “thou art no slow-goer.”

“I am hun­gry,” said Kaa. “Be­sides, they called me speck­led frog.”

“Worm—earth­worm, and yel­low to boot.”

“All one. Let us go on,” and Kaa seemed to pour him­self along the ground, find­ing the short­est road with his steady eyes, and keep­ing to it.

In the Cold Lairs the Mon­key Peo­ple were not think­ing of Mowgli’s friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, and were very pleased with them­selves for the time. Mowgli had never seen an In­dian city be­fore, and though this was al­most a heap of ru­ins it seemed very won­der­ful and splen­did. Some king had built it long ago on a lit­tle hill. You could still trace the stone cause­ways that led up to the ru­ined gates where the last splin­ters of wood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the bat­tle­ments were tum­bled down and de­cayed, and wild creep­ers hung out of the win­dows of the tow­ers on the walls in bushy hang­ing clumps.

A great roof­less palace crowned the hill, and the mar­ble of the court­yards and the foun­tains was split and stained with red and green, and the very cob­ble­stones in the court­yard where the king’s ele­phants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roof­less houses that made up the city, look­ing like empty hon­ey­combs filled with black­ness; the shape­less block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met; the pits and dim­ples at street cor­ners where the pub­lic wells once stood, and the shat­tered domes of tem­ples with wild figs sprout­ing on their sides.

The mon­keys called the place their city, and pre­tended to de­spise the Jun­gle Peo­ple be­cause they lived in the for­est. And yet they never knew what the build­ings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in cir­cles on the hall of the king’s coun­cil-cham­ber, and scratch for fleas and pre­tend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roof­less houses and col­lect pieces of plas­ter and old bricks in a cor­ner, and for­get where they had hid­den them, and fight and cry in scuf­fling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the ter­races of the king’s gar­den, where they would shake the rose-trees and the or­anges in sport to see the fruit and flow­ers fall. They ex­plored all the pas­sages and dark tun­nels in the palace and the hun­dreds of lit­tle dark rooms; but they never re­mem­bered what they had seen and what they had not, and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds, telling one an­other that they were do­ing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made the wa­ter all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush to­gether in mobs and shout: “There are none in the jun­gle so wise and good and clever and strong and gen­tle as the Ban­dar-log.” Then all would be­gin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree­tops, hop­ing the Jun­gle Peo­ple would no­tice them.

Mowgli, who had been trained un­der the Law of the Jun­gle, did not like or un­der­stand this kind of life. The mon­keys dragged him into the Cold Lairs late in the af­ter­noon, and in­stead of go­ing to sleep, as Mowgli would have done af­ter a long jour­ney, they joined hands and danced about and sang their fool­ish songs.

One of the mon­keys made a speech, and told his com­pan­ions that Mowgli’s cap­ture marked a new thing in the his­tory of the Ban­dar-log, for Mowgli was go­ing to show them how to weave sticks and canes to­gether as a pro­tec­tion against rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some creep­ers and be­gan to work them in and out, and the mon­keys tried to im­i­tate; but in a very few min­utes they lost in­ter­est and be­gan to pull their friends’ tails or jump up and down on all fours, cough­ing.

“I want 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; but they fell to fight­ing on the road, and it was too much trou­ble to go back with what was left of the fruit. Mowgli was sore and an­gry as well as hun­gry, and he roamed through the empty city giv­ing the Strangers’ Hunt­ing Call from time to time, but no one an­swered him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place in­deed.

“All that Baloo has said about the Ban­dar-log is true,” he thought to him­self. “They have no Law, no Hunt­ing Call, and no lead­ers—noth­ing but fool­ish words and lit­tle pick­ing, thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to re­turn to my own jun­gle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is bet­ter than chas­ing silly rose-leaves with the Ban­dar-log.”

But no sooner had he walked to the city wall than the mon­keys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinch­ing him to make him grate­ful. He set his teeth and said noth­ing, but went with the shout­ing mon­keys to a ter­race above the red sand­stone reser­voirs that were half full of rain­wa­ter. There was a ru­ined sum­mer­house of white mar­ble in the cen­ter of the ter­race, built for queens dead a hun­dred years ago. The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the un­der­ground pas­sage from the palace by which the queens used to en­ter; but the walls were made of screens of mar­ble trac­ery—beau­ti­ful, milk-white fret­work, set with agates and cor­nelians and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up be­hind the hill it shone through the open­work, cast­ing shad­ows on the ground like black-vel­vet em­broi­dery.

Sore, sleepy, and hun­gry as he was, Mowgli could not help laugh­ing when the Ban­dar-log be­gan, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gen­tle they were, and how fool­ish he was to wish to leave them. “We are great. We are free. We are won­der­ful. We are the most won­der­ful peo­ple in all the jun­gle! We all say so, and so it must be true,” they shouted. “Now as you are a new lis­tener and can carry our words back to the Jun­gle Peo­ple so that they may no­tice us in fu­ture, we will tell you all about our most ex­cel­lent selves.”

Mowgli made no ob­jec­tion, and the mon­keys gath­ered by hun­dreds and hun­dreds on the ter­race to lis­ten to their own speak­ers singing the praises of the Ban­dar-log, and when­ever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would all shout to­gether: “This is true; we all say so.”

Mowgli nod­ded and blinked, and said “Yes” when they asked him a ques­tion, and his head spun with the noise. “Tabaqui, the Jackal, must have bit­ten all these peo­ple,” he said to him­self, “and now they have the mad­ness. Cer­tainly this is de­wance—the mad­ness. Do they never go to sleep? Now there is a cloud com­ing to cover that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in the dark­ness. But I am tired.”

That same cloud was be­ing watched by two good friends in the ru­ined ditch be­low the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, know­ing well how dan­ger­ous the Mon­key Peo­ple were in large num­bers, did not wish to run any risks. The mon­keys never fight un­less they are a hun­dred to one, and few in the jun­gle care for those odds.

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

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

“Good hunt­ing,” said Kaa, grimly, and glided away to the west wall. That hap­pened to be the least ru­ined of any, and the big snake was de­layed a while be­fore he could find a way up the stones.

The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli won­dered what would come next he heard Bagheera’s light feet on the ter­race. The Black Pan­ther had raced up the slope al­most with­out a sound, and was strik­ing—he knew bet­ter than to waste time in bit­ing—right and left among the mon­keys, who were seated round Mowgli in cir­cles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling, kick­ing bod­ies be­neath him, a mon­key shouted: “There is only one here! Kill him! Kill!” A scuf­fling mass of mon­keys, bit­ing, scratch­ing, tear­ing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the sum­mer­house, and pushed him through the hole of the bro­ken dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good ten feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed light.

“Stay there,” shouted the mon­keys, “till we have killed thy friend. Later we will play with thee, if the Poi­son Peo­ple leave thee alive.”

“We be of one blood, ye and I,” said Mowgli, quickly giv­ing the Snake’s Call. He could hear rustling and hiss­ing in the rub­bish all round him, and gave the Call a sec­ond time to make sure.

“Down hoods all,” said half a dozen low voices. Every old ruin in In­dia be­comes sooner or later a dwelling-place of snakes, and the old sum­mer­house was alive with co­bras. “Stand still, Lit­tle Brother, lest thy feet do us harm.”

Mowgli stood as qui­etly as he could, peer­ing through the open­work and lis­ten­ing to the fu­ri­ous din of the fight round the Black Pan­ther—the yells and chat­ter­ings and scuf­flings, and Bagheera’s deep, hoarse cough as he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged un­der the heaps of his en­e­mies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was fight­ing for his life.

“Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come alone,” Mowgli thought; and then he called aloud: “To the tank, Bagheera! Roll to the wa­ter-tanks! Roll and plunge! Get to the wa­ter!”

Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe gave him new courage. He worked his way des­per­ately, inch by inch, straight for the reser­voirs, hit­ting in si­lence.

Then from the ru­ined wall near­est the jun­gle rose up the rum­bling war-shout of Baloo. The old bear had done his best, but he could not come be­fore. “Bagheera,” he shouted, “I am here! I climb! I haste! Ahu­wora! The stones slip un­der my feet! Wait my com­ing, O most in­fa­mous Ban­dar log!”

He panted up the ter­race only to dis­ap­pear to the head in a wave of mon­keys, but he threw him­self squarely on his haunches, and spread­ing out his fore paws, hugged as many as he could hold, and then be­gan to hit with a reg­u­lar bat-bat-bat, like the flip­ping strokes of a pad­dle-wheel.

A crash and a splash told Mowgli that Bagheera had fought his way to the tank, where the mon­keys could not fol­low. The pan­ther lay gasp­ing for breath, his head just out of wa­ter, while the mon­keys stood three deep on the red stone steps, danc­ing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out to help Baloo. It was then that Bagheera lifted up his drip­ping chin, and in de­spair gave the Snake’s Call for pro­tec­tion—“We be of one blood, ye and I”—for he be­lieved that Kaa had turned tail at the last minute. Even Baloo, half smoth­ered un­der the mon­keys on the edge of the ter­race, could not help chuck­ling as he heard the big Black Pan­ther ask­ing for help.

Kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, land­ing with a wrench that dis­lodged a cop­ing-stone into the ditch. He had no in­ten­tion of los­ing any ad­van­tage of the ground, and coiled and un­coiled him­self once or twice, to be sure that ev­ery foot of his long body was in work­ing or­der.

All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the mon­keys yelled in the tank round Bagheera, and Mang, the Bat, fly­ing to and fro, car­ried the news of the great bat­tle over the jun­gle, till even Hathi, the Wild Ele­phant, trum­peted, and, far away, scat­tered bands of the Mon­key Folk woke and came leap­ing along the tree-roads to help their com­rades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused all the day-birds for miles round.

Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anx­ious to kill. The fight­ing strength of a python is in the driv­ing blow of his head, backed by all the strength and weight of his body. If you can imag­ine a lance, or a bat­ter­ing-ram, or a ham­mer, weigh­ing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind liv­ing in the han­dle of it, you can imag­ine roughly what Kaa was like when he fought. A python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know. His first stroke was de­liv­ered into the heart of the crowd round Baloo—was sent home with shut mouth in si­lence, and there was no need of a sec­ond. The mon­keys scat­tered with cries of “Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run!”

Gen­er­a­tions of mon­keys had been scared into good be­hav­ior by the sto­ries their el­ders told them of Kaa, the night-thief, who could slip along the branches as qui­etly as moss grows, and steal away the strong­est mon­key that ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make him­self look so like a dead branch or a rot­ten stump that the wis­est were de­ceived till the branch caught them, and then—

Kaa was ev­ery­thing that the mon­keys feared in the jun­gle, for none of them knew the lim­its of his power, none of them could look him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug. And so they ran, stam­mer­ing with ter­ror, to the walls and the roofs of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of re­lief. His fur was much thicker than Bagheera’s, but he had suf­fered sorely in the fight. Then Kaa opened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hiss­ing word, and the far­away mon­keys, hur­ry­ing to the de­fense of the Cold Lairs, stayed where they were, cow­er­ing, till the loaded branches bent and crack­led un­der them. The mon­keys on the walls and the empty houses stopped their cries, and in the still­ness that fell upon the city Mowgli heard Bagheera shak­ing his wet sides as he came up from the tank.

Then the clamor broke out again. The mon­keys leaped higher up the walls; they clung round the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they skipped along the bat­tle­ments; while Mowgli, danc­ing in the sum­mer­house, put his eye to the screen­work and hooted owl-fash­ion be­tween his front teeth, to show his de­ri­sion and con­tempt.

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

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

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

“I am not sure that they have not pulled me into a hun­dred lit­tle bear­lings,” said Baloo, gravely shak­ing one leg af­ter the other. “Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives—Bagheera and I.”

“No mat­ter. Where is the man­ling?”

“Here, in a trap. I can­not climb out,” cried Mowgli. The curve of the bro­ken dome was above his head.

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

“Hah!” said Kaa, with a chuckle, “he has friends ev­ery­where, this man­ling. Stand back, Man­ling; and hide you, O Poi­son Peo­ple. I break down the wall.”

Kaa looked care­fully till he found a dis­col­ored crack in the mar­ble trac­ery show­ing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get the dis­tance, and then lift­ing up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power, smash­ing blows, nose-first. The screen­work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and rub­bish, and Mowgli leaped through the open­ing and flung him­self be­tween Baloo and Bagheera—an arm round each big neck.

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

“I am sore, hun­gry, and not a lit­tle bruised; but, oh, they have han­dled ye griev­ously, my Brothers! Ye bleed.”

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

“It is noth­ing, it is noth­ing if thou art safe, O my pride of all lit­tle frogs!” whim­pered Baloo.

“Of that we shall judge later,” said Bagheera, in a dry voice that Mowgli did not at all like. “But here is Kaa, to whom we owe the bat­tle and thou ow­est thy life. Thank him ac­cord­ing to our cus­toms, Mowgli.”

Mowgli turned and saw the great python’s head sway­ing a foot above his own.

“So this is the man­ling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not so un­like the Ban­dar-log. Have a care, Man­ling, that I do not mis­take thee for a mon­key some twi­light when I have newly changed my coat.”

“We be of one blood, thou and I,” Mowgli an­swered. “I take my life from thee, tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hun­gry, O Kaa.”

“All thanks, Lit­tle Brother,” said Kaa, though his eyes twin­kled. “And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I may fol­low when next he goes abroad.”

“I kill noth­ing—I am too lit­tle—but I drive goats to­ward such as can use them. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the truth. I have some skill in these”—he held out his hands—“and if ever thou art in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee, to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good hunt­ing to ye all, my mas­ters.”

“Well said,” growled Baloo, for Mowgli had re­turned thanks very pret­tily. The python dropped his head lightly for a minute on Mowgli’s shoul­der. “A brave heart and a cour­te­ous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jun­gle, Man­ling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what fol­lows it is not well that thou shouldst see.”

The moon was sink­ing be­hind the hills and the lines of trem­bling mon­keys hud­dled to­gether on the walls and bat­tle­ments looked like ragged, shaky fringes of things. Baloo went down to the tank for a drink, and Bagheera be­gan to put his fur in or­der, as Kaa glided out into the cen­ter of the ter­race and brought his jaws to­gether with a ring­ing snap that drew all the mon­keys’ eyes upon him.

“The moon sets,” he said. “Is there yet light to see?”

From the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree­tops: “We see, O Kaa!”

“Good! Be­gins now the Dance—the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa. Sit still and watch.”

He turned twice or thrice in a big cir­cle, weav­ing his head from right to left. Then he be­gan mak­ing loops and fig­ures of eight with his body, and soft, oozy tri­an­gles that melted into squares and five-sided fig­ures, and coiled mounds, never rest­ing, never hur­ry­ing, and never stop­ping his low, hum­ming song. It grew darker and darker, till at last the drag­ging, shift­ing coils dis­ap­peared, but they could hear the rus­tle of the scales.

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

“Ban­dar-log,” said the voice of Kaa at last, “can ye stir foot or hand with­out my or­der? Speak!”

“Without thy or­der we can­not stir foot or hand, O Kaa!”

“Good! Come all one pace nearer to me.”

The lines of the mon­keys swayed for­ward help­lessly, and Baloo and Bagheera took one stiff step for­ward with them.

“Nearer!” hissed Kaa, and they all moved again.

Mowgli laid his hands on Baloo and Bagheera to get them away, and the two great beasts started as though they had been waked from a dream.

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

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

“Whoof!” said Baloo, when he stood un­der the still trees again. “Never more will I make an ally of Kaa,” and he shook him­self all over.

“He knows more than we,” said Bagheera, trem­bling. “In a lit­tle time, had I stayed, I should have walked down his throat.”

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

“But what was the mean­ing of it all?” said Mowgli, who did not know any­thing of a python’s pow­ers of fas­ci­na­tion. “I saw no more than a big snake mak­ing fool­ish cir­cles till the dark came. And his nose was all sore. Ho! Ho!”

“Mowgli,” said Bagheera, an­grily, “his nose was sore on thy ac­count; as my ears and sides and paws, and Baloo’s neck and shoul­ders are bit­ten on thy ac­count. Nei­ther Baloo nor Bagheera will be able to hunt with plea­sure for many days.”

“It is noth­ing,” said Baloo; “we have the man-cub again.”

“True; but he has cost us most heav­ily in time which might have been spent in good hunt­ing, in wounds, in hair—I am half plucked along my back—and last of all, in honor. For, re­mem­ber, Mowgli, I, who am the Black Pan­ther, was forced to call upon Kaa for pro­tec­tion, and Baloo and I were both made stupid as lit­tle birds by the Hunger-Dance. All this, Man-cub, came of thy play­ing with the Ban­dar-log.”

“True; it is true,” said Mowgli, sor­row­fully. “I am an evil man-cub, and my stom­ach is sad in me.”

“Mf! What says the Law of the Jun­gle, Baloo?”

Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trou­ble, but he could not tam­per with the Law, so he mum­bled, “Sor­row never stays pun­ish­ment. But re­mem­ber, Bagheera, he is very lit­tle.”

“I will re­mem­ber; but he has done mis­chief; and blows must be dealt now. Mowgli, hast thou any­thing to say?”

“Noth­ing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou art wounded. It is just.”

Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps; from a pan­ther’s point of view they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs, but for a seven year-old boy they amounted to as se­vere a beat­ing as you could wish to avoid. When it was all over Mowgli sneezed, and picked him­self up with­out a word.

“Now,” said Bagheera, “jump on my back, Lit­tle Brother, and we will go home.”

One of the beau­ties of Jun­gle Law is that pun­ish­ment set­tles all scores. There is no nag­ging af­ter­ward.

Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s back and slept so deeply that he never waked when he was put down by Mother Wolf’s side in the home-cave.

Road-Song of the Bandar-Log

Here we go in a flung fes­toon,
Halfway up to the jeal­ous moon!
Don’t you envy our prance­ful bands?
Don’t you wish you had ex­tra hands?
Wouldn’t you like if your tails were—so—
Curved in the shape of a Cupid’s bow?
Now you’re an­gry, but—never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down be­hind!

Here we sit in a branchy row,
Think­ing of beau­ti­ful things we know;
Dream­ing of deeds that we mean to do,
All com­plete, in a minute or two—
Some­thing no­ble and grand and good,
Won by merely wish­ing we could.
Now we’re go­ing to—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 last tale but one. When Mowgli left the wolf’s cave af­ter the fight with the Pack at the Coun­cil Rock, he went down to the plowed lands where the vil­lagers lived, but he would not stop there be­cause it was too near to the jun­gle, and he knew that he had made at least one bad en­emy at the Coun­cil. So he hur­ried on, keep­ing to the rough road that ran down the val­ley, and fol­lowed it at a steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a coun­try that he did not know. The val­ley opened out into a great plain dot­ted over with rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a lit­tle vil­lage, and at the other the thick jun­gle came down in a sweep to the graz­ing-grounds, and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over the plain, cat­tle and buf­faloes were graz­ing, and when the lit­tle boys in charge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yel­low pariah dogs that hang about ev­ery In­dian vil­lage barked. Mowgli walked on, for he was feel­ing hun­gry, and when he came to the vil­lage gate he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up be­fore the gate at twi­light, pushed to one side.

“Umph!” he said, for he had come across more than one such bar­ri­cade in his night ram­bles af­ter things to eat. “So men are afraid of the Peo­ple of the Jun­gle here also.” He sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one street of the vil­lage shout­ing for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with a red and yel­low mark on his fore­head. The priest came to the gate, and with him at least a hun­dred peo­ple, who stared and talked and shouted and pointed at Mowgli.

“They have no man­ners, these Men Folk,” said Mowgli to him­self. “Only the gray ape would be­have as they do.” So he threw back his long hair and frowned at the crowd.

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

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

“Arré! Arré!” said two or three women to­gether. “To be bit­ten by wolves, poor child! He is a hand­some boy. He has eyes like red fire. By my honor, Mes­sua, he is not un­like thy boy that was taken by the tiger.”

“Let me look,” said a woman with heavy cop­per rings on her wrists and an­kles, and she peered at Mowgli un­der the palm of her hand. “In­deed he is not. He is thin­ner, but he has the very look of my boy.”

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

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

The crowd parted as the woman beck­oned Mowgli to her hut, where there was a red lac­quered bed­stead, a great earthen grain-chest with cu­ri­ous raised pat­terns on it, half a dozen cop­per cook­ing-pots, an im­age of a Hindu god in a lit­tle al­cove, and on the wall a real look­ing-glass, such as they sell at the coun­try fairs.

She gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid her hand on his head and looked into his eyes; for she thought per­haps that he might be her real son come back from the jun­gle where the tiger had taken him. So she said: “Nathoo, O Nathoo!” Mowgli did not show that he knew the name. “Dost thou not re­mem­ber the day when I gave thee thy new shoes?” She touched his foot, and it was al­most as hard as horn. “No,” she said, sor­row­fully; “those feet have never worn shoes, but thou art very like my Nathoo, and thou shalt be my son.”

Mowgli was un­easy, be­cause he had never been un­der a roof be­fore; but as he looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if he wanted to get away, and that the win­dow had no fas­ten­ings. “What is the good of a man,” he said to him­self at last, “if he does not un­der­stand man’s talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the jun­gle. I must learn their talk.”

It was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to im­i­tate the 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 un­der any­thing that looked so like a pan­ther-trap as that hut, and when they shut the door he went through the win­dow. “Give him his will,” said Mes­sua’s hus­band. “Re­mem­ber he can never till now have slept on a bed. If he is in­deed sent in the place of our son he will not run away.”

So Mowgli stretched him­self in some long, clean grass at the edge of the field, but be­fore he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked him un­der the chin.

“Phew!” said Gray Brother (he was the el­dest of Mother Wolf’s cubs). “This is a poor re­ward for fol­low­ing thee twenty miles. Thou smellest of wood-smoke and cat­tle—al­to­gether like a man al­ready. Wake, Lit­tle Brother; I bring news.”

“Are all well in the jun­gle?” said Mowgli, hug­ging him.

“All ex­cept the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now, lis­ten. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows again, for he is badly singed. When he re­turns he swears that he will lay thy bones in the Wain­gunga.”

“There are two words to that. I also have made a lit­tle prom­ise. But news is al­ways good. I am tired tonight—very tired with new things, Gray Brother—but bring me the news al­ways.”

“Thou wilt not for­get that thou art a wolf? Men will not make thee for­get?” said Gray Brother, anx­iously.

“Never. I will al­ways re­mem­ber that I love thee and all in our cave; but also I will al­ways re­mem­ber that I have been cast out of the Pack.”

“And that thou mayest be cast out of an­other pack. Men are only men, Lit­tle Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. When I come down here again, I will wait for thee in the bam­boos at the edge of the graz­ing-ground.”

For three months af­ter that night Mowgli hardly ever left the vil­lage gate, he was so busy learn­ing the ways and cus­toms of men. First he had to wear a cloth round him, which an­noyed him hor­ri­bly; and then he had to learn about money, which he did not in the least un­der­stand, and about plow­ing, of which he did not see the use. Then the lit­tle chil­dren in the vil­lage made him very an­gry. Luck­ily, the Law of the Jun­gle had taught him to keep his tem­per, for in the jun­gle, life and food de­pend on keep­ing your tem­per; but when they made fun of him be­cause he would not play games or fly kites, or be­cause he mis­pro­nounced some word, only the knowl­edge that it was un­sports­man­like to kill lit­tle naked cubs kept him from pick­ing them up and break­ing them in two.

He did not know his own strength in the least. In the jun­gle he knew he was weak com­pared with the beasts, but in the vil­lage, peo­ple said he was as strong as a bull.

And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the dif­fer­ence that caste makes be­tween man and man. When the pot­ter’s don­key slipped in the clay-pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their jour­ney to the mar­ket at Khan­hi­wara. That was very shock­ing, too, for the pot­ter is a low-caste man, and his don­key is worse. When the priest scolded him, Mowgli threat­ened to put him on the don­key, too, and the priest told Mes­sua’s hus­band that Mowgli had bet­ter be set to work as soon as pos­si­ble; and the vil­lage head­man told Mowgli that he would have to go out with the buf­faloes next day, and herd them while they grazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, be­cause he had been ap­pointed a ser­vant of the vil­lage, as it were, he went off to a cir­cle that met ev­ery evening on a ma­sonry plat­form un­der a great fig-tree. It was the vil­lage club, and the head­man and the watch­man and the bar­ber (who knew all the gos­sip of the vil­lage), and old Buldeo, the vil­lage hunter, who had a Tower mus­ket, met and smoked. The mon­keys sat and talked in the up­per branches, and there was a hole un­der the plat­form where a co­bra lived, and he had his lit­tle plat­ter of milk ev­ery night be­cause he was sa­cred; and the old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big huqas [the wa­ter-pipes] till far into the night. They told won­der­ful tales of gods and men and ghosts; and Buldeo told even more won­der­ful ones of the ways of beasts in the jun­gle, till the eyes of the chil­dren sit­ting out­side the cir­cle bulged out of their heads. Most of the tales were about an­i­mals, for the jun­gle was al­ways at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again the tiger car­ried off a man at twi­light, within sight of the vil­lage gates.

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

Buldeo was ex­plain­ing how the tiger that had car­ried away Mes­sua’s son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was in­hab­ited by the ghost of a wicked old money­len­der, who had died some years ago. “And I know that this is true,” he said, “be­cause Pu­run Dass al­ways limped from the blow that he got in a riot when his ac­count-books were burned, and the tiger that I speak of he limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are un­equal.”

“True, true; that must be the truth,” said the gray­beards, nod­ding to­gether.

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

Buldeo was speech­less with sur­prise for a mo­ment, and the head­man stared.

“Oho! It is the jun­gle brat, is it?” said Buldeo. “If thou art so wise, bet­ter bring his hide to Khan­hi­wara, for the Govern­ment has set a hun­dred ru­pees ($30) on his life. Bet­ter still, do not talk when thy el­ders speak.”

Mowgli rose to go. “All the evening I have lain here lis­ten­ing,” he called back over his shoul­der, “and, ex­cept once or twice, Buldeo has not said one word of truth con­cern­ing the jun­gle, which is at his very doors. How, then, shall I be­lieve the tales of ghosts and gods and gob­lins which he says he has seen?”

“It is full time that boy went to herd­ing,” said the head­man, while Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli’s im­per­ti­nence.

The cus­tom of most In­dian vil­lages is for a few boys to take the cat­tle and buf­faloes out to graze in the early morn­ing, and bring them back at night; and the very cat­tle that would tram­ple a white man to death al­low them­selves to be banged and bul­lied and shouted at by chil­dren that hardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with the herds they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cat­tle. But if they strag­gle to pick flow­ers or hunt lizards, they are some­times car­ried off. Mowgli went through the vil­lage street in the dawn, sit­ting on the back of Rama, the great herd bull; and the slaty-blue buf­faloes, with their long, back­ward-sweep­ing horns and sav­age eyes, rose out of their byres, one by one, and fol­lowed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to the chil­dren with him that he was the mas­ter. He beat the buf­faloes with a long, pol­ished bam­boo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the cat­tle by them­selves, while he went on with the buf­faloes, and to be very care­ful not to stray away from the herd.

An In­dian graz­ing-ground is all rocks and scrub and tus­socks and lit­tle ravines, among which the herds scat­ter and dis­ap­pear. The buf­faloes gen­er­ally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wal­low­ing or bask­ing in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them on to the edge of the plain where the Wain­gunga River came out of the jun­gle; then he dropped from Rama’s neck, trot­ted off to a bam­boo clump, and found Gray Brother. “Ah,” said Gray Brother, “I have waited here very many days. What is the mean­ing of this cat­tle-herd­ing work?”

“It is an or­der,” said Mowgli. “I am a vil­lage herd for a while. What news of Shere Khan?”

“He has come back to this coun­try, and has waited here a long time for thee. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. But he means to kill thee.”

“Very good,” said Mowgli. “So long as he is away do thou or one of the broth­ers sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come out of the vil­lage. When he comes back wait for me in the ravine by the dhâk-tree in the cen­ter of the plain. We need not walk into Shere Khan’s mouth.”

Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while the buf­faloes grazed round him. Herd­ing in In­dia is one of the lazi­est things in the world. The cat­tle move and crunch, and lie down, and move on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buf­faloes very sel­dom say any­thing, but get down into the muddy pools one af­ter an­other, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and star­ing china-blue eyes show above the sur­face, and there they lie like logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd-chil­dren hear one kite (never any more) whistling al­most out of sight over­head, and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and fol­low, and the next, and the next, and al­most be­fore they were dead there would be a score of hun­gry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and wake and sleep again, and weave lit­tle bas­kets of dried grass and put grasshop­pers in them; or catch two pray­ing-man­tises and make them fight; or string a neck­lace of red and black jun­gle-nuts; or watch a lizard bask­ing on a rock, or a snake hunt­ing a frog near the wal­lows. Then they sing long, long songs with odd na­tive qua­vers at the end of them, and the day seems longer than most peo­ple’s whole lives, and per­haps they make a mud cas­tle with mud fig­ures of men and horses and buf­faloes, and put reeds into the men’s hands, and pre­tend that they are kings and the fig­ures are their armies, or that they are gods to be wor­shiped. Then evening comes, and the chil­dren call, and the buf­faloes lum­ber up out of the sticky mud with noises like gun­shots go­ing off one af­ter the other, and they all string across the gray plain back to the twin­kling vil­lage lights.

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

At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the sig­nal place, and he laughed and headed the buf­faloes for the ravine by the dhâk-tree, which was all cov­ered with golden-red flow­ers. There sat Gray Brother, ev­ery bris­tle on his back lifted.

“He has hid­den for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He crossed the ranges last night with Tabaqui, hot­foot 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 in the dawn. Now he is telling all his wis­dom to the kites, but he told me ev­ery­thing be­fore I broke his back. Shere Khan’s plan is to wait for thee at the 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 meant life or death to him.

“He killed at dawn—a pig—and he has drunk too. Re­mem­ber, Shere Khan could never fast even for the sake of re­venge.”

“Oh! Fool, fool! What a cub’s cub it is! Eaten and drunk too, and he thinks that I shall wait till he has slept! Now, where does he lie up? If there were but ten of us we might pull him down as he lies. Th­ese buf­faloes will not charge un­less they wind him, and I can­not speak their lan­guage. Can we get be­hind 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 the Wain­gunga. That opens out on the plain not half a mile from here. I can take the herd round through the jun­gle to the head of the ravine and then sweep down—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 and dropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a huge gray head that Mowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most des­o­late cry of all the jun­gle—the hunt­ing-howl of a wolf at mid­day.

“Akela! Akela!” said Mowgli, clap­ping his hands. “I might have known that thou wouldst 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 by them­selves.”

The two wolves ran, ladies’-chain fash­ion, in and out of the herd, which snorted and threw up its head, and sep­a­rated into two clumps. In one the cow-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 out of him. In the other the bulls and the young bulls snorted and stamped; but, though they looked more im­pos­ing, they were much less dan­ger­ous, for they had no calves 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 the foot of the ravine.”

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

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

“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 work than driv­ing black-buck. Didst thou think these crea­tures could move so swiftly?” Mowgli called.

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

“Ay, turn! Swiftly turn them. Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I could only tell him what I need of him to­day!”

The bulls were turned to the right this time, and crashed into the stand­ing thicket. 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 the buf­faloes had gone mad and run away.

But Mowgli’s plan was sim­ple enough. All he wanted to do was to make a big cir­cle up­hill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the bulls down it and catch Shere Khan be­tween the bulls and the cows, for he knew that af­ter a meal and a full drink Shere Khan would not be in any con­di­tion to fight or to clam­ber 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 hurry the rear­guard. It was a long, long cir­cle, for they did not wish to get too near the ravine and give Shere Khan warn­ing. At last Mowgli rounded up the be­wil­dered herd at the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down to the ravine it­self. From that height you could see across the tops of the trees down to the plain be­low; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of sat­is­fac­tion that they ran nearly straight up and down, and the vines and creep­ers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out.

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

He put his hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine—it was al­most like shout­ing 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-fed tiger just awak­ened.

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

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

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

“Ha! Ha!” said Mowgli, on his back. “Now thou know­est!” and the tor­rent of black horns, foam­ing muz­zles, and star­ing eyes whirled down the ravine like boul­ders in flood-time; the weaker buf­faloes be­ing shoul­dered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through the creep­ers. They knew what the busi­ness was be­fore them—the ter­ri­ble charge of the buf­falo-herd, against which no tiger can hope to stand. Shere Khan heard the thun­der of their hoofs, picked him­self up, and lum­bered down the ravine, look­ing from side to side for some way of es­cape, but the walls of the ravine were straight, and he had to keep 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 nar­row cut rang. Mowgli heard an an­swer­ing bel­low from the foot of the ravine, saw Shere Khan turn (the tiger knew if the worst came to the worst it was bet­ter to meet 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 his heels, crashed full into the other herd, while the weaker buf­faloes were lifted clean off their feet by the shock of the meet­ing. That charge car­ried both herds out into the plain, gor­ing and stamp­ing and snort­ing. Mowgli watched his time, and slipped off Rama’s neck, lay­ing about him right and left with his stick.

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

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

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

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

A boy trained among men would never have dreamed of skin­ning a ten-foot tiger alone, but Mowgli knew bet­ter than any­one else how an an­i­mal’s skin is fit­ted on, and how it can be taken off. But it was hard work, and Mowgli slashed and tore and grunted for an hour, while the wolves lolled out their tongues, or came for­ward and tugged as he or­dered them.

Presently a hand fell on his shoul­der, and look­ing up he saw Buldeo with the Tower mus­ket. The chil­dren had told the vil­lage about the buf­falo stam­pede, and Buldeo went out an­grily, only too anx­ious to cor­rect Mowgli for not tak­ing bet­ter care of the herd. The wolves 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 a tiger! Where did the buf­faloes kill him? It is the Lame Tiger, too, and there is a hun­dred ru­pees on his head. Well, well, we will over­look thy let­ting the herd run off, and per­haps I will give thee one of the ru­pees of the re­ward when I have taken the skin to Khan­hi­wara.” He fum­bled in his waist­cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to singe Shere Khan’s whiskers. Most na­tive hunters singe a tiger’s whiskers to pre­vent his ghost haunt­ing them.

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

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

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

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

“Ye-es,” he said, be­tween his teeth. “Thou art al­to­gether right, Buldeo. Thou wilt never give me one anna of the re­ward. There is an old war be­tween this lame 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 his chance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf who obeyed the or­ders of this boy who had pri­vate wars with man-eat­ing tigers was not a com­mon an­i­mal. It was sor­cery, magic of the worst kind, thought Buldeo, and he won­dered whether the amulet round his neck would pro­tect him. He lay as still as still, ex­pect­ing ev­ery minute to see Mowgli turn 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 herd-boy. 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. Let him go, Akela.”

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

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

“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 vil­lage Mowgli saw lights, and heard the conches and bells in the tem­ple blow­ing and bang­ing. Half the vil­lage seemed to be wait­ing for him by the gate. “That is be­cause I have killed Shere Khan,” he said to him­self; but a shower of stones whis­tled 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 a wolf again. Shoot, Buldeo, shoot!”

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

“More sor­cery!” shouted the vil­lagers. “He can turn bul­lets. Buldeo, that was thy 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, sit­ting down com­pos­edly. “It is in my head that, if bul­lets mean any­thing, they would cast thee out.”

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

“Again? Last time it was be­cause I was a man. This time it is be­cause I am a wolf. 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 do not 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 big tree at dusk. I have at least paid for thy son’s life. Farewell; and run quickly, for I shall send the herd in more swiftly than their brick­bats. I am no 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 needed Akela’s yell, but charged through the gate like a whirl­wind, scat­ter­ing the crowd right and left.

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

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

When the moon rose over the plain, mak­ing it look all milky, the hor­ri­fied vil­lagers 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 like fire. 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 the jun­gle, till he ended by say­ing that Akela stood up on his hind legs and talked like a man.

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

“They have cast me out from the Man Pack, Mother,” shouted Mowgli, “but I come with the hide of Shere Khan to keep my word.” Mother Wolf walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs be­hind her, and her eyes glowed 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 the hunted. It is well done.”

“Lit­tle Brother, it is well done,” said a deep voice in the thicket. “We were lonely in the jun­gle with­out thee,” and Bagheera came run­ning to Mowgli’s bare feet. They clam­bered up the Coun­cil Rock to­gether, and Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone where Akela used to sit, and pegged it down with four sliv­ers of bam­boo, and Akela lay down upon it, and called the old call to the Coun­cil, “Look—look well, O Wolves!” ex­actly as he had called when Mowgli was first brought there.

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

“Look well, O Wolves. Have I kept my word?” said Mowgli when he had fin­ished; 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 this law­less­ness, and we would be the Free Peo­ple once more.”

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

“Man Pack and Wolf Pack have cast me out,” said Mowgli. “Now I will hunt alone in 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 day on. But he was not al­ways alone, be­cause years af­ter­ward he be­came a man and mar­ried.

But that is a story for grownups.

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 I have done.
Shere Khan said he would kill—would kill! At the gates in the twi­light he would kill 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, Lone Wolf, for there is big game afoot.
Bring up the great bull-buf­faloes, the blue-skinned herd-bulls with the an­gry eyes. Drive them to and fro as I or­der.
Sleep­est thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, O wake! Here come I, and the bulls are be­hind.
Rama, the King of the Buf­faloes, stamped with his foot. Waters of the Wain­gunga, whither went Shere Khan?
He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Pea­cock, that he should fly. He is not 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 lies the 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. I am ashamed to meet all these peo­ple.
Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I may go to the Coun­cil Rock.
By the Bull that bought me I have made a prom­ise—a lit­tle prom­ise. Only thy coat is lack­ing be­fore I keep my word.
With the knife—with the knife that men use—with the knife of the hunter, the man, I will stoop down for my gift.
Waters of the Wain­gunga, bear wit­ness that Shere Khan gives me his coat for the love that he bears me. Pull, Gray Brother! Pull, Akela! Heavy is the hide of Shere Khan. Heavy is the hide of Shere Khan.
The Man Pack are an­gry. They throw stones and talk child’s talk. My mouth is bleed­ing. Let us run away.
Through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly with me, my broth­ers. We will 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, but they were afraid of me. Why?
Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jun­gle is shut to me and the vil­lage gates are shut. Why?
As Mang flies be­tween the beasts and the birds so fly I be­tween the vil­lage and the jun­gle. Why?
I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my heart is very heavy. My mouth is cut and 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. The wa­ter 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, O Wolves!
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, there 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, or North 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 the rig­ging of a steamer go­ing to Ja­pan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a cou­ple of days till he was fit to fly back to St. Paul’s again. Lim­mer­shin is a very odd lit­tle bird, but he knows how to tell the truth.

No­body comes to No­vas­tosh­nah ex­cept on busi­ness, and the only peo­ple who have reg­u­lar busi­ness there are the seals. They come in the sum­mer months by hun­dreds and hun­dreds of thou­sands out of the cold gray sea; for No­vas­tosh­nah Beach 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 he hap­pened to be in—would swim like a tor­pedo-boat straight for No­vas­tosh­nah, and spend a month fight­ing with his com­pan­ions for a good place on the rocks as close to the sea as pos­si­ble. Sea Catch was fif­teen years old, a huge gray fur-seal with al­most a mane on his shoul­ders, and long, wicked dog­teeth. When he heaved him­self up on his front flip­pers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and his weight, if any­one had been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly seven hun­dred pounds. He was scarred all over with the marks of sav­age fights, but he was al­ways ready for just one fight more. He would put his head on one side, as though he were afraid to look his en­emy in the face; then he would shoot it out like light­ning, and when the big teeth were firmly fixed on the other seal’s neck, the other seal might get away if he could, but Sea Catch would not help him.

Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the Rules of the Beach. He only wanted room by the sea for his nurs­ery; but as there were forty or fifty thou­sand other seals hunt­ing for the same thing each spring, the whistling, bel­low­ing, roar­ing, and blow­ing on the beach was some­thing fright­ful.

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

Sea Catch had just fin­ished his forty-fifth fight one spring when Matkah, his soft, sleek, gen­tle-eyed wife came up out of the sea, and he caught her by the scruff 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 he stayed on the beaches, and so his tem­per was gen­er­ally bad. Matkah knew bet­ter than to an­swer back. She looked around and cooed: “How thought­ful of you. You’ve taken 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 blind, and his sides 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 though you had been fight­ing with the Killer Whale.”

“I haven’t been do­ing any­thing but fight since the mid­dle of May. The beach is dis­grace­fully crowded this sea­son. I’ve met at least a hun­dred seals from Lukan­non 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 Is­land in­stead of this crowded place,” said Matkah.

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

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

Kotick, Matkah’s baby, was born in the mid­dle of that con­fu­sion, and he was all head and shoul­ders, with pale, wa­tery blue eyes, as tiny seals must be; but there was some­thing about his coat that made his mother look at him very closely.

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

“Empty clamshells and dry sea­weed!” snorted Sea Catch. “There never has been such 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 the low, 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 pad­dled and scram­bled about by his mother’s side, and learned to scuf­fle out of the way when his fa­ther was fight­ing with an­other seal, and the two rolled and roared up 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, and throve upon it.

The first thing he did was to crawl in­land, and there he met tens of thou­sands of ba­bies of his own age, and they played to­gether like pup­pies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and played again. The old peo­ple in the nurs­eries took no no­tice of them, and the hol­luschickie kept to their own grounds, so the ba­bies had a beau­ti­ful play­time.

When Matkah came back from her deep-sea fish­ing she would go straight to their play­ground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait un­til she heard Kotick bleat. Then she would take the straight­est of straight lines in his di­rec­tion, strik­ing out with her fore flip­pers and knock­ing the young­sters head over heels right and left. There were al­ways a few hun­dred moth­ers hunt­ing for their 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 go swim­ming when there is a heavy sea, noth­ing will hurt you here.”

Lit­tle seals can no more swim than lit­tle chil­dren, but they are un­happy till they learn. The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wave car­ried him out be­yond his depth, and his big head sank and his lit­tle hind flip­pers flew up ex­actly as his mother had told him in the song, and if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would have drowned.

After that he learned to lie in a beach-pool and let the wash of the waves just cover him and lift him up while he pad­dled, but he al­ways kept his eye open for big waves that might hurt. He was two weeks learn­ing to use his flip­pers; and all that while he floun­dered in and out of the wa­ter, and coughed and grunted and crawled up the beach and took cat­naps on the sand, and went back 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 un­der the rollers; or com­ing in on top of a comber and land­ing with a swash and a splut­ter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or stand­ing up on his tail and scratch­ing his head as the old peo­ple did; or play­ing “I’m the King of the Cas­tle” on slip­pery, weedy rocks that just stuck out of the wash. Now and then he would see a thin fin, like a big shark’s fin, drift­ing along close to shore, and he knew that that was the Killer Whale, the Gram­pus, who eats young seals 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, by fam­i­lies and tribes, and there was no more fight­ing over the nurs­eries, and the hol­luschickie 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 sleep on his back with his flip­pers tucked down by his side and his lit­tle nose just out of the wa­ter. No cra­dle is so com­fort­able as the long, rock­ing swell of the Pa­cific. When Kotick felt his skin tin­gle all over, Matkah told him he was learn­ing the “feel of the wa­ter,” and that tingly, prickly feel­ings meant bad weather com­ing, and he must swim hard and get away.

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

This was one of very many things that Kotick learned, and he was al­ways learn­ing. Matkah taught him how to fol­low the cod and the hal­ibut along the un­der­sea banks, and wrench the rock­ling out of his hole among the weeds; how to skirt the wrecks ly­ing a hun­dred fath­oms be­low wa­ter, and dart like a ri­fle-bul­let in at one port­hole and out at an­other as the fishes ran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the light­ning was rac­ing all over the sky, and wave his flip­per po­litely to the Stumpy-tailed Al­ba­tross and the Man-of-war Hawk as they went down the wind; how to jump three or four feet clear of the wa­ter, like a dol­phin, flip­pers close to the side and tail curved; to leave the fly­ing-fish alone be­cause they are all bony; to take the shoul­der-piece out of a cod at full 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 know about deep-sea fish­ing was not worth the know­ing, and all that time he never set flip­per on dry ground.

One day, how­ever, as he was ly­ing half asleep in the warm wa­ter some­where off the Is­land of Juan Fer­nan­dez, he felt faint and lazy all over, just as hu­man peo­ple do when the spring is in their legs, and he re­mem­bered the good firm beaches of No­vas­tosh­nah seven thou­sand miles away; the games his com­pan­ions played, the smell of the sea­weed, the seal-roar, and the fight­ing. That very minute he turned north, swim­ming steadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for the same place, and they said: “Greet­ing, Kotick! This year we are all hol­luschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the break­ers off 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, he only said: “Swim quickly! My bones are aching for the land.” And so they all came to the beaches where they had been born and heard the old seals, their fa­thers, fight­ing in the rolling mist.

That night Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the year­ling seals. The sea is full 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 flash when 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 in the new wild wheat, and told sto­ries of what they had done while they had been at sea. They talked about the Pa­cific as boys would talk about a wood that they had been nut­ting in, and if any­one had un­der­stood them, he could have gone away and made such a chart of that ocean as never was. The three- and four-year-old hol­luschickie 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 till you’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 the speaker over, a cou­ple of black-haired men with flat red faces came from be­hind a sand-dune, and Kotick, who had never seen a man be­fore, coughed and low­ered his head. The hol­luschickie just bun­dled off a few yards and sat star­ing stupidly. The men were no less than Ker­ick Booterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the is­land, and Pata­la­mon, his son. They came from the lit­tle vil­lage not half a mile from the seal nurs­eries, and they were de­cid­ing what seals they would drive up to the killing-pens (for the seals were driven just like sheep), to be turned into seal­skin 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 an Aleut, 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 I was born. Per­haps it is old Za­har­rof’s ghost. He was lost last year in the big gale.”

“I’m not go­ing near him,” said Pata­la­mon. “He’s un­lucky. Do you re­ally think he is 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. The men ought to skin two hun­dred to­day, but it’s the be­gin­ning of the sea­son, and they are new to the work. A hun­dred will do. Quick!”

Pata­la­mon rat­tled a pair of seal’s shoul­der-bones in front of a herd of hol­luschickie and they stopped dead, puff­ing and blow­ing. Then he stepped near, and the seals be­gan to move, and Ker­ick headed them in­land, and they never tried to get back to their com­pan­ions. Hun­dreds and hun­dreds of thou­sands of seals watched them be­ing driven, but they went on play­ing just the same. Kotick was the only one who asked ques­tions, and none of his com­pan­ions could tell him any­thing, ex­cept that the men al­ways drove seals in that way for six weeks or two months of ev­ery year.

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

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

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

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

Ten min­utes later lit­tle Kotick did not rec­og­nize his friends any more, for their skins were ripped off from the nose to the hind flip­pers—whipped off and thrown down on the ground in a pile.

That was enough for Kotick. He turned and gal­loped (a seal can gal­lop very swiftly for a short time) back to the sea, his lit­tle new mus­tache bristling with hor­ror. At Sea-Lion’s Neck, where the great sea-li­ons sit on the edge of the surf, he flung him­self flip­per over­head into the cool wa­ter, and rocked there, gasp­ing mis­er­ably. “What’s here?” said a sea-lion, 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 are mak­ing as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Ker­ick pol­ish­ing off a drove. He’s done that for thirty years.”

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

“Well done for a year­ling!” said the sea-lion, who could ap­pre­ci­ate good swim­ming. “I sup­pose it is rather aw­ful from your way of look­ing at it; but if you 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 be driven.”

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

“I’ve fol­lowed the poltoos [the hal­ibut] for twenty years, and I can’t say I’ve found it yet. But look here—you seem to have a fond­ness for talk­ing to your bet­ters; sup­pose you go to Wal­rus Islet and talk to Sea Vitch. He may know some­thing. Don’t flounce off like that. It’s a six-mile swim, and if I were you I 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. Then he headed straight for Wal­rus Islet, a lit­tle low sheet of rocky is­land al­most due north­east from No­vas­tosh­nah, all ledges of rock and gulls’ nests, where the 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 is asleep—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 a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck the next, and so on till they were all awake and star­ing in ev­ery di­rec­tion but the right one.

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

“Well! May I be—skinned!” said Sea Vitch, and they all looked at Kotick as you can 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 seen enough of it; so he called out: “Isn’t there any place for seals to go where men don’t ever come?”

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

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 his life, but al­ways rooted for clams and sea­weeds; though he pre­tended to be a very ter­ri­ble per­son. Nat­u­rally the Chick­ies and the Gooverooskies and the Epatkas, the Bur­go­mas­ter Gulls and the Kit­ti­wakes and the Puffins, who are al­ways look­ing for a chance to be rude, took up the cry, and—so Lim­mer­shin told me—for nearly five min­utes you could not have heard a gun fired on Wal­rus Islet. All the pop­u­la­tion was yelling and scream­ing: “Clam-eater! Sta­reek [old man]!” 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 to tell 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 bur­go­mas­ter gull, wheel­ing un­der Sea Vitch’s nose. “Uglier, and with worse man­ners! Sta­reek!”

Kotick swam back to No­vas­tosh­nah, leav­ing the gulls to scream. There he found that no one sym­pa­thized with him in his lit­tle at­tempts to dis­cover a quiet place for the seals. They told him that men had al­ways driven the hol­luschickie—it was part of the day’s work—and that if he did not like to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing-grounds. But none of the other seals had seen the killing, and that made the dif­fer­ence be­tween him and his friends. Be­sides, Kotick was a white seal.

“What you must do,” said old Sea Catch, af­ter he had heard his son’s ad­ven­tures, “is to grow up and be a big seal like your fa­ther, and have a nurs­ery on the beach, and then they will leave you alone. In an­other five years you 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 lit­tle heart.

That au­tumn he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off alone be­cause of a no­tion in his bul­let-head. He was go­ing to find Sea Cow, if there was such a per­son in the sea, and he was go­ing to find a quiet is­land with good firm beaches for seals to live on, where men could not get at them. So he ex­plored and ex­plored by him­self from the North to the South Pa­cific, swim­ming as much as three hun­dred miles in a day and a night. He met with more ad­ven­tures than can be told, and nar­rowly es­caped be­ing caught by the Bask­ing Shark, and the Spot­ted Shark, and the Ham­mer­head, and he met all the un­trust­wor­thy ruf­fi­ans that loaf up and down the high seas, and the heavy po­lite fish, and the scar­let-spot­ted scal­lops that are moored in one place for hun­dreds of years, and grow very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he never found an is­land that he 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 once vis­ited the is­land and been killed off, and Kotick knew that where men had come once they would come again.

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

Lim­mer­shin gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick spent five sea­sons ex­plor­ing, with a four months’ rest each year at No­vas­tosh­nah, where the hol­luschickie used to make fun of him and his imag­i­nary is­lands. He went to the Gal­la­pa­gos, a hor­rid dry place on the Equa­tor, where he was nearly baked to death; he went to the Ge­or­gia Is­lands, the Orkneys, Emer­ald Is­land, Lit­tle Nightin­gale Is­land, Gough’s Is­land, Bou­vet’s Is­land, the Cros­sets, and even to a lit­tle speck of an is­land south of the Cape of Good Hope. But ev­ery­where the Peo­ple of the Sea told him the same things. Seals had come to those is­lands once upon a time, but men had killed them all off. Even when he swam thou­sands of miles out of the Pa­cific, and got to a place called Cape Cori­entes (that was when he was com­ing back from Gough’s Is­land), he found a few hun­dred mangy seals 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 own beaches; 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 him and told him all his sor­rows. “Now,” said Kotick, “I am go­ing back to No­vas­tosh­nah, and if I am driven to the killing-pens with the hol­luschickie I shall not care.”

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

And Kotick curled up his mus­tache (it was a beauty), and said: “I am the only white 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.”

That 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 a hol­luschick, but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly white mane on his shoul­ders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his fa­ther. “Give me an­other sea­son,” he said. “Re­mem­ber, Mother, it is al­ways the sev­enth wave that goes far­thest up the beach.”

Cu­ri­ously enough, there was an­other seal who thought that she would put off mar­ry­ing till the next year, and Kotick danced the Fire-dance with her all down Lukan­non Beach the night be­fore he set off on his last ex­plo­ration.

This time he went west­ward, be­cause he had fallen on the trail of a great shoal of hal­ibut, and he needed at least one hun­dred pounds of fish a day to keep him in good con­di­tion. He chased them till he was tired, and then he curled him­self up and went to sleep on the hol­lows of the ground-swell that sets in to Cop­per Is­land. He knew the coast per­fectly well, so about mid­night, when he felt him­self gen­tly bumped on a weed bed, he said: “Hm, tide’s run­ning strong tonight,” 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 shoal wa­ter and brows­ing on the heavy fringes of the weeds.

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

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

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

“Messy style of feed­ing that,” said Kotick. They bowed again, and Kotick be­gan to lose his tem­per. “Very good,” he said. “If you do hap­pen to have an ex­tra joint 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, and the glassy green eyes stared; but they did not speak.

“Well!” said Kotick, “you’re the only peo­ple I’ve ever met uglier than Sea Vitch—and with worse man­ners.”

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

The sea cows went on schloop­ing and graz­ing, and chump­ing in the weed, and Kotick asked them ques­tions in ev­ery lan­guage that he had picked up in his trav­els; and the Sea Peo­ple talk nearly as many lan­guages as hu­man be­ings. But the Sea Cow did not an­swer, be­cause Sea Cow can­not talk. He has only six bones in his neck where he ought to have seven, and they say un­der the sea that that pre­vents him from speak­ing even to his com­pan­ions; but, as you know, he has an ex­tra joint in his fore flip­per, and by wav­ing it up and down and about he makes what an­swers to a sort of clumsy tele­graphic code.

By day­light Kotick’s mane was stand­ing on end and his tem­per was gone where the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow be­gan to travel north­ward very slowly, stop­ping to 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 been killed long ago if they hadn’t found out some safe is­land; and what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good enough for the Sea Catch. All the same, I wish they’d hurry.”

It was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more than forty or fifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept close to the shore all the time; while Kotick swam round them, and over them, and un­der them, but he could not hurry them up one half-mile. As they went far­ther north they held a bow­ing coun­cil ev­ery few hours, and Kotick nearly bit off his mus­tache with im­pa­tience till he saw that they were fol­low­ing up a warm cur­rent of wa­ter, and then he re­spected them more.

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

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

The sea cows had sep­a­rated, and were brows­ing lazily along the edges of the finest beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There were long stretches of smooth worn rock run­ning for miles, ex­actly fit­ted to make seal nurs­eries, and there were play­grounds of hard sand, slop­ing in­land be­hind them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and long grass to roll in, and sand-dunes to climb 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, and then he swam along the beaches and counted up the de­light­ful low sandy is­lands half 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 within six miles of the beach; and be­tween the is­lands and the main­land was a stretch of deep wa­ter that ran up to the per­pen­dic­u­lar cliffs, and some­where be­low the cliffs was the mouth of the tun­nel.

“It’s No­vas­tosh­nah over again, but ten times bet­ter,” said Kotick. “Sea Cow must be wiser than I thought. Men can’t come down the cliffs, even if there were any men; and the shoals to sea­ward would knock a ship to splin­ters. If any place 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 a hurry to go back to No­vas­tosh­nah, he thor­oughly ex­plored the new coun­try, so that he would be able to an­swer all ques­tions.

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

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

But the hol­luschickie and Sea Catch, his fa­ther, and all the other seals, laughed at him when he told them what he had dis­cov­ered, and a young seal about his own age said: “This is all very well, Kotick, but you can’t come from no one knows where and or­der us off like this. Re­mem­ber we’ve been fight­ing for our nurs­eries, and that’s a thing you never did. You pre­ferred prowl­ing about in the sea.”

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

“I’ve no nurs­ery to fight for,” said Kotick. “I want only to show you all a place 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 the young seal, with an ugly chuckle.

“Will you come with me if I win?” said Kotick; and a green light came into his eyes, 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 darted out and his teeth sunk in the blub­ber of the young seal’s neck. Then he threw him­self back on his haunches 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 sea­sons past. I’ve found you the is­land where you’ll be safe, but un­less your heads are dragged 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 big seals fight­ing ev­ery year—never in all his lit­tle life did he see any­thing like Kotick’s charge into the nurs­eries. He flung him­self at the big­gest sea-catch he could find, caught him by the throat, choked him and bumped him and banged him 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 ev­ery year, and his deep-sea swim­ming-trips kept him in per­fect con­di­tion, and, best of all, he had never fought be­fore. His curly white mane stood up with rage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dog­teeth glis­tened, and he was splen­did to look at.

Old Sea Catch, his fa­ther, saw him tear­ing past, haul­ing the griz­zled old seals about as though they had been hal­ibut, and up­set­ting the young bach­e­lors in all di­rec­tions; and Sea Catch gave one roar and shouted: “He may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the Beaches. Don’t tackle your fa­ther, my son! He’s with you!”

Kotick roared in an­swer, and old Sea Catch wad­dled in, his mus­tache on end, blow­ing like a lo­co­mo­tive, while Matkah and the seal that was go­ing to marry Kotick cow­ered down and ad­mired their men-folk. It was a gor­geous fight, for the two fought as long as there was a seal that dared lift up his head, and then they pa­raded grandly up and down the beach side by side, bel­low­ing.

At night, just as the North­ern Lights were wink­ing and flash­ing through the fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scat­tered nurs­eries and the 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 fear­fully mauled. “The Killer Whale him­self could not have cut them up worse. Son, I’m proud of you, and what’s more, I’ll come with you to your is­land—if there is such 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. “We will come,” said thou­sands of tired voices. “We will fol­low Kotick, the White Seal.”

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 he would 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 seals that stayed at No­vas­tosh­nah called them id­iots. But next spring when they all met off the fish­ing-banks of the Pa­cific, Kotick’s seals told such tales of the new 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 need a long time to turn things over in their minds, but year by year more 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 play round 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 are head­ing back to their beaches in the sum­mer. It is a sort of very sad seal Na­tional 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 dropped 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 through 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 meet 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 bath­rooms of the big bun­ga­low in Se­gowlee can­ton­ment. Darzee, the tai­lor­bird, helped him, and Chuchun­dra, the muskrat, who never comes out into the 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 quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his rest­less nose 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 looked like 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 with his fa­ther and mother, and car­ried him, kick­ing and cluck­ing, down a road­side ditch. He found a lit­tle wisp of grass float­ing there, and clung to it till he lost his senses. When he re­vived, he was ly­ing in the hot sun on the mid­dle of a gar­den path, very drag­gled in­deed, and a small boy was say­ing: “Here’s a dead mon­goose. Let’s have a fu­neral.”

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

They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up be­tween his fin­ger and thumb and said he was not dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cot­ton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.

“Now,” said the big man (he was an English­man who had just moved into the bun­ga­low); “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 is eaten up from nose to tail with cu­rios­ity. The motto of all the mon­goose fam­ily is, “Run and find out”; and Rikki-tikki was a true mon­goose. He looked at the cot­ton-wool, de­cided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the ta­ble, sat up and put his fur in or­der, scratched him­self, and jumped on the small boy’s shoul­der.

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

“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 sup­pose he’s so tame be­cause we’ve been kind to him.”

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

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

“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 stay and find out.”

He spent all that day roam­ing over the house. He nearly drowned him­self in the bath­tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writ­ing-ta­ble, and burned it on the end of the big man’s cigar, for he climbed up in the big man’s lap to see how writ­ing was done. At night­fall he ran into Teddy’s nurs­ery to watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a rest­less com­pan­ion, be­cause he had to get up and at­tend to ev­ery noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy’s mother and fa­ther came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pil­low. “I don’t like that,” said Teddy’s mother; “he may bite the child.”

“He’ll do no such thing,” said the fa­ther. “Teddy’s safer with that lit­tle beast than if he had a blood­hound to watch him. If a snake came into the nurs­ery now—”

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

Early in the morn­ing Rikki-tikki came to early break­fast in the ve­randa rid­ing on Teddy’s shoul­der, and they gave him ba­nana and some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one af­ter the other, be­cause ev­ery well-brought-up mon­goose al­ways 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.

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the gar­den to see what was to be seen. It was a large gar­den, only half cul­ti­vated, with bushes as big as sum­mer­houses of Mar­shal Niel roses, lime and or­ange trees, clumps of bam­boos, and thick­ets of high 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 scut­tled up and down the gar­den, snuff­ing here and there till he heard very sor­row­ful voices in a thorn-bush.

It was Darzee, the tai­lor­bird, and his wife. They had made a beau­ti­ful nest by pulling 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 and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well,” said Rikki-tikki, and his tail be­gan to fluff up again, “marks or no marks, 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 the grass be­hind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mon­gooses in the gar­den meant death sooner or later for him and his fam­ily; but he wanted to get Rikki-tikki off his 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.

Rikki-tikki knew bet­ter than to waste time in star­ing. He jumped up in the air as 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 an end of him; and he heard her sav­age hiss as the stroke missed. He came down al­most across her back, and if he had been an old mon­goose he would have known that then was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the ter­ri­ble lash­ing re­turn-stroke of the co­bra. He bit, in­deed, but did not bite long enough, and he jumped clear of the whisk­ing tail, leav­ing Na­gaina torn and an­gry.

“Wicked, wicked Darzee!” said Nag, lash­ing up as high as he could reach to­ward the nest in the thorn-bush; but Darzee had built it out of reach of snakes, and it 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 around him, and chat­tered with rage. But Nag and Na­gaina had dis­ap­peared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says any­thing or gives any sign of what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to fol­low them, for he did not feel sure that he could man­age two snakes at once. So he trot­ted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. It was a se­ri­ous mat­ter for him.

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

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

Rikki-tikki’s eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the pe­cu­liar rock­ing, sway­ing mo­tion that he had in­her­ited from his fam­ily. It looks very funny, but it is so per­fectly bal­anced a gait that you can fly off from it at any an­gle you please; and in deal­ing with snakes this is an ad­van­tage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was do­ing a much more dan­ger­ous thing than fight­ing Nag, for Karait is so small, and can turn so quickly, that un­less Rikki bit him close to the back of the head, he would get the re­turn-stroke in his eye or lip. But Rikki did not know: his eyes were all red, and he rocked 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 gray head lashed within a frac­tion of his shoul­der, and he had to jump over the body, 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 a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake’s back, dropped his head far be­tween his fore legs, bit­ten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite par­a­lyzed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just go­ing to eat him up from the tail, af­ter the cus­tom of his fam­ily at din­ner, when he re­mem­bered that a full meal makes a slow mon­goose, and if he wanted all his strength and quick­ness ready, he must keep him­self thin.

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

That night, at din­ner, walk­ing to and fro among the wine­glasses on the ta­ble, he could have stuffed him­self three times over with nice things; but he re­mem­bered Nag and Na­gaina, and though it was very pleas­ant to be pat­ted and pet­ted by Teddy’s mother, and to sit on Teddy’s shoul­der, his eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long war-cry of “Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”

Teddy car­ried him off to bed, and in­sisted on Rikki-tikki sleep­ing un­der his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark he ran up against Chuchun­dra, the muskrat, creep­ing round by the wall. Chuchun­dra is a bro­ken­hearted lit­tle beast. He whim­pers and cheeps all the night, try­ing to make up his mind to run into the mid­dle of the room, but he never 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 sor­row­fully than ever. “And how am I to be sure that Nag won’t mis­take me for you some dark night?”

“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 the gar­den.”

“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 a very poor man,” he sobbed. “I never had spirit enough to run out into the mid­dle 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 could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world—a noise as faint as that of a wasp walk­ing on a win­dow­pane—the dry scratch of a snake’s scales on brick­work.

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

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

“When the house is emp­tied of peo­ple,” said Na­gaina to her hus­band, “he will have to go away, and then the gar­den will be our own again. Go in qui­etly, and re­mem­ber that the big man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then come out 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 any mon­goose in the gar­den? So long as the bun­ga­low is empty, we are king and queen of the gar­den; and re­mem­ber that as soon as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they 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 we should 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 head came through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body fol­lowed it. An­gry as he 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 the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes glit­ter.

“Now, if I kill him here, Na­gaina will know; and if I fight him on the open floor, 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 big­gest wa­ter-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 shall wait here till he comes. Na­gaina—do you hear me?—I shall wait here in the cool till 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 the wa­ter-jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he be­gan to move, mus­cle by mus­cle, to­ward the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki-tikki looked at his big back, won­der­ing which would be the best place for a good hold. “If I don’t break his back at the first jump,” said Rikki, “he can still fight; and if 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 Nag sav­age.

“It must be the head,” he said at last: “the head above the hood; and, when I am once there, I must not let go.”

Then he jumped. The head was ly­ing a lit­tle clear of the wa­ter-jar, un­der the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earth­en­ware to hold down the head. This gave him just one sec­ond’s pur­chase, and he made the most of it. Then he was bat­tered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog—to and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great cir­cles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cartwhipped over the floor, up­set­ting the tin dip­per and the soap-dish and the flesh-brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honor of 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 thun­der­clap just 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 a shot­gun 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 the mon­goose 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 of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged him­self to Teddy’s bed­room and spent half the rest of the night shak­ing him­self ten­derly to find out whether he re­ally was bro­ken into forty pieces, as he fan­cied.

When morn­ing came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his do­ings. “Now I have Na­gaina to set­tle with, and she will be worse than five Nags, and there’s no know­ing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Good­ness! I must go and see Darzee,” he said.

Without wait­ing for break­fast, Rikki-tikki ran to the thorn-bush where Darzee was singing a song of tri­umph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag’s death was all over the gar­den, for the sweeper had thrown the body on the rub­bish-heap.

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

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

“All that’s true enough; but where’s Na­gaina?” said Rikki-tikki, look­ing care­fully round him.

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

“If I could get up to your nest, I’d roll all your ba­bies out!” said Rikki-tikki. “You don’t know when to do the right thing at the right time. You’re safe enough in your nest there, but it’s war for me down here. Stop singing a minute, 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-tikki with 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 nearly all day. She had them there weeks ago.”

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

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

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

Darzee was a feath­er­brained lit­tle fel­low who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head; and just be­cause he knew that Na­gaina’s chil­dren were born in eggs like his own, he didn’t think at first that it was fair to kill them. But his wife was a sen­si­ble bird, and she knew that co­bra’s eggs meant young co­bras later on; so she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the ba­bies warm, and con­tinue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some ways.

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

Na­gaina lifted up her head and hissed, “You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have 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 shall set­tle 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 of run­ning 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’s eyes gets so fright­ened that she can­not move. Darzee’s wife flut­tered on, pip­ing sor­row­fully, and never leav­ing the ground, and Na­gaina quick­ened her pace.

Rikki-tikki heard them go­ing up the path from the sta­bles, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in the warm lit­ter about the mel­ons, very cun­ningly hid­den, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a ban­tam’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 up in­side the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched they could each kill 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 to time 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 wife scream­ing:

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

Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tum­bled back­ward down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and scut­tled to the ve­randa as hard as he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and fa­ther were there at early break­fast; but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eat­ing any­thing. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white. Na­gaina was coiled up on the mat­ting by Teddy’s chair, within easy strik­ing dis­tance of Teddy’s bare leg, and she was sway­ing to and fro singing a song of tri­umph.

“Son of the big man that killed Nag,” she hissed, “stay still. I am not ready yet. Wait a lit­tle. Keep very still, all you three. If you move I strike, and if 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 to whis­per, “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 my ac­count with you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are still and white; they are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer I strike.”

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

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

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

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

“Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tck-tck!” chuck­led Rikki-tikki. “The boy is safe, 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 to the floor. “He threw me to and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was dead be­fore 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 lay be­tween Rikki-tikki’s paws. “Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my 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 the rub­bish-heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!”

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

He had for­got­ten the egg. It still lay on the ve­randa, and Na­gaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was draw­ing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the ve­randa steps, and flew like an ar­row down the path, with Rikki-tikki be­hind her. When the co­bra runs for her life, she goes like a whiplash 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 run­ning Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his fool­ish lit­tle song of tri­umph. But Darzee’s wife was wiser. She flew off her nest as Na­gaina came along, and flapped her wings about Na­gaina’s head. If Darzee had helped they might have turned her; but Na­gaina only low­ered her hood and went on. Still, the in­stant’s de­lay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to live, his lit­tle white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he 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-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Na­gaina room to turn and strike at him. He held on sav­agely, and struck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth.

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

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

Rikki-tikki curled him­self up in the grass and slept where he was—slept and slept 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 the Cop­per­smith, Darzee, and he will tell the gar­den that Na­gaina is dead.”

The Cop­per­smith is a bird who makes a noise ex­actly like the beat­ing of a lit­tle ham­mer on a cop­per pot; and the rea­son he is al­ways mak­ing it is be­cause he is the town-crier to ev­ery In­dian gar­den, and tells all the news to ev­ery­body 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 in the gar­den singing, and the frogs croak­ing; for Nag and Na­gaina used to eat frogs as well as lit­tle birds.

When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy’s mother (she looked very white still, for she had been faint­ing) and Teddy’s fa­ther came out and al­most cried over him; and that night he ate all that was given him till he could eat no more, and went to bed on Teddy’s shoul­der, where Teddy’s mother saw him when she came to look late at night.

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

Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all 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 and spring and bite, till never a co­bra dared show its head in­side the walls.

Darzee’s Chaunt (Sung in Honor of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi)

Singer and tai­lor am I—
Dou­bled the joys that I know—
Proud of my lilt through 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 dunghill and dead!

Who hath de­liv­ered us, who?
Tell me his nest and his name.
Rikki, the valiant, the true,
Tikki, with eye­balls of flame.
Rik-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 of red!

(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 sug­ar­cane,
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 winds’ un­tainted kiss, the wa­ters’ 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 ev­ery way that an ele­phant could serve it for forty-seven years, and as he was fully twenty years old when he was caught, that makes him nearly sev­enty—a ripe age for 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 he had not then come to his full strength. His mother, Radha Pyari—Radha the dar­ling—who had been caught in the same drive with Kala Nag, told him, be­fore his lit­tle milk tusks had dropped out, that ele­phants who were afraid al­ways got hurt: and Kala Nag knew that that ad­vice was 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 soft­est places. So, be­fore he was twenty-five, he gave up be­ing afraid, and so he was the best-loved and the best-looked-af­ter ele­phant in the ser­vice of the Govern­ment of In­dia. He had car­ried tents, twelve hun­dred pounds’ weight of tents, on the march in Up­per In­dia: he had been hoisted into a ship at the end of a steam-crane and taken for days across the wa­ter, and made to carry a mor­tar on his back in a strange and rocky coun­try very far from In­dia, and had seen the Em­peror Theodore ly­ing dead in Mag­dala, and had come back again in the steamer en­ti­tled, so the sol­diers said, to the Abyssinian war medal. He had seen his fel­low-ele­phants die of cold and epilepsy and star­va­tion and sun­stroke up at a place called Ali Musjid, ten years later; and af­ter­ward he had been sent down thou­sands of miles south to haul and pile big baulks of teak in the tim­ber-yards at Moul­mein. There he had half killed an in­sub­or­di­nate young ele­phant who was shirk­ing his fair share of the work.

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

Kala Nag stood ten fair feet at the shoul­ders, and his tusks had been cut off short at five feet, and bound round the ends, to pre­vent them split­ting, with bands of cop­per; but he could do more with those stumps than any un­trained ele­phant could do with the real sharp­ened ones.

When, af­ter weeks and weeks of cau­tious driv­ing of scat­tered ele­phants across the hills, the forty or fifty wild mon­sters were driven into the last stock­ade, and the big drop-gate, made of tree-trunks lashed to­gether, jarred down be­hind them, Kala Nag, at the word of com­mand, would go into that flar­ing, trum­pet­ing pan­de­mo­nium (gen­er­ally at night, 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 him and hus­tle him into quiet while the men on the backs of the other ele­phants roped and tied the smaller ones.

There was noth­ing in the way of fight­ing that Kala Nag, the old wise Black Snake, did not know, for he had stood up more than once in his time to the charge of the wounded tiger, and, curl­ing up his soft trunk to be out of harm’s way, had knocked the spring­ing brute side­ways in midair with a quick sickle-cut of his head, that he had in­vented all by him­self; had knocked him over, and kneeled upon him with his huge knees till the life went out with a gasp and a howl, and there was only a fluffy striped thing on the ground for Kala Nag to pull by the tail.

“Yes,” said Big Toomai, his driver, the son of Black Toomai who had taken him to 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 three gen­er­a­tions 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 height of four feet, with only one rag upon him. He was ten years old, the el­dest son of Big Toomai, and, ac­cord­ing to cus­tom, he would take his fa­ther’s place on Kala Nag’s neck when he grew up, and would han­dle the heavy iron ankus, the ele­phant-goad that had been worn smooth by his fa­ther, and his grand­fa­ther, and his great-grand­fa­ther. 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 down to wa­ter as soon as he could walk, and Kala Nag would no more have dreamed of dis­obey­ing his shrill lit­tle or­ders than he would have dreamed of killing him on that day when Big Toomai car­ried the lit­tle brown baby un­der Kala Nag’s tusks, 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 to Kala Nag, called him a fat old pig, and made him lift up his feet one af­ter the other.

“Wah!” said Lit­tle Toomai, “thou art a big ele­phant,” and he wagged his fluffy head, quot­ing his fa­ther. “The Govern­ment may pay for ele­phants, but they be­long to us ma­houts. When thou art old, Kala Nag, there will come some rich Ra­jah, and he will buy thee from the Govern­ment, on ac­count of thy size and thy man­ners, and then thou wilt have noth­ing to do but to carry gold ear­rings in thy ears, and a gold how­dah on thy back, and a red cloth cov­ered with gold on thy sides, and walk at the head of the pro­ces­sions of the King. Then I shall sit on thy neck, O Kala Nag, with a sil­ver ankus, and men will run be­fore us with 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. This run­ning up and down among the hills is not the best Govern­ment ser­vice. I am get­ting 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, the Cawn­pore 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 very much pre­ferred the camp life, and hated those broad, flat roads, with the daily grub­bing for grass in the for­age-re­serve, and the long hours when there was noth­ing to do ex­cept to watch Kala Nag fid­get­ing in his pick­ets.

What Lit­tle Toomai liked was to scram­ble up bri­dle-paths that only an ele­phant could take; the dip into the val­ley be­low; the glimpses of the wild ele­phants brows­ing miles away; the rush of the fright­ened pig and pea­cock un­der Kala Nag’s feet; the blind­ing warm rains, when all the hills and val­leys smoked; the beau­ti­ful misty morn­ings when no­body knew where they would camp that night; the steady, cau­tious drive of the wild ele­phants, and the mad rush and blaze and hul­la­bal­loo of the last night’s drive, when the ele­phants poured into the stock­ade like boul­ders in a land­slide, found that they could not get out, and flung them­selves at the heavy posts only to be driven back by yells and flar­ing torches and vol­leys of blank car­tridge.

Even a lit­tle boy could be of use there, and Toomai was as use­ful as three boys. He would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the best. But the re­ally good time came when the driv­ing out be­gan, and the Ked­dah, that is, the stock­ade, looked like a pic­ture of the end of the world, and men had to make signs to one an­other, be­cause they could not hear them­selves speak. Then Lit­tle Toomai would climb up to the top of one of the quiv­er­ing stock­ade-posts, his sun-bleached brown hair fly­ing loose all over his shoul­ders, and he look­ing like a gob­lin in the torch­light; and as soon as there was a lull you could hear his high-pitched yells of en­cour­age­ment to Kala Nag, above the trum­pet­ing and crash­ing, and snap­ping of ropes, and groans of the teth­ered ele­phants. “Maîl, maîl, Kala Nag! [Go on, go on, Black Snake!] Dant do! [Give him the tusk!] So­malo! So­malo! [Care­ful, care­ful!] Maro! Mar! [Hit him, hit him!] Mind the post! Arre! Arre! Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah!” he would shout, and the big fight be­tween 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 find time 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 in be­tween 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 then and there, and put him back on the post.

Next morn­ing he gave him a scold­ing, and said: “Are not good brick ele­phant-lines and a lit­tle tent-car­ry­ing enough, that thou must needs go ele­phant-catch­ing on thy own ac­count, lit­tle worth­less? Now those fool­ish hunters, whose pay is less than my pay, have spo­ken to Petersen Sahib of the mat­ter.” Lit­tle Toomai was fright­ened. He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib was the great­est white man in the world to him. He was the head of all the Ked­dah op­er­a­tions—the man who caught all the ele­phants for the Govern­ment of In­dia, 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 should he go hunt­ing these wild dev­ils? He may even re­quire thee to be an ele­phant-catcher, to sleep any­where in these fever-filled jun­gles, and at last to be tram­pled 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 our sta­tions. 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 these dirty As­samese jun­gle-folk. Kala Nag will obey none but me, so I must go with him into the Ked­dah, but he is only a fight­ing ele­phant, and he does not help to rope them. So I sit at my ease, as be­fits a ma­hout—not a mere hunter—a ma­hout, I say, and a man who gets a pen­sion at the end of his ser­vice. Is the fam­ily of Toomai of the Ele­phants to be trod­den un­der­foot in the dirt of a Ked­dah? Bad one! Wicked one! Worth­less son! Go and wash Kala Nag and at­tend to his ears, and see that there are no thorns in his feet; or else Petersen Sahib will surely catch thee and make thee a wild hunter—a fol­lower of ele­phant’s foot-tracks, a jun­gle-bear. Bah! Shame! Go!”

Lit­tle Toomai went off with­out say­ing a word, but he told Kala Nag all his griev­ances 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 to Petersen Sahib, and per­haps—and per­haps—and per­haps—who knows? Hai! That is a big thorn that I have pulled out!”

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

Petersen Sahib came in on his clever she-ele­phant Pud­mini; he had been pay­ing off other camps among the hills, for the sea­son was com­ing to an end, and there was a na­tive clerk sit­ting at a ta­ble un­der a tree, to pay the driv­ers their wages. As each man was paid he went back to his ele­phant, and joined the line that stood ready to start. The catch­ers, and hunters, and beat­ers, the men of the reg­u­lar Ked­dah, who stayed in the jun­gle year in and year out, sat on the backs of the ele­phants that be­longed to Petersen Sahib’s per­ma­nent force, or leaned against the trees with their guns across their arms, and made fun of the driv­ers who were go­ing away, and laughed when the newly caught ele­phants broke the 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 one piece of good ele­phant-stuff at least. ’Tis a pity to send that young jun­gle-cock to moult in the plains.”

Now Petersen Sahib had ears all over him, as a man must have who lis­tens to the most silent of all liv­ing things—the wild ele­phant. He turned where he was ly­ing all along on Pud­mini’s back, and said, “What is that? I did not know of a man among the plain-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, and threw Bar­mao there the rope, when we were try­ing to get that young calf with the blotch on his shoul­der away from his mother.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of that I have my doubts,” said Petersen Sahib. “A boy who can face a full Ked­dah at his age does not end in jails. See, lit­tle one, here are four an­nas to spend in sweet­meats be­cause thou hast a lit­tle head un­der that great thatch of hair. In time thou mayest be­come a hunter too.” Big Toomai scowled more than ever. “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 among ele­phant-catch­ers, and it means just never. There are great cleared flat places hid­den away in the forests that are called ele­phants’ ball­rooms, but even these are found only 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 when didst thou see the ele­phants dance?”

Kala Nag put Lit­tle Toomai down, and he bowed to the earth again and went away with his fa­ther, and gave the sil­ver four-anna piece to his mother, who was nurs­ing his baby-brother, and they all were put up on Kala Nag’s back, and the line 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 at ev­ery ford, and who needed coax­ing or beat­ing ev­ery other minute.

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

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

Big Toomai heard him and grunted. “That thou shouldst never be one of these hill-buf­faloes of track­ers. That was what he meant. Oh you in front, what is block­ing 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. Why should Petersen Sahib have cho­sen me to go down with you don­keys of the rice-fields? Lay your beast along­side, Toomai, and let him prod with his tusks. By all the Gods of the Hills, these new ele­phants are pos­sessed, or else they can smell their com­pan­ions in the jun­gle.”

Kala Nag hit the new ele­phant in the ribs and knocked the wind out of him, as Big Toomai said, “We have swept the hills of wild ele­phants at the last catch. It is only your care­less­ness in driv­ing. Must I keep or­der along the whole line?”

“Hear him!” said the other driver. “We have swept the hills! Ho! ho! You are very wise, you plains-peo­ple. Any­one but a mud­head who never saw the jun­gle would know that they know that the drives are ended for the sea­son. There­fore all the wild ele­phants tonight will—but why should I waste wis­dom on a river-tur­tle?”

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

“Ohé, lit­tle one. Art thou there? Well, I will tell thee, for thou hast a cool head. They will dance, and it be­hooves thy fa­ther, who has swept all the hills of all the ele­phants, to dou­ble-chain his pick­ets tonight.”

“What talk is this?” said Big Toomai. “For forty years, fa­ther and son, we have tended 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 their danc­ing, I have seen the place where—Bapree-Bap! how many wind­ings has the Di­hang 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, they made their first march to a sort of re­ceiv­ing-camp for the new ele­phants; but they lost their tem­pers long be­fore they got there.

Then the ele­phants were chained by their hind legs to their big stumps of pick­ets, and ex­tra ropes were fit­ted to the new ele­phants, and the fod­der was piled be­fore them, and the hill-driv­ers went back to Petersen Sahib through the af­ter­noon light, telling the plains-driv­ers to be ex­tra care­ful that night, and laugh­ing when the plains-driv­ers asked the rea­son.

Lit­tle Toomai at­tended to Kala Nag’s sup­per, and as evening fell, wan­dered through the camp, un­speak­ably happy, in search of a tom-tom. When an In­dian child’s heart is full, he does not run about and make a noise in an ir­reg­u­lar fash­ion. He sits down to a sort of revel all by him­self. And Lit­tle Toomai had been spo­ken to by Petersen Sahib! If he had not found what he wanted I be­lieve he would have burst. But the sweat­meat-seller in the camp lent him a lit­tle tom-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 he thumped and he thumped and he thumped, and the more he thought of the great honor that had been done to him, the more he thumped, all alone among the ele­phant-fod­der. There was no tune and no words, but the thump­ing made him happy.

The new ele­phants strained at their ropes, and squealed and trum­peted from time to time, and he could hear his mother in the camp hut putting his small brother to sleep with an old, old song about the great God Shiv, who once told all the an­i­mals what they should eat. It is a very sooth­ing lul­laby, and the first verse 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 gud­dee to 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, till he felt sleepy and stretched him­self on the fod­der at Kala Nag’s side.

At last the ele­phants be­gan to lie down one af­ter an­other as is their cus­tom, till only Kala Nag at the right of the line was left stand­ing up; and he rocked slowly from side to side, his ears put for­ward to lis­ten to the night wind as it blew very 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 the other, the rus­tle of some­thing alive in the un­der­growth, the scratch and squawk of a half-waked bird (birds are awake in the night much more of­ten than we imag­ine), and the fall of wa­ter ever so far away. Lit­tle Toomai slept for some time, and when he waked it was bril­liant moon­light, and Kala Nag was still stand­ing 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, and while he watched he heard, so far away that it sounded no more than a pin­hole of 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 their grunts at last waked the sleep­ing ma­houts, and they came out and drove in the picket-pegs with big mal­lets, and tight­ened this rope and knot­ted that till all was quiet. One new ele­phant had nearly grubbed up his picket, and Big Toomai took off Kala Nag’s leg-chain and shack­led that ele­phant fore foot to hind foot, but slipped a loop of grass-string round Kala Nag’s leg, and told him to re­mem­ber that he was tied fast. He knew that he and his fa­ther and his grand­fa­ther had done the very same thing hun­dreds of times be­fore. Kala Nag did not an­swer to the or­der by gur­gling, as he usu­ally did. He stood still, look­ing out across the moon­light, his head a lit­tle raised and his ears spread like fans, up to the great folds of the Garo hills.

“Look to him if he grows rest­less in the night,” said Big Toomai to Lit­tle Toomai, and he went into the hut and slept. Lit­tle Toomai was just go­ing to sleep, too, when he heard the coir string snap with a lit­tle tang, and Kala Nag rolled out of his pick­ets as slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a val­ley. Lit­tle Toomai pat­tered af­ter him, bare­footed, down the road in the moon­light, call­ing un­der his breath, “Kala Nag! Kala Nag! Take me with you, O Kala Nag!” The ele­phant turned with­out a sound, took three strides back 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 si­lence shut down on ev­ery­thing, and Kala Nag be­gan to move. Some­times a tuft of high grass washed along his sides as a wave washes along the sides of a ship, and some­times a clus­ter of wild-pep­per vines would scrape along his back, or a bam­boo would creak where his shoul­der touched it; but be­tween those times he moved ab­so­lutely with­out any sound, drift­ing through the thick Garo for­est as though it had been smoke. He was go­ing up­hill, but though Lit­tle Toomai watched the 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, and Lit­tle Toomai could see the tops of the trees ly­ing all speck­led and furry un­der the moon­light for miles and miles, and the blue-white mist over the river in the hol­low. Toomai leaned for­ward and looked, and he felt that the for­est was awake be­low him—awake and alive and crowded. A big brown fruit-eat­ing bat brushed past his ear; a por­cu­pine’s quills rat­tled in the thicket, and in the dark­ness be­tween the tree-stems he heard a hog-bear dig­ging hard in the moist warm earth, and snuff­ing as it digged.

Then the branches closed over his head again, and Kala Nag be­gan to go down into the val­ley—not qui­etly this time, but as a run­away gun goes down a steep bank—in one rush. The huge limbs moved as steadily as pis­tons, eight feet to each stride, and the wrin­kled skin of the el­bow-points rus­tled. The un­der­growth on ei­ther side of him ripped with a noise like torn can­vas, and the saplings that he heaved away right and left with his shoul­ders sprang back again, and banged 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 his path­way. Then Lit­tle Toomai laid him­self down close to the great neck, lest a swing­ing bough should sweep him to the ground, and he wished that he were back in the lines again.

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

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

Kala Nag swashed out of the wa­ter, blew his trunk clear, and be­gan an­other climb; but this time he was not alone, and he had not to make his path. That was made al­ready, six feet wide, in front of him, where the bent jun­gle-grass was try­ing to re­cover it­self and stand up. Many ele­phants must have gone that way only a few min­utes be­fore. Lit­tle Toomai looked back, and be­hind him a great wild tusker with his lit­tle pig’s eyes glow­ing like hot coals, was just lift­ing him­self out of the misty river. Then the trees closed up again, and they went on and up, with trum­pet­ings and crash­ings, and the sound of break­ing branches on ev­ery side of them.

At last Kala Nag stood still be­tween two tree-trunks at the very top of the hill. They were part of a cir­cle of trees that grew round an ir­reg­u­lar space of some 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 in the cen­ter of the clear­ing, but their bark was rubbed away, and the white wood be­neath showed all shiny and pol­ished in the patches of moon­light. There were creep­ers hang­ing from the up­per branches, and the bells of the flow­ers of the creep­ers, great waxy white things like con­volvu­luses, hung down fast asleep; but within the lim­its of the clear­ing there was not a sin­gle blade of green—noth­ing but the tram­pled earth.

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

There were white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs ly­ing in the wrin­kles of their necks and the folds of their ears; fat slow-footed she-ele­phants, with rest­less, lit­tle pinky-black calves only three or four feet high run­ning un­der their stom­achs; young ele­phants with their tusks just be­gin­ning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy old-maid ele­phants, with their hol­low anx­ious faces, and trunks like rough bark; sav­age old bull-ele­phants, scarred from shoul­der to flank with great weals and cuts of by­gone fights, and the caked dirt of their soli­tary mud-baths drop­ping from their shoul­ders; and there was one with a bro­ken tusk and the marks of the full-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 in cou­ples, or rock­ing and sway­ing all by them­selves—scores and scores of ele­phants.

Toomai knew that so long as he lay still on Kala Nag’s neck noth­ing would hap­pen to him; for even in the rush and scram­ble of a Ked­dah-drive a wild ele­phant does not reach up with his trunk and drag a man off the neck of a tame ele­phant; and these ele­phants were not think­ing of men that night. Once they started and put their ears for­ward when they heard the chink­ing of a leg-iron in the for­est, but it was Pud­mini, Petersen Sahib’s pet ele­phant, her chain snapped short off, grunt­ing, snuf­fling up the hill­side. She must have bro­ken her pick­ets, and come straight from Petersen Sahib’s camp; and Lit­tle Toomai saw an­other ele­phant, one that he did not know, with deep rope-galls on his back and 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 Kala Nag rolled out from his sta­tion be­tween the trees and went into the mid­dle of the crowd, cluck­ing and gur­gling, and all the ele­phants be­gan to talk in their own tongue, and to move about.

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

Then an ele­phant trum­peted, and they all took it up for five or ten ter­ri­ble sec­onds. The dew from the trees above spat­tered down like rain on the un­seen backs, and a dull boom­ing noise be­gan, not very loud at first, and Lit­tle Toomai could not tell what it was; but it grew and grew, and Kala Nag lifted up one fore foot and then the other, and brought them down on the ground—one-two, one-two, as steadily as trip-ham­mers. The ele­phants were stamp­ing al­to­gether now, and it sounded like a war-drum beaten at the mouth of a cave. The dew fell from 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 his ears to shut out the sound. But it was all one gi­gan­tic jar that ran through him—this stamp of hun­dreds of heavy feet on the raw earth. Once or twice he could feel Kala Nag and all the oth­ers surge for­ward a few strides, and the thump­ing would change to the crush­ing sound of juicy green things be­ing bruised, but in a minute or two the boom of feet on hard earth be­gan again. A tree was creak­ing and groan­ing some­where near him. He put out his arm and felt the bark, but Kala Nag moved for­ward, still tramp­ing, and he could not tell where he was in the clear­ing. There was no sound from the ele­phants, ex­cept once, when two or three lit­tle calves squeaked to­gether. Then he heard a thump and 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 night air that the dawn was com­ing.

The morn­ing broke in one sheet of pale yel­low be­hind the green hills, and the boom­ing 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 had shifted 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 nor rus­tle nor whis­per down the hill­sides to show where the oth­ers had gone.

Lit­tle Toomai stared again and again. The clear­ing, as he re­mem­bered it, had grown in the night. More trees stood in the mid­dle of it, but the un­der­growth and the jun­gle-grass at the sides had been rolled back. Lit­tle Toomai stared once more. Now he un­der­stood the tram­pling. The ele­phants had stamped out more room—had stamped the thick grass and juicy cane to trash, the trash into sliv­ers, 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 Peter­son Sahib’s camp, or I shall drop from thy neck.”

The third ele­phant watched the two go away, snorted, wheeled round, and took his 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 to the shoul­ders, with Kala Nag, very foot­sore, sham­bled into the camp.

Lit­tle Toomai’s face was gray and pinched, and his hair was full of leaves and drenched 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 sat down, he slid off his neck in a dead faint.

But, since na­tive chil­dren have no nerves worth speak­ing of, in two hours he was ly­ing very con­tent­edly in Petersen Sahib’s ham­mock with Petersen Sahib’s shoot­ing-coat un­der his head, and a glass of warm milk, a lit­tle brandy, with a dash of qui­nine in­side of him, and while the old hairy, scarred hunters of the jun­gles 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 the ele­phant-folk have tram­pled down more room in their dance-room, and they will find ten and ten, and many times ten, tracks lead­ing to that dance-room. They made 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 the twi­light, and while he slept Petersen Sahib and Machua Appa fol­lowed the track of the two ele­phants for fif­teen miles across the hills. Petersen Sahib had spent eigh­teen years in catch­ing ele­phants, and he had only once be­fore found such a dance-place. Machua Appa had no need to look twice at the clear­ing to see what had been done there, or to scratch with his toe in the packed, rammed earth.

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

They looked at each other, and up and down, and they won­dered; for the ways of ele­phants are be­yond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom.

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

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

Big Toomai had come up hot­foot from the camp in the plains to search for his son and his ele­phant, and now that he had found them he looked at them as though he were afraid of them both. And there was a feast by the blaz­ing camp­fires in front of the lines of pick­eted ele­phants, and Lit­tle Toomai was the hero of it all; and the big brown ele­phant-catch­ers, the track­ers and driv­ers and rop­ers, and the men who know all the se­crets of break­ing the wildest ele­phants, passed him from one to the other, and they marked his fore­head with blood from the breast of a newly killed jun­gle-cock, to show that he 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 the ele­phants look as though they had been dipped in blood too, Machua Appa, the head of all the driv­ers of all the Ked­dahs—Machua Appa, Petersen Sahib’s other self, who had never seen a made road in forty years: Machua Appa, who was so great that he had no other name than Machua Appa—leaped to his feet, with Lit­tle Toomai held high in the air above his head, and shouted: “Lis­ten, my broth­ers. Lis­ten, too, you my lords in the lines there, for I, Machua Appa, am speak­ing! This lit­tle one shall no more be called Lit­tle Toomai, but Toomai of the Ele­phants, as his great-grand­fa­ther was called be­fore him. What never man has seen he has seen through the long night, and the fa­vor of the ele­phant-folk and of the Gods of the Jun­gles is with him. He shall be­come a great tracker; he shall be­come greater than I, even I, Machua Appa! He shall fol­low the new trail, and the stale trail, and the mixed trail, with a clear eye! He shall take no harm in the Ked­dah when he runs un­der their bel­lies to rope the wild tuskers; and if he slips be­fore the feet of the charg­ing bull-ele­phant that bull-ele­phant shall know who he is and shall not crush him. Ai­hai! my lords in the chains,”—he whirled up the line of pick­ets—“here is the lit­tle one that has seen your dances in your hid­den places—the sight that never man saw! Give him honor, my lords! Salaam karo, my chil­dren. Make your salute to Toomai of the Ele­phants! Gunga Per­shad, ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi Guj, Kut­tar Guj, ahaa! Pud­mini—thou hast seen him at the dance, and thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among ele­phants!—ahaa! To­gether! To Toomai of the Ele­phants. Bar­rao!”

And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the tips touched their fore­heads, and broke out into the full salute—the crash­ing trum­pet-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 had seen be­fore—the dance of the ele­phants at night and alone in the heart of the Garo 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 gud­dee to 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;
Cat­tle 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 thirty thou­sand men, thou­sands of camels, ele­phants, horses, bul­locks, and mules, all gath­ered to­gether at a place called Rawal Pindi, to be re­viewed by the Viceroy of In­dia. He was re­ceiv­ing a visit from the Amir of Afghanistan—a wild king of a very wild coun­try; and the Amir had brought with him for a body­guard eight hun­dred men and horses who had never seen a camp or a lo­co­mo­tive be­fore in their lives—sav­age men and sav­age horses from some­where at the back of Cen­tral Asia. Every night a mob of these horses would be sure to break their heel-ropes, and stam­pede up and down the camp through the mud in the dark, or the camels would break loose and run about and fall over the ropes of the tents, 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 one night a man popped his head in and shouted, “Get out, quick! They’re com­ing! My tent’s gone!”

I knew who “they” were; so I put on my boots and wa­ter­proof and scut­tled out into 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 tent cave in, as the pole snapped, and be­gin to dance about like a mad ghost. A camel had blun­dered into it, and wet and an­gry as I was, I could not help laugh­ing. Then I ran on, be­cause I did not know how many camels might have got loose, and be­fore long I was out of sight of the camp, plow­ing my way through the mud.

At last I fell over the tail-end of a gun, and by that knew I was some­where near the Ar­tillery lines where the can­non were stacked at night. As I did not want to plowter about any more in the driz­zle and the dark, I put my wa­ter­proof over the muz­zle of one gun, and made a sort of wig­wam with two or three ram­mers that I found, and lay along the tail of an­other gun, won­der­ing where Vixen had got to, and where I might be.

Just as I was get­ting ready to sleep I heard a jin­gle of har­ness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shak­ing his wet ears. He be­longed to a screw-gun bat­tery, for I could hear the rat­tle of the straps and rings and chains and things on his sad­dle-pad. The screw-guns are tidy lit­tle can­non made in two pieces, that are screwed to­gether when the time comes to use them. They are taken up moun­tains, any­where that a mule can find a road, and they are very use­ful for fight­ing in rocky coun­try.

Be­hind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet squelch­ing and slip­ping 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, but camp-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 that waved, 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 been dis­turb­ing the camp? All right. You’ll be beaten for this in the morn­ing; but I may as well give you some­thing on ac­count now.”

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

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

“It’s dis­grace­ful,” he said, blow­ing out his nos­trils. “Those camels have rack­eted through our lines again—the third time this week. How’s a horse to keep 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,” said the mule, “and the other’s one of your friends. He’s waked me up too. Who are you?”

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

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

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

“Then why the pick­ets 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 is that? Shall we run on again?”

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

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

“That’s one of our re­cruits,” said the old mule to the troop-horse. “He’s call­ing for me. Here, young­ster, stop squeal­ing; the dark never hurt any­body yet.”

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

“Things!” he said; “fear­ful and hor­ri­ble things, Billy! They came into our lines while we were asleep. D’you think they’ll kill us?”

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

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

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

“True enough,” said Billy. “Stop shak­ing, young­ster. The first time they put the full har­ness with all its chains on my back, I stood on my fore legs and kicked 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. “You know I don’t mind that now, Billy. It was Things like trees, and they fell up and down the lines and bub­bled; and my head-rope broke, and I couldn’t find my driver, and I couldn’t find you, Billy, so I ran off with—with these gen­tle­men.”

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

The gun-bul­locks rolled their cuds, and an­swered both to­gether: “The sev­enth yoke of the first gun of the Big Gun Bat­tery. We were asleep when the camels came, but when we were tram­pled on we got up and walked away. It is bet­ter to lie quiet in the mud than to be dis­turbed on good bed­ding. We told your friend here that there was noth­ing to be afraid of, but he knew so much that he thought 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 be­ing afraid of any beefy old bul­lock in the world; but the bul­locks only clicked their horns to­gether and went on chew­ing.

“Now, don’t be an­gry af­ter you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cow­ardice,” said the troop-horse. “Any­body can be for­given for be­ing scared in the night, I think, if they see things they don’t un­der­stand. We’ve bro­ken out of our pick­ets, again and again, four hun­dred and fifty of us, just be­cause a new re­cruit got to telling tales of whip-snakes at home in Aus­tralia till we were 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 do you do on ac­tive ser­vice?”

“Oh, that’s quite an­other set of new shoes,” said the troop-horse. “Dick Cun­liffe’s on my back then, and drives his knees into me, and all I have to do is 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 to say that you aren’t taught to be bri­dle-wise in your busi­ness? How can you do any­thing, un­less you can spin round at once when the rein is pressed on your neck? It means life or death to your man, and of course that’s life or death to you. Get round with your hind legs un­der you the in­stant you feel the rein on your neck. If you haven’t room to swing round, rear up a lit­tle and come round on your hind legs. That’s be­ing bri­dle-wise.”

“We aren’t taught that way,” said Billy the mule stiffly. “We’re taught to obey the man at our head: step off when he says so, and step in when he says so. I sup­pose it comes to the same thing. Now, with all this fine fancy busi­ness and rear­ing, 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 of yelling, hairy men with knives—long shiny knives, worse than the far­rier’s knives—and I have to take care that Dick’s boot is just touch­ing the next man’s boot 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 to Dick 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 young mule.

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

“H’m!” said Billy; “it sounds very fool­ish. Knives are dirty things at any time. The proper thing to do is to climb up a moun­tain with a well-bal­anced sad­dle, hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and creep and crawl and wrig­gle along, till you come out hun­dreds of feet above any­one else, on a ledge where there’s just room enough for your hoofs. Then you stand still and keep quiet—never ask a man to hold your head, young ’un—keep quiet while the guns are be­ing put to­gether, and then you watch the lit­tle poppy shells drop down into the tree­tops 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. “Now and again per-haps a badly packed sad­dle will up­set a mule, but it’s very sel­dom. I wish I could show you our busi­ness. It’s beau­ti­ful. Why, it took me three years to find out what the men were driv­ing at. The sci­ence of the thing is never to show up against the sky­line, be­cause, if you do, you may get fired at. Re­mem­ber that, young ’un. Al­ways keep hid­den as much as pos­si­ble, even if you have to go a mile out of your way. I lead the bat­tery when it comes to that sort of climb­ing.”

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

“Oh no, you wouldn’t; you know that as soon as the guns are in po­si­tion they’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 edge­ways. Then I heard him say, as he cleared his throat, 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 made for 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. “Sat down?”

“We sat down—a hun­dred of us,” the camel went on, “in a big square, and the men piled 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 teach us in rid­ing-school to lie down and let our mas­ters fire across us, but Dick Cun­liffe 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 plenty of men and plenty of other camels close by, and a great many clouds of smoke. I am 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 fire across me, my heels and his head would have some­thing to say to each other. Did you ever hear any­thing so aw­ful as that?”

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

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

“Only one way,” said the two to­gether. (They must have been twins.) “This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon as Two Tails trum­pets.” (“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. Two Tails 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 the level plain, twenty yoke of us, till we are un­yoked again, and we graze while the big guns talk across the plain to some town with mud walls, and pieces of the wall fall out, and the dust goes up as though many cat­tle were com­ing home.”

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

“That time or any other. Eat­ing is al­ways good. We eat till we are yoked up again and tug the gun back to where Two Tails is wait­ing for it. Some­times there are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of us are killed, and then there is all the more graz­ing for those that are left. This is Fate—noth­ing but Fate. None the less, Two Tails is a great cow­ard. That is the proper way to fight. We are broth­ers 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 you gen­tle­men of the screw-gun bat­tery feel in­clined to eat when you are be­ing fired 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, a well-bal­anced load, a driver you can trust to let you pick your own way, and I’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 I can quite see that your fam­ily, on your fa­ther’s side, would fail to un­der­stand a great many things.”

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

“Brumby” means wild horse with­out any breed­ing. Imag­ine the feel­ings of Sunol if a car-horse called her a “skate,” and you can imag­ine how the Aus­tralian horse felt. 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 of the Mel­bourne Cup, and where I come from we aren’t ac­cus­tomed to be­ing rid­den over roughshod by any par­rot-mouthed, pig­headed mule in a pop­gun peashooter bat­tery. Are you ready?”

“On your hind legs!” squealed Billy. They both reared up fac­ing each other, and I was ex­pect­ing a fu­ri­ous fight, when a gur­gly, rumbly voice called out of the dark­ness 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 mule can 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 end isn’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’s not 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 the night. I’ve heard what you fel­lows have been say­ing. But don’t be afraid. I’m not com­ing over.”

The bul­locks and the camel said, half aloud: “Afraid of Two Tails—what non­sense!” And the bul­locks went on: “We are sorry that you heard, but it is true. 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 a lit­tle boy say­ing a piece, “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. But it’s dif­fer­ent with me. My bat­tery cap­tain called me a ‘Pachy­der­ma­tous Anachro­nism’ the other day.”

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

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

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

“I can see more than you, and I do think about it. I know there’s a great deal of me to take care of, and I know that no­body knows how to cure me when I’m sick. All they can do is to stop my driver’s pay till I get well, and I can’t trust 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 any bet­ter. I know just enough to be un­com­fort­able, and not enough to go on in spite 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 and smells.”

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 makes me 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 talk about 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 not talk­ing to you. You can’t see in­side your heads.”

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

“If I could do that and noth­ing else you wouldn’t be needed to pull the big guns at all. If I was like my cap­tain—he can see things in­side his head be­fore the fir­ing be­gins, and he shakes all over, but he knows too much to run away—if I was like him I could pull the guns. But if I were as wise as all that I should 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 a month.”

“That’s all very fine,” said Billy; “but giv­ing a thing a long name doesn’t make 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, just you ex­plain 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 them stamp and shiver. An ele­phant’s trum­pet­ing is al­ways nasty, es­pe­cially on a dark night.

“I sha’n’t stop,” said Two Tails. “Won’t you ex­plain that, please? Hhrrmh! Rrrt! Rr­rmph! Rr­rhha!” Then he stopped sud­denly, and I heard a lit­tle whim­per in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last. She knew as well as I did that if there is one thing in the world the ele­phant is more afraid of than an­other it is a lit­tle bark­ing dog; so she stopped to bully Two Tails in his pick­ets, and yapped round his big feet. Two Tails shuf­fled and squeaked. “Go away, 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 is afraid of most things. Now, if I had a full meal for ev­ery dog I’ve kicked across 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, and told me a long tale about hunt­ing for me all through the camp. I never let her know that I un­der­stood beast talk, or she would have taken all sorts of lib­er­ties. So I but­toned her into the breast of my over­coat, and Two Tails shuf­fled 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 I had 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 dreams in 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 long time—“what I want to know is, why we have to fight at all.”

“Be­cause we are 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 and the 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—Or twists your tail,” said Billy and the troop-horse and the camel and the bul­locks 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 of get­ting kicked. All you have to do is to obey the man at your head and ask no ques­tions.”

“He’s quite right,” said Two Tails. “I can’t al­ways obey, be­cause I’m be­twixt and 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 back to our lines. It is true that we see only out of our eyes, and we are not very clever; but still, we are the only peo­ple tonight who have not been afraid. Good night, you brave peo­ple.”

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

“Here I am,” yapped Vixen, “un­der the gun-tail with my man. You big, blun­der­ing beast 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 black bul­lock-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 the pole of an am­mu­ni­tion-wagon, where it jammed.

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

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

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

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

I never knew be­fore what made In­dian cat­tle so afraid of English­men. We eat beef—a thing that no cat­tle-driver touches—and of course the cat­tle do not like it.

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

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

“I’ll leave you, then. I can’t say I’m over­fond of ’em my­self. Be­sides, white men who haven’t a place to sleep in are more than likely to be thieves, and I’ve a good deal of Govern­ment prop­erty on my back. Come along, young ’un, and we’ll go back to our lines. Good night, Aus­tralia! See you on pa­rade to­mor­row, 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. It spoils our for­ma­tion.”

Billy the mule stumped off with the swag­ger­ing limp of an old cam­paigner, as the 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 scores of horses that she and I kept.

“I’m com­ing to the pa­rade to­mor­row in my dog­cart,” she said. “Where will you be?”

“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 all muddy, and he’ll have two hours’ hard work dress­ing me for the pa­rade.”

The big pa­rade of all the thirty thou­sand men was held that af­ter­noon, and Vixen and I had a good place close to the Viceroy and the Amir of Afghanistan, with his high big black hat of as­trakhan wool and the great di­a­mond star in the cen­ter. The first part of the re­view was all sun­shine, and the reg­i­ments went by in wave upon wave of legs all mov­ing to­gether, and guns all in a line, till our eyes grew dizzy. Then the cav­alry came up, to the beau­ti­ful cav­alry can­ter of “Bon­nie Dundee,” and Vixen cocked her ear where she sat on the dog­cart. The sec­ond squadron of the lancers shot by, and there was the troop-horse, with his tail like spun silk, his head pulled into his breast, one ear for­ward and one back, set­ting the time for all his squadron, his legs go­ing as smoothly as waltz-mu­sic. Then the big guns came by, and I saw Two Tails and two other ele­phants har­nessed in line to a forty-pounder siege-gun while twenty yoke of oxen walked be­hind. The sev­enth pair had a new yoke, and they looked rather stiff and tired. Last came the screw-guns, and Billy the mule car­ried him­self as though he com­manded all the troops, and his har­ness was oiled and pol­ished till it winked. I gave a cheer all by my­self for Billy the mule, but he never looked right or left.

The rain be­gan to fall again, and for a while it was too misty to see what the troops were do­ing. They had made a big half-cir­cle across the plain, and were spread­ing out into a line. That line grew and grew and grew till it was three-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 it got nearer the ground be­gan to shake, like the deck of a steamer when the en­gines are go­ing fast.

Un­less you have been there you can­not imag­ine what a fright­en­ing ef­fect this steady come­down of troops has on the spec­ta­tors, even when they know it is only a re­view. I looked at the Amir. Up till then he had not shown the shadow of a sign of as­ton­ish­ment or any­thing else; but now his eyes be­gan to get big­ger and big­ger, and he picked up the reins on his horse’s neck and looked be­hind him. For a minute it seemed as though he were go­ing to draw his sword and slash his way out through the English men and women in the car­riages at the back. Then the ad­vance stopped dead, the ground stood still, the whole line saluted, and thirty bands be­gan to play all to­gether. That was the end of the re­view, and the reg­i­ments went off to their camps in the rain; and an in­fantry band 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 come down with the Amir, ask­ing ques­tions of a na­tive of­fi­cer.

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

And the of­fi­cer an­swered, “There was an or­der, 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 his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieu­tenant, and the lieu­tenant his cap­tain, and the cap­tain his ma­jor, and the ma­jor his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier com­mand­ing three reg­i­ments, and the brigadier his gen­eral, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the ser­vant of the Em­press. Thus it is done.”

“Would it were so in Afghanistan!” said the chief; “for there we obey only our own wills.”

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

Parade-Song of the Camp Animals

Elephants of the Gun-Team

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 can­non­ball,
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 with­ers, 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 squadrons and see
The way of the warhorse 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,
And 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,
And 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 hairy trom­bone
(Rtt-ta-ta-ta! is a hairy trom­bone!)
And this is our march­ing song:
Can’t! Don’t! Shan’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.