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)

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

All this will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired of saying the same thing over a hundred times; but, as Baloo said to Bagheera, one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and run off in a temper: ‘A Mancub is a Man-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 to-day 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 MasterWords? I am more likely to give help than to ask it’—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—‘still I should like to know.’

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

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

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

‘Master-Words for which people?’ said Mowgli, delighted to show off. ‘The Jungle has many tongues. I know them all.’

‘A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-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 use.

‘Good. Now for the birds.’

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

‘Now for the Snake-People,’ said Bagheera.

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

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

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

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

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

‘What is this new folly, little dreamer of dreams?’ said Bagheera.

‘Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old Baloo,’ Mowgli went on. ‘They have promised me this. Ah!’

‘Whoof!’ Baloo’s big paw scooped Mowgli off Bagheera’s back, and as the boy lay between the big 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.

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‘Thou hast been with the Monkey-People—the grey apes—the people without a Law—the eaters of everything. That is great shame.’

‘When Baloo hurt my head,’ said Mowgli (he was still on his back), ‘I went away, and the grey 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 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 outcasts. 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 to-day?’

‘No,’ said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo had finished.

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

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

‘The Monkey-People are forbidden,’ said Baloo, ‘forbidden to the Jungle-People. Remember.’

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

‘I—I? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt? The Monkey-People! Faugh!’

A fresh shower came down on their heads and the two trotted away, taking Mowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other’s path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People could see them. They were always just going to have a leader, and laws and customs of their own, but they never did, because their memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they compromised things by making up a saying: ‘What the Bandar-log think now the Jungle will think later,’ and that comforted them a great deal. None of the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none of the beasts would notice them, and that was why they were so pleased when Mowgli came to play with them, and they heard how angry Baloo was.

They never meant to do any more—the Bandar-log never mean anything at all; but one of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and he told all the others that Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in the tribe, because he could weave sticks together for protection from the wind; so, if they caught him, they could make him teach them. Of course, Mowgli, as a woodcutter’s child, inherited all sorts of instincts, and used to make little huts of fallen branches without thinking how he came to do it, and the Monkey-People, watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful. This time, they said, they were really going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the Jungle—so wise that every one 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 cross-roads, up hills and down hills, all laid out from fifty to seventy or a hundred feet above ground, and by these they can travel even at night if necessary. Two of the strongest monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung off with him through the tree-tops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy’s weight held them back. Sick and giddy as Mowgli was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth. His escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the thinnest topmost branches crackle and bend under them, and then with a cough and a whoop would fling themselves into the air outward and downward, and bring up, hanging by their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree. Sometimes he could see for miles and miles across the still green Jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost down to earth again. So, bounding and crashing and whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log swept along the tree-roads with Mowgli their prisoner.

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

‘In whose name, Brother?’ Chil had never seen Mowgli before, though of course he had heard of him.

‘Mowgli, the Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my tra-il!’

The last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air, but Chil nodded and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of dust, and there he hung, watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the tree-tops 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.’

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

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

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

‘Haste! Oh, 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 Hyaena, for I am the most miserable of bears! Arrulala! Wahooa! Oh, 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 one forepaw thoughtfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Give me permission to come with you,’ said Kaa. ‘A blow more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape. Pss-haw! 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.

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‘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 earth-worm,’ said Bagheera under his whiskers, as though he were trying to remember something.

‘Sssss! Have they ever called me that?’ said Kaa.

‘Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we never noticed them. They will say anything—even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they are indeed shameless, these Bandar-log)—because thou art afraid of the he-goat’s 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 to-day I heard them whooping among the tree-tops.’

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

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

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

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

‘I heard some news from 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.’

‘Tss! Tss!’ 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 man-thing is not to be envied. They called me also—“yellow fish,” was it not?’

‘Worm—worm—earth-worm,’ 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-ssh! We must help their wandering memories. Now, whither went they with the cub?’

‘The Jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe,’ said Baloo. ‘We had thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa.’

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

‘Up, Up! Up, Up! Hillo! Illo! Illo! Look up, Baloo of the Seeonee Wolf-Pack!’

Baloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was Chil the Kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his wings. It was near Chil’s bed-time, but he had ranged all over the Jungle looking for the Bear and had missed him in the thick foliage.

‘What is it?’ said Baloo.

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

‘Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Chil,’ cried Bagheera. ‘I will remember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee alone, O best of kites!’

‘It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master-Word. I could have done no less,’ and Chil circled up again to his roost.

‘He has not forgotten to use his tongue,’ said Baloo, with a chuckle of pride. ‘To think of one so young remembering the Master-Word for the birds too while he was being pulled across-trees!’

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

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

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

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

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‘Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four,’ said Kaa shortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, and so they left him to come on later, while Bagheera hurried forward, at the quick panther-canter. Kaa said nothing, but, strive as Bagheera might, the huge Rock Python held level with him. When they came to a hill-stream, Bagheera gained, because he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head and two feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground Kaa made up the distance.

‘By the Broken Lock that freed me,’ said Bagheera, when twilight had fallen, ‘thou art no slow goer!’

‘I am hungry,’ said Kaa. ‘Besides, they called me speckled frog.’

‘Worm—earth-worm, and yellow to boot.’

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

In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking of Mowgli’s friends 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 cobble-stones in the courtyard where the king’s elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol, in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at street-corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king’s council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king’s garden, where they would shake the rose-trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout: ‘There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log.’ Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, 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 lest interest and began to pull their friends’ tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.

‘I wish to eat,’ said Mowgli. ‘I am a stranger in this part of the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here.’

Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts and wild 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 Stranger’s Hunting Call from time to time, but no one answered him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed. ‘All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true,’ he thought to himself. ‘They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders—nothing but foolish words and little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jungle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is better than chasing silly rose-leaves with the Bandar-log.’

No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinching him to make him grateful. He set his teeth and said nothing, but went with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half-full of rain-water. There was a ruined summer-house of white marble in the centre 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 open-work, casting shadows on the ground like black velvet embroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mowgli could not help laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave them. ‘We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true,’ they shouted. ‘Now, as you are a new listener and can carry our words back to the Jungle-People so that they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our most excellent selves.’ Mowgli made no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speakers singing the praises of the Bandar-log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would all shout together: ‘This is true; we all say so.’ Mowgli nodded and blinked, and said ‘Yes’ when they asked him a question, and his head spun with the noise. ‘Tabaqui the jackal must have bitten all these people,’ he said to himself, ‘and now they have the madness. Certainly this is dewanee, the madness. Do they never go to sleep? Now there is a cloud coming to cover that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in the darkness. But I am tired.’

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

‘I will go to the west wall,’ Kaa whispered, ‘and come down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favour. 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.’

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‘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 scufing 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 summer-house and pushed him through the hole of the broken dome. A man trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed on his feet.

‘Stay there,’ shouted the monkeys, ‘till we have killed thy friends, and later we will play with thee—if the Poison-People leave thee alive.’

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

‘Even ssso! Down hoods all!’ said half-adozen low voices (every ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling-place of snakes, and the old summer-house was alive with cobras). ‘Stand still, Little Brother, for thy feet may do us harm.’

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

‘Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come alone,’ Mowgli thought; and then he called aloud: ‘To the tank, Bagheera! Roll to the water-tank. 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 steps, dancing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out to help Baloo. It was then that Bagheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in despair gave the Snake’s Call for protection ‘We be of one blood, ye and I’—for he believed that Kaa had turned tail at the last minute. Even Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the edge of the terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the Black Panther asking for help.

Kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, landing with a wrench that dislodged a coping-stone into the ditch. He had no intention of losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself once or twice, to be sure that every foot of his long body was in working order. All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the monkeys yelled in the tank around Bagheera, and Mang the Bat, flying to and fro, carried the news of the great battle over the Jungle, till even Hathi the Wild Elephant trumpeted, and, far away, scattered bands of the Monkey-Folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help their comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused all the day-birds for miles round. Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious to kill. The fighting-strength of a python is in the driving blow of his head backed by all the strength and weight of his body. If you can imagine a lance, or a battering-ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can roughly imagine what Kaa was like when he fought. A python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he hits, him fairly in the chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know. His first stroke was delivered into the heart of the crowd round Baloo—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 behaviour by the stories their elders told them of Kaa, the night-thief, who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead branch or a rotten stump that the wisest were deceived, till the branch caught them. Kaa was everything that the monkeys feared in the Jungle, for none of them knew the limits of his power, none of them could look him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug. And so they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was much thicker than Bagheera’s, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. Then Kaa opened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hissing word, and the far-away monkeys, hurrying to the defence 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 clamour 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 summer-house, put his eye to the screen-work 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.’

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Kaa looked carefully till he found a discoloured 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 screen-work 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, to-night. 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 centre 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 tree-tops: ‘We see, O Kaa.’

‘Good. Begins now the Dance—the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa. Sit still and watch.’

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

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

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

‘Without thy order we cannot stir foot or hand, O Kaa!’

‘Good! Come all one pace closer to me.’

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

‘Closer!’ hissed Kaa, and they all moved again.

Mowgli laid his lands 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 backmust go back to Kaa. Aah!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It is nothing,’ said Baloo; ‘we have the Man-cub again.’

‘True; but he has cost us heavily in time which might have been spent in good hunting, in wounds, in hair—I am half plucked along my back,—and, last of all, in honour. 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, Mancub, came of thy playing with the Bandar-log.’

‘True; it is true,’ said Mowgli sorrowfully. ‘I am an evil Man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me.’

‘Mf! What says the Law of the Jungle, Baloo?’

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

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

‘Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou are wounded. It is just.’

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

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

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

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

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For our white and our excellent nights—for the nights of swift running,
Fair ranging, far seeing, good hunting, sure cunning!
For the smells of the dawning, untainted, ere dew has departed!
For the rush through the mist, and the quarry blind-started!
For the cry of our mates when the sambhur has wheeled and is standing at bay,
For the risk and the riot of night!
For the sleep at the lair-mouth by day,
It is met, and we go to the fight.
Bay! O Bay!

IT was after the letting in of the jungle that the pleasantest part of Mowgli’s life began. He had the good conscience that comes from paying debts; all the Jungle was his friend, and just a little afraid of him. The things that he did and saw and heard when he was wandering from one people to another, with or without his four companions, would make many many stories, each as long as this one. So you will never be told how he met the Mad Elephant of Mandla, who killed two-and-twenty bullocks drawing eleven carts of coined silver to the Government Treasury, and scattered the shiny rupees in the dust; how he fought Jacala, the Crocodile, all one long night in the Marshes of the North, and broke his skinning-knife on the brute’s backplates; how he found a new and longer knife round the neck of a man who had been killed by a wild boar, and how he tracked that boar and killed him as a fair price for the knife; how he was caught up once in the Great Famine, by the moving of the deer, and nearly crushed to death in the swaying hot herds; how he saved Hathi the Silent from being once more trapped in a pit with a stake at the bottom, and how, next day, he himself fell into a very cunning leopard-trap, and how Hathi broke the thick wooden bars to pieces above him; how he milked the wild buffaloes in the swamp, and how——

But we must tell one tale at a time. Father and Mother Wolf died, and Mowgli rolled a big boulder against the mouth of their cave, and cried the Death Song over them; Baloo grew very old and stiff, and even Bagheera, whose nerves were steel and whose muscles were iron, was a shade slower on the kill than he had been. Akela turned from gray to milky white with pure age; his ribs stuck out, and he walked as though he had been made of wood, and Mowgli killed for him. But the young wolves, the children of the disbanded Seeonee Pack, throve and increased, and when there were about forty of them, masterless, full-voiced, clean-footed five-year-olds, Akela told them that they ought to gather themselves together and follow the Law, and run under one head, as befitted the Free People.

This was not a question in which Mowgli concerned himself, for, as he said, he had eaten sour fruit, and he knew the tree it hung from; but when Phao, son of Phaona (his father was the Gray Tracker in the days of Akela’s headship), fought his way to the leadership of the Pack, according to the Jungle Law, and the old calls and songs began to ring under the stars once more, Mowgli came to the Council Rock for memory’s sake. When he chose to speak the Pack waited till he had finished, and he sat at Akela’s side on the rock above Phao. Those were days of good hunting and good sleeping. No stranger cared to break into the jungles that belonged to Mowgli’s people, as they called the Pack, and the young wolves grew fat and strong, and there were many cubs to bring to the Looking-over. Mowgli always attended a Looking-over, remembering the night when a black panther bought a naked brown baby into the pack, and the long call, ‘Look, look well, O Wolves,’ made his heart flutter. Otherwise, he would be far away in the Jungle with his four brothers, tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things.

One twilight when he was trotting leisurely across the ranges to give Akela the half of a buck that he had killed, while the Four jogged behind him, sparring a little, and tumbling one another over for joy of being alive, he heard a cry that had never been heard since the bad days of Shere Khan. It was what they call in the Jungle the pheeal, a hideous kind of shriek that the jackal gives when he is hunting behind a tiger, or when there is a big killing afoot. If you can imagine a mixture of hate, triumph, fear, and despair, with a kind of leer running through it, you will get some notion. of the pheeal that rose and sank and wavered and quavered far away across the Waingunga. The Four stopped at once, bristling and growling. Mowgli’s hand went to his knife, and he checked, the blood in his face, his eyebrows knotted.

‘There is no Striped One dare kill here,’ he said.

‘That is not the cry of the Forerunner,’ answered Gray Brother. ‘It is some great killing. Listen!’

It broke out again, half sobbing and half chuckling, just as though the jackal had soft human lips. Then Mowgli drew deep breath, and ran to the Council Rock, overtaking on his way hurrying wolves of the Pack. Phao and Akela were on the Rock together, and below them, every nerve strained, sat the others. The mothers and the cubs were cantering off to their lairs; for when the pheeal cries it is no time for weak things to be abroad.

They could hear nothing except the Waingunga rushing and gurgling in the dark, and the light evening winds among the tree-tops, till suddenly across the river a wolf called. It was no wolf of the Pack, for they were all at the Rock. The note changed to a long, despairing bay; and ‘Dhole!’ it said, ‘Dhole! dhole! dhole!’ They heard tired feet on the rocks, and a gaunt wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right fore-paw useless, and his jaws white with foam, flung himself into the circle and lay gasping at Mowgli’s feet.

‘Good hunting! Under whose Headship?’ said Phao gravely.

‘Good hunting! Won-tolla am I,’ was the answer. He meant that he was a solitary wolf, fending for himself, his mate, and his cubs in some lonely lair, as do many wolves in the south. Wontolla means an Outlier—one who lies out from any Pack. Then he panted, and they could see his heart-beats shake him backward and forward.

‘What moves?’ said Phao, for that is the question all the Jungle asks after the pheeal cries.

‘The dhole, the dhole of the Dekkan—Red Dog, the Killer! They came north from the south saying the Dekkan was empty and killing out by the way. When this moon was new there were four to me—my mate and three cubs. She would teach them to kill on the grass plains, hiding to drive the buck, as we do who are of the open. At midnight I heard them together, full tongue on the trail. At the dawn-wind I found them stiff in the grass-four, Free People, four when this moon was new. Then sought I my Blood-Right and found the dhole.’

‘How many?’ said Mowgli quickly; the Pack growled deep in their throats.

‘I do not know. Three of them will kill no more, but at the last they drove me like the buck; on my three legs they drove me. Look, Free People!’

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He thrust, out his mangled fore-foot, all dark with dried blood. There were cruel bites low down on his side, and his throat was torn and worried.

‘Eat,’ said Akela, rising up from the meat Mowgli had brought him, and the Outlier flung himself on it.

‘This shall be no loss,’ he said humbly, when he had taken off the first edge of his hunger. ‘Give me a little strength, Free People, and I also will kill. My lair is empty that was full when this moon was new, and the Blood Debt is not all paid.’

Phao heard his teeth crack on a haunch-bone and grunted approvingly.

‘We shall need those jaws,’ said he. ‘Were there cubs with the dhole?’

‘Nay, nay. Red Hunters all: grown dogs of their Pack, heavy and strong for all that they eat lizards in the Dekkan.’

What Won-tolla had said meant that the dhole, the red hunting-dog of the Dekkan, was moving to kill, and the Pack knew well that even the tiger will surrender a new kill to the dhole. They drive straight through the Jungle, and what they meet they pull down and tear to pieces. Though they are not as big nor half as cunning as the wolf, they are very strong and very numerous. The dhole, for instance, do not begin to call themselves a pack till they are a hundred strong; whereas forty wolves make a very fair pack indeed. Mowgli’s wanderings had taken him to the edge of the high grassy downs of the Dekkan, and he had seen the fearless dholes sleeping and playing and scratching themselves in the little hollows and tussocks that they use for lairs. He despised and hated them because they did not smell like the Free People, because they did not live in caves, and, above all, because they had hair between their toes while he and his friends were clean-footed. But he knew, for Hathi had told him, what a terrible thing a dhole hunting-pack was. Even Hathi moves aside from their line, and until they are killed, or till game is scarce, they will go forward.

Akela knew something of the dholes, too, for he said to Mowgli quietly, ‘It is better to die in a Full Pack than leaderless and alone. This is good hunting, and—my last. But, as men live, thou hast very many more nights and days, Little Brother. Go north and lie down, and if any live after the dhole has gone by he shall bring thee word of the fight.’

‘Ah,’ said Mowgli, quite gravely, ‘must I go to the marshes and catch little fish and sleep in a tree, or must I ask help of the Bandar-log and crack nuts, while the Pack fight below?’

‘It is to the death,’ said Akela. ‘Thou hast never met the dhole—the Red Killer. Even the Striped One——’

‘Aowa! Aowa!’ said Mowgli pettingly. ‘I have killed one striped ape, and sure am I in my stomach that Shere Khan would have left his own mate for meat to the dhole if he had winded a pack across three ranges. Listen now: There was a wolf, my father, and there was a wolf, my mother, and there was an old gray wolf (not too wise he is white now) was my father and my mother. Therefore I—’ he raised his voice, ‘I say that when the dhole come, and if the dhole come, Mowgli and the Free People are of one skin for that hunting; and I say, by the Bull that bought me—by the Bull Bagheera paid for me in the old days which ye of the Pack do not remember—I say, that the Trees and the River may hear and hold fast if I forget; I say that this my knife shall be as a tooth to the Pack—and I do not think it is so blunt. This is my Word which has gone from me.’

‘Thou dost not know the dhole, man with a wolf’s tongue,’ said Won-tolla. ‘I look only to clear the Blood Debt against them ere they have me in many pieces. They move slowly, killing out as they go, but in two days a little strength will come back to me and I turn again for the Blood Debt. But for ye, Free People, my word is that ye go north and eat but little for a while till the dhole are gone. There is no meat in this hunting.’

‘Hear the Outlier!’ said Mowgli with a laugh. ‘ree People, we must go north and dig lizards and rats from the bank, lest by any chance we meet the dhole. He must kill out our hunting-grounds, while we lie hid in the north till it please him to give us our own again. He is a dog—and the pup of a dog—red, yellow-bellied, lairless, and haired between every toe! He counts his cubs six and eight at the litter, as though he were Chikai, the little leaping rat. Surely we must run away, Free People, and beg leave of the peoples of the north for the offal of dead cattle! Ye know the saying “North are the vermin; south are the lice. We are the Jungle.” Choose ye, O choose. It is good hunting! For the Pack—for the Full Pack—for the lair and the litter; for the in-kill and the out-kill; for the mate that drives the doe and the little, little cub within the cave; it is met!—it is met!—it is met!’

The Pack answered with one deep, crashing bark that sounded in the night like a big tree falling. ‘It is met!’ they cried.

‘Stay with these,’ said Mowgli to the Four. ‘We shall need every tooth. Phao and Akela must make ready the battle. I go to count the dogs.’

‘It is death!’ Won-tolla cried, half rising. ‘What can such a hairless one do against the Red Dog? Even the Striped One, remember——’

‘Thou art indeed an Outlier,’ Mowgli called back; ‘but we will speak when the dholes are dead. Good hunting all!’

He hurried off into the darkness, wild with excitement, hardly looking where he set foot, and the natural consequence was that he tripped full length over Kaa’s great coils where the python lay watching a deer-path near the river.

‘Kssha!’ said Kaa angrily. ‘Is this jungle-work, to stamp and tramp and undo a night’s hunting—when the game are moving so well, too?’

‘The fault was mine,’ said Mowgli, picking himself up. ‘Indeed I was seeking thee, Flathead, but each time we meet thou art longer and broader by the length of my arm. There is none like thee in the Jungle, wise, old, strong, and most beautiful Kaa.’

‘Now whither does this trail lead?’ Kaa’s voice was gentler. ‘Not a moon since there was a Manling with a knife threw stones at my head and called me bad little tree-cat names, because I lay asleep in the open.’

‘Ay, and turned every driven deer to all the winds, and Mowgli was hunting, and this same Flathead was too deaf to hear his whistle, and leave the deer-roads free,’ Mowgli answered composedly, sitting down among the painted coils.

‘Now this same Manling comes with soft, tickling words to this same Flathead, telling him that he is wise and strong and beautiful, and this same old Flathead believes and makes a place, thus, for this same stone-throwing Manling, and——Art thou at ease now? Could Bagheera give thee so good a resting-place?’

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Kaa had, as usual, made a sort of soft half-hammock of himself under Mowgli’s weight. The boy reached out in the darkness, and gathered in the supple cable-like neck till Kaa’s head rested on his shoulder, and then he told him all that had happened in the Jungle that night.

‘Wise I may be,’ said Kaa at the end; ‘but deaf I surely am. Else I should have heard the pheeal. Small wonder the Eaters of Grass are uneasy. How many be the dhole?’

‘I have not yet seen. I came hot-foot to thee. Thou art older than Hathi. But oh, Kaa,’—here Mowgli wriggled with sheer joy,—‘it will be good hunting. Few of us will see another moon.’

‘Dost thou strike in this? Remember thou art a Man; and remember what Pack cast thee out. Let the Wolf look to the Dog. Thou art a Man.’

‘Last year’s nuts are this year’s black earth,’ said Mowgli. ‘It is true that I am a Man, but it is in my stomach that this night I have said that I am a Wolf. I called the River and the Trees to remember. I am of the Free People, Kaa, till the dhole has gone by.’

‘Free People,’ Kaa grunted. ‘Free thieves! And thou hast tied thyself into the death-knot for the sake of the memory of the dead wolves? This is no good hunting.’

‘It is my Word which I have spoken. The Trees know, the River knows. Till the dhole have gone by my Word comes not back to me.’

‘Ngssh! This changes all trails: I had thought to take thee away with me to the northern marshes, but the Word—even the Word of a little, naked, hairless Manling—is the Word. Now I, Kaa, say——’

‘Think well, Flathead, lest thou tie thyself into the death-knot also. I need no Word from thee, for well I know——’

‘Be it so, then,’ said Kaa. ‘I will give no Word; but what is in thy stomach to do when the dhole come?’

‘They must swim the Waingunga. I thought to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the Pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting, we a little might turn them down-stream, or cool their throats.’

‘The dhole do not turn and their throats are hot,’ said Kaa. ‘There will be neither Manling nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry bones.’

‘Alala! If we die, we die. It will be most good hunting. But my stomach is young, and I have not seen many Rains. I am not wise nor strong. Hast thou a better plan, Kaa?’

‘I have seen a hundred and a hundred Rains. Ere Hathi cast his milk-tushes my trail was big in the dust. By the First Egg, I am older than many trees, and I have seen all that the Jungle has done.’

‘But this is new hunting,’ said Mowgli. ‘Never before have the dhole crossed our trail.’

‘What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward. Be still while I count those my years.’

For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night.

Then he felt Kaa’s back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard.

‘I have seen all the dead seasons,’ Kaa said at last, ‘and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling?’

‘It is only a little after moonset,’ said Mowgli. ‘I do not understand——’

‘Hssh! I am again Kaa. I knew it was but a little time: Now we will go to the river, and I will show thee what is to be done against the dhole.’

He turned, straight as an arrow, for the main stream of the Waingunga, plunging in a little above the pool that hid the Peace Rock, Mowgli at his side.

‘Nay, do not swim. I go swiftly. My back, Little Brother.’

Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa’s neck, dropped his right close to his body, and straightened his feet. Then Kaa breasted the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked water stood up in a frill round Mowgli’s neck, and his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under the python’s lashing sides. A mile or two above the Peace Rock the Waingunga narrows between a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred feet high, and the current runs like a mill-race between and over all manner of ugly stones. But Mowgli did not trouble his head about the water; little water in the world could have given him a moment’s fear. He was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day. Instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his head to breathe from time to time, and Kaa came to anchor with a double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in the hollow of a coil, while the water raced on.

‘This is the Place of Death,’ said the boy. ‘Why do we come here?’

‘They sleep,’ said Kaa. ‘Hathi will not turn aside for the Striped One. Yet Hathi and the Striped One together turn aside for the dhole, and the dhole they say turn aside for nothing. And yet for whom do the Little People of the Rocks turn aside? Tell me, Master of the Jungle, who is the Master of the Jungle?’

‘These,’ Mowgli whispered. ‘It is the Place of Death. Let us go.’

‘Nay, look well, for they are asleep. It is as it was when I was not the length of thy arm.’

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The split and weatherworn rocks of the gorge of the Waingunga had been used since the beginning of the Jungle by the Little People of the Rocks—the busy, furious, black wild bees of India; and, as Mowgli knew well, all trails turned off half a mile before they reached the gorge. For centuries the Little People had hived and swarmed from cleft to cleft, and swarmed again, staining the white marble with stale honey, and made their combs tall and deep in the dark of the inner caves, where neither man nor beast nor fire nor water had ever touched them. The length of the gorge on both sues was hung as it were with black shimmery velvet curtains, and Mowgli sank as he looked, for those were the clotted millions of the sleeping bees. There were other lumps and festoons and things like decayed tree-trunks studded on the face of the rock, the old combs of past years, or new cities built in the shadow of the windless gorge, and huge masses of spongy, rotten trash had rolled down and stuck among the trees and creepers that clung to the rockface. As he listened he heard more than once the rustle and slide of a honey-loaded comb turning over or falling away somewhere in the dark galleries; then a booming of angry wings, and the sullen drip, drip, drip, of the wasted honey, guttering along till it lipped over some ledge in the open air and sluggishly trickled down on the twigs. There was a tiny little beach, not five feet broad, on one side of the river, and that was piled high with the rubbish of uncounted years. There were dead bees, drones, sweepings, and stale combs, and wings of marauding moths that had strayed in after honey, all tumbled in smooth piles of the finest black dust. The mere sharp smell of it was enough to frighten anything that had no wings, and knew what the Little People were.

Kaa moved up-stream again till he came to a sandy bar at the head of the gorge.

‘Here is this season’s kill,’ said he. ‘Look!’

On the bank lay the skeletons of a couple of young deer and a buffalo. Mowgli could see that neither wolf nor jackal had touched the bones, which were laid out naturally.

‘They came beyond the line; they did not know the Law,’ murmured Mowgli, ‘and the Little People killed them. Let us go ere they wake.’

‘They do not wake till the dawn,’ said Kaa ‘Now I will tell thee. A hunted buck from the south, many, many Rains ago, came hither from the south, not knowing the Jungle, a Pack on his trail. Being made blind by fear, he leaped from above, the Pack running by sight, for they were hot and blind on the trail. The sun was high, and the Little People were many and very angry. Many, too, were those of the Pack who leaped into the Waingunga, but they were dead ere they took water. Those who did not leap died also in the rocks above. But the buck lived.’

‘How?’

‘Because he came first, running for his life, leaping ere the Little People were aware, and was in the river when they gathered to kill. The Pack, following, was altogether lost under the weight of the Little People.’

‘The buck lived?’ Mowgli repeated slowly.

‘At least he did not die then, though none waited his coming down with a strong body to hold him safe against the water, as a certain old fat, deaf, yellow Flathead would wait for a Manling—yea, though there were all the dholes of the Dekkan on his trail. What is in thy stomach?’ Kaa’s head was close to Mowgli’s ear; and it was a little time before the boy answered.

‘It is to pull the very whiskers of Death, but—Kaa, thou art, indeed, the wisest of all the Jungle.’

‘So many have said. Look now, if the dhole follow thee——’

‘As surely they will follow. Ho! ho! I have many little thorns under my tongue to prick into their hides.’

‘If they follow thee hot and blind, looking only at thy shoulders, those who do not die up above will take water either here or lower down, for the Little People will rise up and cover them. Now the Waingunga is hungry water, and they will have no Kaa to hold them, but will go down, such as live, to the shallows by the Seeonee Lairs, and there thy Pack may meet them by the throat.’

‘Ahai! Eowawa! Better could not be till the Rains fall in the dry season. There is now only the little matter of the run and the leap. I will make me known to the dholes, so that they shall follow me very closely.’

‘Hast thou seen the rocks above thee? From the landward side?’

‘Indeed, no. That I had forgotten.’

‘Go look. It is all rotten ground, cut and full of holes. One of thy clumsy feet set down without seeing would end the hunt. See, I leave thee here, and for thy sake only I will carry word to the Pack that they may know where to look for the dhole. For myself, I am not of one skin with any wolf.’

When Kaa disliked an acquaintance he could be more unpleasant than any of the Jungle People, except perhaps Bagheera. He swam down-stream, and opposite the Rock he came on Phao and Akela, listening to the night noises.

‘Hssh! Dogs,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The dholes will come down-stream. If ye be not afraid ye can kill them in the shallows.’

‘When come they?’ said Phao. ‘And where is my Man-cub?’ said Akela.

‘They come when they come,’ said Kaa. ‘Wait and see. As for thy Man-cub, from whom thou hast taken a Word and so laid him open to Death, thy Man-cub is with me, and if he be not already dead the fault is none of thine, bleached dog! Wait here for the dhole, and be glad that the Man-cub and I strike on thy side.’

Kaa flashed up-stream again, and moored himself in the middle of the gorge, looking upward at the line of the cliff. Presently he saw Mowgli’s head move against the stars, and then there was a whizz in the air, the keen, clean schloop of a body falling feet first, and next minute the boy was at rest again in the loop of Kaa’s body.

‘It is no leap by night,’ said Mowgli quietly. ‘I have jumped twice as far for sport; but that is an evil place above—low bushes and gullies that go down very deep, all full of the Little People. I have put big stones one above the other by the side of three gullies. These I shall throw down with my feet in running, and the Little People will rise up behind me, very angry.’

‘That is Man’s talk and Man’s cunning,’ said Kaa. ‘Thou art wise, but the Little People are always angry.’

page 5

‘Nay, at twilight all wings near and far rest for a while. I will play with the dhole at twilight, for the dhole hunts best by day. He follows now Won-tolla’s blood-trail.’

‘Chil does not leave a dead ox, nor the dhole the blood-trail,’ said Kaa.

‘Then I will make him a new blood-trail, of his own blood, if I can, and give him dirt to eat. Thou wilt stay here, Kaa, till I come again with my dholes?’

‘Ay, but what if they kill thee in the Jungle, or the Little People kill thee before thou canst leap down to the river?’

‘When to-morrow comes we will kill for tomorrow,’ said Mowgli, quoting a Jungle saying; and again, ‘When I am dead it is time to sing the Death Song. Good hunting, Kaa!’

He loosed his arm from the python’s neck and went down the gorge like a log in a freshet, paddling toward the far bank, where he found slack-water, and laughing aloud from sheer happiness. There was nothing Mowgli liked better than, as he himself said, ‘to pull the whiskers of Death,’ and make the Jungle know that he was their overlord. He had often, with Baloo’s help, robbed bees’ nests in single trees, and he knew that the Little People hated the smell of wild garlic. So he gathered a small bundle of it, tied it up with a bark string, and then followed Won-tolla’s blood-trail, as it ran southerly from the Lairs, for some five miles, looking at the trees with his head on one side, and chuckling as he looked.

‘Mowgli the Frog have I been,’ said he to himself; ‘Mowgli the Wolf have I said that I am. Now Mowgli the Ape must I be before I am Mowgli the Buck. At the end I shall be Mowgli the Man. Ho!’ and he slid his thumb along the eighteen-inch blade of his knife.

Won-tolla’s trail, all rank with dark bloodspots, ran under a forest of thick trees that grew close together and stretched away north-eastward, gradually growing thinner and thinner to within two miles of the Bee Rocks. From the last tree to the low scrub of the Bee Rocks was open country, where there was hardly cover enough to hide a wolf. Mowgli trotted along under the trees, judging distances between branch and branch, occasionally climbing up a trunk and taking a trial leap from one tree to another till he came to the open ground, which he studied very carefully for an hour. Then he turned, picked up Won-tolla’s trail where he had left it, settled himself in a tree with an outrunning branch some eight feet from the ground, and sat still, sharpening his knife on the sole of his foot and singing to himself.

A little before mid-day, when the sun was very warm, he heard the patter of feet and smelt the abominable smell of the dhole-pack as they trotted pitilessly along Won-tolla’s trail. Seen from above, the red dhole does not look half the size of a wolf, but Mowgli knew how strong his feet and jaws were. He watched the sharp bay head of the leader snuffing along the trail, and gave him ‘Good hunting!’

The brute looked up, and his companions halted behind him, scores and scores of red dogs with low-hung tails, heavy shoulders, weak quarters, and bloody mouths. The dholes are a very silent people as a rule, and they have no manners even in their own Jungle. Fully two hundred must have gathered below him, but he could see that the leaders sniffed hungrily on Won-tolla’s trail, and tried to drag the Pack forward. That would never do, or they would be at the Lairs in broad daylight, and Mowgli meant to hold them under his tree till dusk.

‘By whose leave do ye come here?’ said Mowgli.

‘All Jungles are our Jungle,’ was the reply, and the dhole that gave it bared his white teeth. Mowgli looked down with a smile, and imitated perfectly the sharp chitter-chatter of Chikai, the leaping rat of the Dekkan, meaning the dholes to understand that he considered them no better than Chikai. The Pack closed up round the tree-trunk and the leader bayed savagely, calling Mowgli a tree-ape. For an answer Mowgli stretched down one naked leg and wriggled his bare toes just above the leader’s head. That was enough, and more than enough, to wake the Pack to stupid rage. Those who have hair between their toes do not care to be reminded of it. Mowgli caught his foot away as the leader leaped up, and said sweetly: ‘Dog, red dog! Go back to the Dekkan and eat lizards. Go to Chikai thy brother—dog, dog—red, red dog! There is hair between every toe!’ He twiddled his toes a second time.

‘Come down ere we starve thee out, hairless ape!’ yelled the Pack, and this was exactly what Mowgli wanted. He laid himself down along the branch, his cheek to the bark, his right arm free, and there he told the Pack what he thought and knew about them, their manners, their customs, their mates, and their puppies. There is no speech in the world so rancorous and so stinging as the language the Jungle People use to show scorn and contempt. When you come to think of it you will see how this must be so. As Mowgli told Kaa, he had many little thorns under his tongue, and slowly and deliberately he drove the dholes from silence to growls, from growls to yells, and from yells to hoarse slavery ravings. They tried to answer his taunts, but a cub might as well have tried to answer Kaa in a rage; and all the while Mowgli’s right hand lay crooked at his side, ready for action, his feet locked round the branch. The big bay leader had leaped many times in the air, but Mowgli dared not risk a false blow. At last, made furious beyond his natural strength, he bounded up seven or eight feet clear of the ground. Then Mowgli’s hand shot out like the head of a tree-snake, and gripped him by the scruff of his neck, and the branch shook with the jar as his weight fell back, almost wrenching Mowgli to the ground. But he never loosed his grip, and inch by inch he hauled the beast, hanging like a drowned jackal, up on the branch. With his left hand he reached for his knife and cut off the red, bushy tail, flinging the dhole back to earth again. That was all he needed. The Pack would not go forward on Won-tolla’s trail now till they had killed Mowgli or Mowgli had killed them. He saw them settle down in circles with a quiver of the haunches that meant they were going to stay, and so he climbed to a higher crotch, settled his back comfortably, and went to sleep.

After three or four hours he waked and counted the Pack. They were all there, silent, husky, and dry, with eyes of steel. The sun was beginning to sink. In half an hour the Little People of the Rocks would be ending their labours, and, as you know, the dhole does not fight best in the twilight.

‘I did not need such faithful watchers,’ he said politely, standing up on a branch, ‘but I will remember this. Ye be true dholes, but to my thinking over much of one kind. For that reason I do not give the big lizard-eater his tail again. Art thou not pleased, Red Dog?’

‘I myself will tear out thy stomach!’yelled the leader, scratching at the foot of the tree.

‘Nay, but consider, wise rat of the Dekkan. There will now be many litters of little tailless red dogs, yea, with raw red stumps that sting when the sand is hot. Go home, Red Dog, and cry that an ape has done this. Ye will not go? Come, then, with me, and I will make you very wise!’

page 6

He moved, Bandar-log fashion, into the next tree, and so on into the next and the next, the Pack following with lifted hungry heads. Now and then he would pretend to fall, and the Pack would tumble one over the other in their haste to be at the death. It was a curious sight—the boy with the knife that shone in the low sunlight as it sifted through the upper branches, and the silent Pack with their red coats all aflame, huddling and following below. When he came to the last tree he took the garlic and rubbed himself all over carefully, and the dholes yelled with scorn. ‘Ape with a wolf’s tongue, dost thou think to cover thy scent?’ they said. ‘We follow to the death.’

‘Take thy tail,’ said Mowgli, flinging it back along the course he had taken. The Pack instinctively rushed after it. ‘And follow now—to the death.’

He had slipped down the tree-trunk, and headed like the wind in bare feet for the Bee Rocks, before the dholes saw what he would do.

They gave one deep howl, and settled down to the long, lobbing canter that can at the last run down anything that runs. Mowgli knew their pack-pace to be much slower than that of the wolves, or he would never have risked a two-mile run in full sight. They were sure that the boy was theirs at last, and he was sure that he held them to play with as he pleased. All his trouble was to keep them sufficiently hot behind him to prevent their turning off too soon. He ran cleanly, evenly, and springily; the tailless leader not five yards behind him; and the Pack tailing out over perhaps a quarter of a mile of ground, crazy and blind with the rage of slaughter. So he kept his distance by ear, reserving his last effort for the rush across the Bee Rocks.

The Little People had gone to sleep in the early twilight, for it was not the season of late blossoming flowers; but as Mowgli’s first footfalls rang hollow on the hollow ground he heard a sound as though all the earth were humming. Then he ran as he had never run in his life before, spurned aside one’two’three of the piles of stones into the dark, sweet-smelling gullies; heard a roar like the roar of the sea in a cave; saw with the tail of his eye the air grow dark behind him; saw the current of the Waingunga far below, and a flat, diamond-shaped head in the water; leaped outward with all his strength, the tailless dhole snapping at his shoulder in mid-air, and dropped feet first to the safety of the river, breathless and triumphant. There was not a sting upon him, for the smell of the garlic had checked the Little People for just the few seconds that he was among them. When he rose Kaa’s coils were steadying him and things were bounding over the edge of the cliff-great lumps, it seemed, of clustered bees falling like plummets; but before any lump touched water the bees flew upward and the body of a dhole whirled down-stream. Overhead they could hear furious short yells that were drowned in a roar like breakers—the roar of the wings of the Little People of the Rocks. Some of the dholes, too, had fallen into the gullies that communicated with the underground caves, and there choked and fought and snapped among the tumbled honeycombs, and at last, borne up, even when they were dead, on the heaving waves of bees beneath them, shot out of some hole in the river-face, to roll over on the black rubbish-heaps. There were dholes who had leaped short into the trees on the cliffs, and the bees blotted out their shapes; but the greater number of them, maddened by the stings, had flung themselves into the river; and, as Kaa said, the Waingunga was hungry water.

Kaa held Mowgli fast till the boy had recovered his breath.

‘We may not stay here,’ he said. ‘The Little People are roused indeed. Come!’

Swimming low and diving as often as he could, Mowgli went down the river, knife in hand.

‘Slowly, slowly,’ said Kaa. ‘One tooth does not kill a hundred unless it be a cobra’s, and many of the dholes took water swiftly when they saw the Little People rise.’

‘The more work for my knife, then. Phai! How the Little People follow!’ Mowgli sank again. The face of the water was blanketed with wild bees, buzzing sullenly and stinging all they found.

‘Nothing was ever yet lost by silence,’ said Kaa—no sting could penetrate his scales—‘and thou hast all the long night for the hunting. Hear them howl!’

Nearly half the pack had seen the trap their fellows rushed into, and turning sharp aside had flung themselves into the water where the gorge broke down in steep banks. Their cries of rage and their threats against the ‘tree-ape’ who had brought them to their shame mixed with the yells and growls of those who had been punished by the Little People. To remain ashore was death, and every dhole knew it. Their pack was swept along the current, down to the deep eddies of the Peace Pool, but even there the angry Little People followed and forced them to the water again. Mowgli could hear the voice of the tailless leader bidding his people hold on and kill out every wolf in Seeonee. But he did not waste his time in listening.

‘One kills in the dark behind us!’ snapped a dhole. ‘Here is tainted water!’

Mowgli had dived forward like an otter, twitched a struggling dhole under water before he could open his mouth, and dark rings rose as the body plopped up, turning on its side. The dholes tried to turn, but the current prevented them, and the Little People darted at the heads and ears, and they could hear the challenge of the Seeonee Pack growing louder and deeper in the gathering darkness. Again Mowgli dived, and again a dhole went under, and rose dead, and again the clamour broke out at the rear of the pack; some howling that it was best to go ashore, others calling on their leader to lead them back to the Dekkan, and others bidding Mowgli show himself and be killed.

‘They come to the fight with two stomachs and several voices,’ said Kaa. ‘The rest is with thy brethren below yonder, The Little People go back to sleep. They have chased us far. Now I, too, turn back, for I am not of one skin with any wolf. Good hunting, Little Brother, and remember the dhole bites low.’

A wolf came running along the bank on three legs, leaping up and down, laying his head sideways close to the ground, hunching his back, and breaking high into the air, as though he were playing with his cubs. It was Won-tolla, the Outlier, and he said never a word, but continued his horrible sport beside the dholes. They had been long in the water now, and were swimming wearily, their coats drenched and heavy, their bushy tails dragging like sponges, so tired and shaken that they, too, were silent, watching the pair of blazing eyes that moved abreast.

‘This is no good hunting,’ said one, panting.

‘Good hunting!’ said Mowgli, as he rose boldly at the brute’s side, and sent the long knife home behind the shoulder, pushing hard to avoid his dying snap.

‘Art thou there, Man-cub?’ said Won-tolla across the water.

page 7

‘Ask of the dead, Outlier,’ Mowgli replied. ‘Have none come down-stream? I have filled these dogs’ mouths with dirt; I have tricked them in the broad daylight, and their leader lacks his tail, but here be some few for thee still. Whither shall I drive them?’

‘I will wait,’ said Won-tolla. ‘The night is before me.’

Nearer and nearer came the bay of the Seeonee wolves. ‘For the Pack, for the Full Pack it is met!’ and a bend in the river drove the dholes forward among the sands and shoals opposite the Lairs.

Then they saw their mistake. They should have landed half a mile higher up, and rushed the wolves on dry ground. Now it was too late. The bank was lined with burning eyes, and except for the horrible pheeal that had never stopped since sundown, there was no sound in the Jungle. It seemed as though Won-tolla were fawning on them to come ashore; and ‘Turn and take hold!’ said the leader of the dholes. The entire Pack flung themselves at the shore, threshing and squattering through the shoal water, till the face of the Waingunga was all white and torn, and the great ripples went from side to side, like bow-waves from a boat. Mowgli followed the rush, stabbing and slicing as the dholes, huddled together, rushed up the river-beach in one wave.

Then the long fight began, heaving and straining and splitting and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red, wet sands, and over and between the tangled tree-roots, and through and among the bushes, and in and out of the grass clumps; for even now the dholes were two to one. But they met wolves fighting for all that made the Pack, and not only the short, high, deep-chested, white-tusked hunters of the Pack, but the anxious-eyed lahinis—the she-wolves of the lair, as the saying is—fighting for their litters, with here and there a yearling wolf, his first coat still half woolly, tugging and grappling by their sides. A wolf, you must know, flies at the throat or snaps at the flank, while a dhole, by preference, bites at the belly; so when the dholes were struggling out of the water and had to raise their heads, the odds were with the wolves. On dry land the wolves suffered; but in the water or ashore, Mowgli’s knife came and went without ceasing. The Four had worried their way to his side. Gray Brother, crouched between the boy’s knees, was protecting his stomach, while the others guarded his back and either side, or stood over him when the shock of a leaping, yelling dhole who had thrown himself full on the steady blade bore him down. For the rest, it was one tangled confusion—a locked and swaying mob that moved from right to left and from left to right along the bank; and also ground round and round slowly on its own centre. Here would be a heaving mound, like a water-blister in a whirlpool, which would break like a water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled dogs, each striving to get back to the centre; here would be a single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, laboriously dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling cub would be held up by the pressure round him, though he had been killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage, rolled over and over, snapping, and passing on; and in the middle of the thickest press, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole, forgetting everything else, would be manoeuvring for first hold till they were whirled away by a rush of furious fighters. Once Mowgli passed Akela, a dhole on either flank, and his all but toothless jaws closed over the loins of a third; and once he saw Phao, his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging the unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could finish him. But the bulk of the fight was blind flurry and smother in the dark; hit, trip, and tumble, yelp, groan, and worry-worry-worry, round him and behind him and above him. As the night wore on, the quick, giddy-go-round motion increased. The dholes were cowed and afraid to attack the stronger wolves, but did not yet dare to run away. Mowgli felt that the end was coming soon, and contented himself with striking merely to cripple. The yearlings were growing bolder; there was time now and again to breathe, and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker of the knife would sometimes turn a dog aside.

‘The meat is very near the bone,’ Gray Brother yelled. He was bleeding from a score of flesh-wounds.

‘But the bone is yet to be cracked,’ said Mowgli. ‘Eowawa! Thus do we do in the Jungle!’ The red blade ran like a flame along the side of a dhole whose hind-quarters were hidden by the weight of a clinging wolf.

‘My kill!’ snorted the wolf through his wrinkled nostrils. ‘Leave him to me.’

‘Is thy stomach still empty, Outlier?’ said Mowgli. Won-tolla was fearfully punished, but his grip had paralysed the dhole, who could not turn round and reach him.

‘By the Bull that bought me,’ said Mowgli, with a bitter laugh, ‘it is the tailless one!’ And indeed it was the big bay-coloured leader.

‘It is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis,’ Mowgli went on philosophically, wiping the blood out of his eyes, ‘unless one has also killed the Outlier; and it is in my stomach that this Won-tolla kills thee.’

A dhole leaped to his leader’s aid; but before his teeth had found Won-tolla’s flank, Mowgli’s knife was in his throat, and Gray Brother took what was left.

‘And thus do we do in the Jungle,’ said Mowgli.

Won-tolla said not a word, only his jaws were closing and closing on the backbone as his life ebbed. The dhole shuddered, his head dropped, and he lay still, and Won-tolla dropped above him.

‘Huh! The Blood Debt is paid,’ said Mowgli. ‘Sing the song, Won-tolla.’

‘He hunts no more,’ said Gray Brother; ‘and Akela, too, is silent this long time.’

‘The bone is cracked!’ thundered Phao, son of Phaona. ‘They go! Kill, kill out, O hunters of the Free People!’

Dhole after dhole was slinking away from those dark and bloody sands to the river, to the thick Jungle, up-stream or down-stream as he saw the road clear.

‘The debt! The debt!’ shouted Mowgli ‘Pay the debt! They have slain the Lone Wolf! Let not a dog go!’

He was flying to the river, knife in hand, to check any dhole who, dared to take water, when, from under a mound of nine dead, rose Akela’s head and fore-quarters, and Mowgli dropped on his knees beside the Lone Wolf.

‘Said I not it would be my last fight?’ Akela gasped. ‘It is good hunting. And thou, Little Brother?’

‘I live, having killed many.’

‘Even so. I die, and I would—I would die by thee, Little Brother.’

Mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his knees, and put his arms round the torn neck.

‘It is long since the old days of Shere Khan, and a Man-cub that rolled naked in the dust.’

page 8

‘Nay, nay, I am a wolf. I am of one skin with the Free People,’ Mowgli cried. ‘It is no will of mine that I am a man.’

‘Thou art a man, Little Brother, wolfling of my watching. Thou art a man, or else the Pack had fled before the dhole. My life I owe to thee, and to-day thou hast saved the Pack even as once I saved thee. Hast thou forgotten? All debts are paid now. Go to thine own people. I tell thee again, eye of my eye, this hunting is ended. Go to thine own people.’

‘I will never go. I will hunt alone in the Jungle. I have said it.’

‘After the summer come the Rains, and after the Rains comes the spring. Go back before thou art driven.’

‘Who will drive me?’

‘Mowgli will drive Mowgli. Go back to thy people. Go to Man.’

‘When Mowgli drives Mowgli I will go,’ Mowgli answered.

‘There is no more to say,’ said Akela. ‘Little Brother, canst thou raise me to my feet? I also was a leader of the Free People.’

Very carefully and gently Mowgli lifted the bodies aside, and raised Akela to his feet, both arms round him, and the Lone Wolf drew a long breath, and began the Death Song that a leader of the Pack should sing when he dies. It gathered strength as he went on, lifting and lifting, and ringing far across the river, till it came to the last ‘Good hunting!’ and Akela shook himself clear of Mowgli for an instant, and, leaping into the air, fell backward dead upon his last and most terrible kill.

Mowgli sat with his head on his knees, careless of anything else, while the remnant of the flying dholes were being overtaken and run down by the merciless lahinis. Little by little the cries died away, and the wolves returned limping, as their wounds stiffened, to take stock of the losses. Fifteen of the Pack, as well as half a dozen lahinis, lay dead by the river, and of the others not one was unmarked. And Mowgli sat through it all till the cold daybreak, when Phao’s wet, red muzzle was dropped in his hand, and Mowgli drew back to show the gaunt body of Akela.

‘Good hunting!’ said Phao, as though Akela were still alive, and then over his bitten shoulder to the others: ‘Howl, dogs! A Wolf has died to-night!’

But of all the Pack of two hundred fighting dholes, whose boast was that all jungles were their Jungle, and that no living thing could stand before them, not one returned to the Dekkan to carry that word.

[a short tale]

HANS BREITMANN paddled across the deck in his pink pyjamas, a cup of tea in one hand and a cheroot in the other, when the steamer was sweltering down the coast on her way to Singapur. He drank beer all day and all night, and played a game called ‘Scairt’ with three compatriots.‘I haf washed,’ said he in a voice of thunder, ‘but, dere is no use washing on these hell-seas. Look at me—I am still all wet und schweatin’. It is der tea dot makes me so. Boy, bring me Bilsener on ice.’

‘You will die if you drink beer before breakfast,’ said one man. ‘Beer is the worst thing in the world for—’

‘Ya, I know—der liver. I haf no liver, und I shall not die. At least I will not die obon dese benny sdeamers dot haf no beer fit to trink. If I should haf died, I will haf don so a hoondert dimes before now—in Shermany, in New York, in Japon, in Assam, und all over der inside barts of South Amerique. Also in Shamaica should I haf died or in Siam, but I am here; und der are my orchits dot I have drafelled all the vorld round to find.’

He pointed towards the wheel, where, in two rough wooden boxes, lay a mass of shrivelled vegetation, supposed by all the ship to represent Assam orchids of fabulous value.

Now, orchids do not grow in the main streets of towns, and Hans Breitmann had gone far to get his. There was nothing that he had not collected that year, from kingcrabs to white kangaroos.

‘Lisden now,’ said he, after he had been speaking for not much more than ten minutes without a pause; ‘Lisden und I will dell you a sdory to show how bad und worse it is to go gollectin’ und belief vot anoder fool haf said. Dis was in Uraguay which was in Amerique—North or Sout’ you would not know—und I was hoontin’ orchits und aferydings else dot I could back in my kanasters—dot is drafelling sbecimen-gaces. Dere vas den mit me anoder man—Reingelder, dot vas his name—und he vas hoontin’ also, but only coral-snakes—joost Uraguay coral-snakes—aferykind you could imagine. I dell you a coral-snake is a peauty—all red und white like coral dot has been gestrung in bands upon der neck of a girl. Dere is one snake howefer dot we who gollect know ash der Sherman Flag, pecause id is red und plack und white, joost like a sausage mit druffles. Reingelder he was naturalist—goot man—goot trinker—better as me! “By Gott,” said Reingelder, “I will get a Sherman Flag snake or I will die.” Und we toorned all Uraguay upside-behint all pecause of dot Sherman Flag.

‘Von day when we was in none knows where—shwingin’ in our hummocks among der woods, oop comes a natif woman mit a Sherman Flag in a bickle-bottle—my bickle-bottle—und we both fell from our hummocks flat ubon our pot—what you call stomach—mit shoy at dis thing. Now I was gollectin’ orchits also, und I knowed dot der idee of life to Reingelder vas dis Sherman Flag. Derefore I bicked myselfs oop und I said, “Reingelder dot is your find.”—“Heart’s true friend, dou art a goot man,” said Reingelder, und mit dot he obens der bickle-bottle, und der natif woman she shqueals, “Herr Gott! It will bite.” I said—pecause in Uraguay a man must be careful of der insects—“Reingelder shpifligate her in der alcohol und den she will be all right.”—“Nein,” said Reingelder, “I will der shnake alife examine. Dere is no fear. Der coral-snakes are mitout shting-apparatus brofided.” Boot I looked at her het, und she vas der het of a boison-shnake—der true viper cranium, narrow und contract. “It is not good,” said I, “She may bite und den—we are tree hoondert mile from aferywheres. Broduce der alcohol und bickle him alife.” Reingelder he had him in his hand—grawlin’ und grawlin’ as slow as a woorm und dwice as guiet. “Nonsense,” says Reingelder. “Yates haf said dot not von of der coral-snakes haf der sack of boison.” Yates vas der crate authorité ubon der reptilia of Sout’ Amerique. He haf written a book. You do not know, of course, but he vas a crate authorité.

‘I gum my eye upon der Sherman Flag, grawlin’ und grawlin’ in Reingelder’s fist, und der het vas not der het of innocence. “Mein Gott,” I said. “It is you dot will get der sack—der sack from dis life here pelow!”

‘“Den you may haf der snake,” says Reingelder, pattin’ it ubon her het. “See now, I will show you vat Yates haf written!”

‘Und mit dot he went indo his dent, unt brung out his big book of Yates; der Sherman Flag grawlin’ in his fist. “Yates haf said,” said Reingelder, und he throwed oben der dook in der fork of his fist und read der passage, proofin’ conglusivement dot nefer coral-snake bite vas boison. Den he shut der book mit a bang, und dot shqueeze der Sherman Flag, und she nip once und dwice.

‘“Der liddle fool he haf bit me,” says Reingelder.

‘Dese things was before we know apout der permanganat-potash injection. I was discomfordable.

‘“Die oop der arm, Reingelder,” said I, “und trink whisky ontil you can no more think.”

‘“Trink ten tousand tevils! I will go to dinner,” said Reingelder, und he put her afay, und it vas very red mit emotion.

‘We lifed upon soup, horse-flesh, und beans for dinner, but before we vas eaten der soup, Reingelder he haf hold of his arm und cry, “It is genumben to der clavicle. I am a dead man; und Yates he haf lied in brint!”

‘I dell you it vas most sad, for der symbtoms dot came vas all dose of strychnine. He vas doubled into big knots, und den undoubled, und den redoubled mooch worse dan pefore, und he frothed. I vas mit him, saying “Reingelder dost dou know me?” but he himself, der inward gonciousness part, was peyond knowledge, und so I know he vas not in bain. Den he wrop himself oop in von dremendous knot und den he died—all alone mit me in Uraguay. I was sorry for I lofed Reingelder, und I puried him, und den I took der coral-snake—dot Sherman Flag—so bad und dreacherous, und I bickled him alife.

‘So I got him: und so I lost Reingelder.’

page 1 of 5

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 tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, 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 road-side 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 bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing-table, and burnt 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 summer-houses 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 tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibres, 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?’

page 2

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?’ said he. ‘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 round 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 grey 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 Rikkitikki 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 paralysed 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 wine-glasses 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 musk-rat, creeping round by the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted 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.’

page 3

‘Do you think a snake-killer kills musk-rats?’ 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 window-pane,—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 bath-room sluice. You’re right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua.’

He stole off to Teddy’s bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to Teddy’s mother’s bath-room. 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 bath-room 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 favour. 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—oh, 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 cart-whipped 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 honour 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.

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‘Nagaina came to the bath-room 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 hid 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 feather-brained 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 tea-cups, 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 bath-room.’ 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.’

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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 Kikki-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 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-tack!’ 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 still looked very white, 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.

MR. HAWKINS MUMRATH, of Her Majesty’s Bengal Civil Service, lay down to die of enteric fever; and, being a thorough-minded man, so nearly accomplished his purpose that all his friends, two doctors, and the Government he served gave him up for lost. Indeed, upon a false rumour the night before he rallied, several journals published very pleasant obituary notices, which, three weeks later, Mr. Mumrath sat up in bed and studied with interest. It is strange to read about yourself in the past tense, and soothing to discover that for all your faults, your world ‘could have better spared a better man.’ When a Bengal Civilian is tepid and harmless, newspapers always conclude their notices with this reflection. It entirely failed to amuse Mr. Mumrath.

The loving-kindness of the Government provides for the use of its servants in the East luxuries undreamed of by other civilisations. A State-paid doctor closed Mumrath’s eyes — till Mumrath insisted upon opening them again; a subventionised undertaker bought Government timber for a Government coffin; and the great Cemetery of St. Golgotha-in-Partibus prepared, according to regulation, a brick-lined grave, headed and edged, with masonry rests for the coffin. The cost of that grave was 175 rupees 14 annas, including the lease of the land in perpetuity. Very minute are the instructions of the Government for the disposal, wharfage, and demurrage of its dead; but the actual arrangements are not published in any appendix to pay and pension rules, for the same reason that led a Prussian officer not to leave his dead and wounded too long in the sight of a battery under fire.

Mr. Mumrath recovered and went about his work, to the disgust of his juniors who had hoped promotion from his decease. The undertaker sold the coffin, at a profit, to a fat Armenian merchant in Calcutta, and the State-paid doctor profited in practice by Mumrath’s resurrection from the dead. The Cemetery of St. Golgotha-in-Partibus sat down by the head of the new-made grave with the beautiful brick luung, and waited for the corpse then signing despatches in an office three mules away. The yearly accounts were made up; and there remained over, unpaid for, one grave, cost 175 rupees 14 annas. The vouchers for all the other graves carried the name of a deceased servant of the Government. Only one space was blank in the column.

Then Ahutosh Lal Deb, Sub-Deputy Assistant in the Accounts Department, being full of zeal for the State, and but newly appointed to his important post, wrote officially to the Cemetery, desiring to know the inwardness of that grave, and ‘having the honour to be,’ etc. The Cemetery wrote officially that there was no inwardness at all, but a complete emptiness; said grave having been ordered for Mr. Hawkins Mumrath, and ‘had the honour to remain.’ Ahutosh Lal Deb had the honour to point out that, the grave being unused, the Government could by no means pay for it. The Cemetery wished to know if the account could be carried over to the next year, ‘pending anticipated taking-up of grave.’

Ahutosh Lal Deb said that he was not going to have the accounts confused. Discrepancy was ‘the soul of bandinage and defalcations.’ The Cemetery would be good enough to adjust on the financial basis of that year.

The Cemetery wished they might be buried if they saw their way to doing it, and there really had been more than two thousand burned bricks put into the lining of the grave. Meantime, they complained, the Government Brickfield Audit was waiting until all material should have been paid for.

Ahutosh Lal Deb wrote: ‘Refer to Mr. Mumrath.’ The Cemetery referred semi-officially. It struck them as being rather a delicate matter, but orders are orders. Hawkins Mumrath wrote back, saying that he had the honour to be quite well, and not in the least in need of a grave, brick-lined or otherwise. He recommended the head of the Cemetery to get into that grave and stay there. The Cemetery forwarded the letter to Ahutosh Lal Deb, for reference and order.

Ahutosh Lal Deb forwarded it to the Provincial Government, who filed it behind a mass of other files and forgot all about it.

A fat she-cobra crawled into the neglected grave, and laid her eggs among the bricks. The Rains fell, and a little sprinkling of grass jewelled the brick floor.

The Cemetery wrote to Ahutosh Lal Deb, advising him that Mr. Mumrath had not paid for the grave, and requesting that the sum might be stopped from his monthly pay. Ahutosh Lal Deb sent the letter to Hawkins Mumrath as a reminder.

Hawkins Mumrath swore; but when he had sworn, he began to feel frightened. The enteric fever had destroyed his nerve. He wrote to the Accounts Department, protesting against the injustice of paying for a grave beforehand. Deductions for pension or widow’s annuity were quite right, but this sort of deduction was an imposition, besides being sarcastic.

Ahutosh Lal Deb wrote that Mr. Mumrath’s style was not one usually employed in official correspondence, and requested him to modulate it and pay for the grave. Hawkins Mumrath tossed the letter into the fire, and wrote to the Provincial Government.

The Provincial Government had the honour to point out that the matter rested entirely between Mr. Hawkins Mumrath and the Accounts Department. They saw no reason to interfere till the money was actually deducted from the pay. In that eventuality, if Mr. Hawkins Mumrath appealed through the proper channels, he might, if the matter were properly reported upon, get a refund, less the cost of his last letter, which was under-stamped. The Cemetery wrote to Ahutosh Lal Deb, enclosing triplicate of grave-bill and demanding some sort of settlement.

Ahutosh Lal Deb deducted 175 rupees 14 annas from Mumrath’s monthly pay. Mumrath appealed through the proper channels. The Provincial Government wrote that the expenses of all Government graves solely concerned the Supreme Government, to whom his letter had been forwarded.

Mumrath wrote to the Supreme Governinent. The Supreme Government had the honour to explain that the management of St. Golgotha-in-Partibus was under direct control of the Provincial Government, to whom they had had the honour of forwarding his communication. Mumrath telegraphed to the Cemetery to this effect.

The Cemetery telegraphed: ‘Fiscal and finance, Supreme; management of internal affairs, Provincial Government. Refer Revenue and Agricultural Department for grave details.’ Mumrath referred to the Revenue and Agricultural Department. That Department had the honour to make clear that it was only concerned in the plantation of trees round the Cemetery. The Forest Department controlled the reboisement of the edges of the paths.

Mumrath forwarded all the letters to Ahutosh Lal Deb, with a request for an immediate refund under ‘Rule 431 A, Supplementary Addenda, Bengal.’ He invented rule and reference pro re riata, having some knowledge of the workings of the Babu mind.

The crest of the Revenue and Agricultural Department frightened Ahutosh Lal Deb more than the reference. He bewilderedly granted the refund, and recouped the Government from the Cemetery Establishment allowance.

The Cemetery Establishment Executive Head wanted to know what Ahutosh Lal Deb meant.

The Accountant-General wanted to know what Ahutosh Lal Deb meant.

The Provincial Governinent wanted to know what Ahutosh Lal Deb meant.

The Revenue and Agricultural, the Forest Department, and the Government Harness Depot, which supplies the leather slings for the biers, all wanted to know what the deuce Ahutosh Lal Deb meant.

Ahutosh Lal Deb referred them severally to Mr. Hawkins Mumrath, who had driven out to chuckle over his victory all alone at the head of the bricklined grave with the masonry foot-rests. The she-cobra was sunning herself by the edge of the grave with her little ones about her, for the eggs had hatched out beautifully. Hawkins Mumrath stepped absently on the old lady’s tail, and she bit him in the ankle.

Hawkins Mumrath drove home very quickly, and died in five hours and three-quarters. Then Ahutosh Lal Deb passed the entry to ‘regular account,’ and there was peace in India.

NOW THIS IS THE TRUE TALE that was told to Punch and Judy his sister by their nurse, in the city of Bombay. They were playing in the veranda, waiting for their mother to come back from her evening drive. The big pink crane, who generally lived by himself at the bottom of the garden, because he hated horses and carriages, was with them too, and their nurse, who was called the ayah, was making him dance by throwing pieces of mud at him. Pink cranes dance very prettily until they grow angry. Then they peck. This pink crane lost his temper, opened his wings and clattered his beak, and the ayah had to sing a song which never fails to quiet all the cranes in Bombay. It is a very old song, and it says:

Buggle baita nuddee kanara
Toom-toom mushia kaye!
Nuddee kinara kanta lugga
Tullaka-tullaka ju jaye!

That means: A crane sat by the river-bank, eating fish, toom-toom: and a thorn in the river-bank pricked him, and his life went away, tullaka-tullaka – drop by drop. The ayah and Punch and Judy always talked Hindustani because they spent more time talking to their ayah than to their parents, and understood it better than English.

‘See now,’ said Punch, clapping his hands. ‘He knows, and he is ashamed. Tullaka-tullaka ju jaye! Go away!’

‘Tullaka-tullaka,’ said little Judy, who was five; and the pink crane shut up his beak, and went down to the bottom of the garden to the coconut palms and the aloes and the red peppers.

Punch followed, shouting ‘Tullaka-tullaka!’ till the crane hopped over an aloe hedge and Punch got pricked by the spikes. Then he cried, because he was only seven, and because it was so hot that he was wearing only very few clothes and the aloes had pricked a great deal of him; and Judy cried too, because Punch was crying, and she knew that that meant something worth crying for.

‘Ohoo!’said Punch, looking at both his fat little legs together. ‘I am very badly pricked by the very bad aloe. Perhaps I shall die!’

‘Punch will die because he has been pricked by the very bad aloe; and then there will be only Judy,’ said Judy.

‘No,’ said Punch very quickly, putting his legs down. ‘Then you will sit up to dinner alone. I will not die; but, ayah, I am very badly pricked. What is good for that?’

The ayah looked down for a minute, just to see that there were two tiny pink scratches on Punch’s legs. Then she looked out across the garden to the blue water of Bombay harbour, where the ships are, and said:

‘Once upon a time there was a Rajah.’ [‘Rajah’ in Hindustani means king, just as ‘Ranee’ means queen.]

‘Will Punch die, ayah?’ said Judy. She too had seen the pink scratches, and they seemed very dreadful to her.

‘No,’ said Punch. ‘Ayah is telling a tale. Stop crying, Judy.’

‘And the Rajah had a daughter,’ said the ayah.

‘It is a new tale,’ said Punch. ‘The last Rajah had a son, and he was turned into a monkey. Hssh!’

The ayah put out her soft brown arm, picked Judy off the matting of the veranda, and tucked her into her lap. Punch sat cross-legged close by.

‘That Rajah’s daughter was very beautiful,’ the ayah went on.

‘How beautiful? More beautiful than Mamma? Then I do not believe this tale,’ said Punch.

‘She was a fairy Princess, Punch baba, and she was very beautiful indeed. And when she grew up the Rajah her father said that she must marry the best Prince in all India!’

‘Where did all these things happen?’ said Punch. ‘In a big forest near Delhi. So it was told to me,’ said the ayah.

‘Very good,’ said Punch. ‘When I am big I will go to Delhi. Tell the tale, ayah.’

‘Therefore the king made a talk with his magicians – men with white beards who do jadoo[magic], and make snakes come out of baskets, and grow mangoes from little stones, such as you, Punch, and you, Judy baba, have seen. But in those days they did much more wonderful things. They turned men into tigers and elephants. And the magicians counted the stars under which the Princess was born.’

‘I – I do not understand this,’ said Judy, wriggling on the ayah‘s lap. Punch did not understand either, but he looked very wise.

The ayah hugged her close. ‘How should a babe understand?’ she said very softly. ‘It is in this way. When the stars are in one position when a child is born, it means well. When they are in another position, it means, perhaps, that the child may be sick or ill-tempered, or she may have to travel very far away.’

‘Must I travel far away?’ said Judy.

‘No, no. There were only good little stars in the sky on the night that Judy baba was born – little home-keeping stars that danced up and down, they were so pleased.’

‘And I – I – I? What did the stars do when I was born?’ said Punch.

‘There was a new star that night. I saw it. A great star with a fiery tail all across the sky. Punch will travel far.’

‘That is true. I have been to Nasik in the railway train. Never mind the Princess’s stars. What did the magic-men do?’

‘They consulted the stars, little impatient, and they said that the Princess must be shut up in such a manner that only the very best of all the Princes in India could take her out. So they shut her up, when she was sixteen years old, in a big deer grain-jar of dried clay, with a cover of plaited grass.

‘I have seen them in the Bombay market,’ said Judy. ‘Was it of the very big kind?’ The ayah nodded, and Judy shivered, for her father had once held her up to look into the mouth of just such a grain-jar, and it was full of empty darkness.

‘How did they feed her?’ said Punch.

‘She was a fairy. Perhaps she did not want food,’ the ayah replied.

‘All people want food. This is not a true tale. I shall go and beat the crane.’ Punch got up on his knees.

‘No, no. I have forgotten. There was plenty of food. Plantains, red and yellow ones, almond curd, boiled rice and peas, fowl stuffed with raisins and red peppers, and cakes fried in oil with coriander seeds, and sweetmeats of sugar and butter. Is that enough food? So the Princess was shut up in the grain-jar, and the Rajah made a proclamation that whoever could take her out should marry her and should govern ten provinces, sitting upon an elephant with tusks of gold. That proclamation was made through all India.’

‘We did not hear it, Punch and I,’ said Judy. ‘Is this a true tale, ayah?’

‘It was before Punch was born. It was before even I was born; but so my mother told it to me. And when the proclamation was made, there came to Delhi hundreds and thousands of Princes and Rajahs and great men. The grain-jar with the cover of plaited grass was set in the middle of all, and the Rajah said he would allow to each man one year in which to make charms and learn great words that would open the grain-jar.’

‘I do not understand,’ said Judy again. She had been looking down the garden for her mother’s return, and had lost the thread of the tale.

‘The jar was a magic one, and it was to be opened by magic,’ said Punch. ‘Go on, ayah; I understand.’

The ayah laughed a little. ‘Yes, the Rajah’s magicians told all the Princes that it was a magic jar, and led them three times round it, muttering under their beards, and bade them come back in a year. So the Princes and the Subadars, and the Wazirs and the Maliks rode away east and west and north and south, and consulted the magicians in their fathers’ Courts, and holy men caves.’

‘Like the holy men I saw at Nasik on the mountain. They were all nungapunga [naked], but they showed me their little Gods, and I burned stuff that smelt in a pot before them all, and they said I was a Hindu and -‘ Punch stopped, out of breath.

‘Yes. Those were the men. Old men smeared with ashes and yellow paint did the Princes consult, and witches and dwarfs that live in caves, and wise tigers and talking horses and learned parrots. They told these men and all these beasts of the Princess in the grain-jar; and the holy men and the wise beasts taught them charms and spells that were very strong magic indeed. Some of the Princes they advised to go out and kill giants and dragons, and cut off their heads. And some of the Princes stayed for a year with the holy men in forests, learning charms that would immediately split open great mountains. There was no charm and no magic that these Princes and Subadars did not learn, for they knew that the Rajah’s magicians were very strong magicians, and therefore they needed very very strong charms to open the grain-jar. So they did all these things that I have told, and also cut off the tails of the little devils that live on the sand of the great Desert in the north; and at last there were very few djinns and giants left, and poor people could plough without being bewitched any more.

‘Only there was one Prince that did not ride away with the others, for he had neither horse nor saddle nor any men to follow him. He was a Prince of low birth for his mother had married the son of a potter, and he was the son of his mother. So he sat down on the ground, and the little boys of the city driving the cattle to pasture threw mud at him.’

‘Ah,’ said Punch. ‘Mud is nice. Did they hit him?’

‘I am telling the tale of the Princess, and if there are so many questions, how can I finish before bedtime? He sat on the ground, and presently his mother, the Ranee, came by, gathering sticks to cook bread, and he told her of the Princess and the grain-jar. And she said: “Remember that a pot is a pot, and thou art the son of a potter.” Then she went away with those dry sticks, and the Potter-Prince waited till the end of the year.

‘Then – the Princes returned, as many of them as were left over from the fights that they had fought. They brought with them the terrible cut-off heads of the giants and the dragons, so that people fell down with fright; and the tails of all the little devils, bunch by bunch, tied up with string; and the feathers of magic birds; and holy men and dwarfs and talking beasts came with them. And there were bullock carts full of the locked books of magic incantations and spells. The Rajah appointed a day, and his magicians came, and the grain-jar was set in the middle of all, and the Princes began according to their birth and the age of their families to open the grain-jar by means of their charm-work. There were very many Princes, and the charms were very strong, so that, as they performed the ceremonies, the lightning ran about the ground as a broken egg runs over the cook-house floor, and it was thick, dark night, and the people heard the voices of devils and djinns and talking tigers, and saw them running to and fro about the grain-jar till the ground shook. But, none the less, the grain-jar did not open. And the next day the ground was split up as a log of wood is split, and great rivers flowed up and down the plain, and magic armies with banners walked in circles – so great was the strength of the charms! Snakes, too, crawled round the grain-jar and hissed, but none the less the jar did not open. When morning came the holes in the ground had closed up, and the rivers were gone away, and there was only the plain. And that was because it was all magic charm-work, which cannot last.’

‘Aha,’ said Punch, drawing a deep breath. ‘I am glad of that. It was only magic, Judy. Tell the tale, ayah.’

‘At the very last, when they were all wearied out, and the holy men began to bite their nails with vexation, and the Rajah’s magicians laughed, the Potter Prince came into the plain alone, without even one little talking beast or wise bird, and all the people made jokes at him. But he walked to the grain-jar and cried: “A pot is a pot, and I am the son of a potter!” And he put his two hands upon the grain-jar’s cover, and he lifted it up, and the Princess came out! Then the people said, “This is very great magic indeed”; and they began to chase the talking beasts and the holy men up and down, meaning to kill them. But the Rajah’s magicians said: “This is no magic jar at all, for we did not put any charm upon the jar. It was a common grain-jar, and it is a common grain-jar, such as they buy in the bazar; and a child might have lifted the cover a year ago, or on any day since that day. You are too wise, O Princes and Subadars, who rely on holy men and the heads of dead giants and devils’ tails, but do not work with your own hands! You are too cunning! There was no magic, and now one man has taken it all away from you because he was not afraid. Go home, Princes, or, if you will, stay to see the wedding. But remember that a pot is a pot.”‘

There was a long silence at the end of the tale. ‘But the charms were very strong,’ said Punch doubtfully.

‘They were only words, and how could they touch the pot? Could words turn you into a tiger, Punch baba?’

‘No. I am Punch.’

‘Even so, ‘said the ayah. ‘If the pot had been charmed, a charm would have opened it. But it was a common, bazar pot. what did it know of charms? It opened to a hand on the cover.’

‘Oh!’ said Punch; and then he began to laugh, and Judy followed his example. ‘Now I quite understand. I will tell it to Mamma.’

When Mamma came back from her drive, the children told her the tale twice over, while she was dressing for dinner; but as they began in the middle and put the beginning first, and then began at the end and put the middle last, she became a little confused.

‘Never mind,’ said Punch. ‘I will show.’ And he reached up to the table for the big eau-de-cologne bottle that he was strictly forbidden to touch, and pulled out the stopper, and upset half the scent down the front of his dress, shouting, ‘A pot is a pot, and I am the son of a potter!’

by Rudyard Kipling

Background + Notes