…then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs …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.
This is from “Kaa’s Hunting” in The Jungle Book.
Mowgli has been captured by the bandar-log, the monkey people. They carry him away through the jungle and imprison him in Cold Lairs, the ancient ruined city.
He has remembered from his lessons how to call out to the kite high above the tree-tops, who tells Baloo and Bagheera where they have taken him …later in the story they rescue him with the help of Kaa, the great rock python.
…he ran as he had never run in his life before …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…
This is from “Red Dog” in The Second Jungle Book.
A big aggressive pack of dholes, hunting dogs from the Deccan, have invaded the territory of Mowgli’s Seeonee wolves. Here he has led them into a gorge, the home of killer wild bees where many of them perish.
There follows an epic battle in which the dholes are defeated and driven out.
They heard, as the last burdened family filed through the gate, a crash of falling beams and thatch behind the walls. They saw a shiny, snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering sodden thatch. It disappeared, and there was another crash…
This is from “Letting in the Jungle” in The Second Jungle Book, one of Kipling’s most powerful stories of revenge.
Mowgli has been driven out of the village, and Meessua, his mother, and her man are soon to be put to death as witches. He resolves to destroy the village by letting in the jungle upon it. The crops are destroyed by the deer and nilghai and wild pig, here the elephants are now breaking down the houses.
‘by the end of the Rains there was the roaring Jungle in full blast on the spot that had been under plough not six months before.’