
"THE
JUNGLE BOOK"

Contents
Mowgli's Brothers
Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack
Kaa's Hunting
Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
"Tiger! Tiger!"
Mowgli's Song
The White Seal
Lukannon
"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
Darzee's Chant
Toomai of the Elephants
Shiv and the Grasshopper
Her Majesty's Servants
Parade Song of the Camp Animals

Mowgli's
Brothers
Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free—
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
Night-Song in the Jungle
It was seven
o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills
when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest,
scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws
one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling
in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray
nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing
cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave
where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It
is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down
hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed
the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O
Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white
teeth go with noble children that they may never
forget the hungry in this world."
It was the
jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of
India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making
mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and
pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps.
But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui,
more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go
mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of
anyone, and runs through the forest biting
everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides
when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the
most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild
creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it
dewanee—the madness—and run.
"Enter,
then, and look," said Father Wolf stiffly, "but
there is no food here."
"For a wolf,
no," said Tabaqui, "but for so mean a person as
myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the
Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?"
He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found
the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat
cracking the end merrily.
"All thanks
for this good meal," he said, licking his lips. "How
beautiful are the noble children! How large are
their eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I
might have remembered that the children of kings are
men from the beginning."
Now, Tabaqui
knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so
unlucky as to compliment children to their faces. It
pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look
uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat
still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made,
and then he said spitefully:
"Shere Khan,
the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He
will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he
has told me."
Shere Khan
was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River,
twenty miles away.
"He has no
right!" Father Wolf began angrily—"By the Law of the
Jungle he has no right to change his quarters
without due warning. He will frighten every head of
game within ten miles, and I—I have to kill for two,
these days."
"His mother
did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing,"
said Mother Wolf quietly. "He has been lame in one
foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed
cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry
with him, and he has come here to make our villagers
angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is
far away, and we and our children must run when the
grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful to
Shere Khan!"
"Shall I
tell him of your gratitude?" said Tabaqui.
"Out!"
snapped Father Wolf. "Out and hunt with thy master.
Thou hast done harm enough for one night."
"I go," said
Tabaqui quietly. "Ye can hear Shere Khan below in
the thickets. I might have saved myself the
message."
Father Wolf
listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a
little river he heard the dry, angry, snarly,
singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and
does not care if all the jungle knows it.
"The fool!"
said Father Wolf. "To begin a night's work with that
noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat
Waingunga bullocks?"
"H'sh. It is
neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night," said
Mother Wolf. "It is Man."
The whine
had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to
come from every quarter of the compass. It was the
noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies
sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes
into the very mouth of the tiger.
"Man!" said
Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. "Faugh!
Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks
that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!"
The Law of
the Jungle, which never orders anything without a
reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when
he is killing to show his children how to kill, and
then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his
pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that
man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of
white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of
brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then
everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the
beasts give among themselves is that Man is the
weakest and most defenseless of all living things,
and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say
too—and it is true—that man-eaters become mangy, and
lose their teeth.
The purr
grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "Aaarh!"
of the tiger's charge.
Then there
was a howl—an untigerish howl—from Shere Khan. "He
has missed," said Mother Wolf. "What is it?"
Father Wolf
ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering
and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in the
scrub.
"The fool
has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter's
campfire, and has burned his feet," said Father Wolf
with a grunt. "Tabaqui is with him."
"Something
is coming uphill," said Mother Wolf, twitching one
ear. "Get ready."
The bushes
rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf
dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his
leap. Then, if you had been watching, you would have
seen the most wonderful thing in the world—the wolf
checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he
saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried
to stop himself. The result was that he shot up
straight into the air for four or five feet, landing
almost where he left ground.
"Man!" he
snapped. "A man's cub. Look!"
Directly in
front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a
naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft and as
dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave
at night. He looked up into Father Wolf's face, and
laughed.
"Is that a
man's cub?" said Mother Wolf. "I have never seen
one. Bring it here."
A Wolf
accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary,
mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father
Wolf's jaws closed right on the child's back not a
tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down
among the cubs.
"How little!
How naked, and—how bold!" said Mother Wolf softly.
The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get
close to the warm hide. "Ahai! He is taking his meal
with the others. And so this is a man's cub. Now,
was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's
cub among her children?"
"I have
heard now and again of such a thing, but never in
our Pack or in my time," said Father Wolf. "He is
altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a
touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not
afraid."
The
moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave,
for Shere Khan's great square head and shoulders
were thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui, behind him,
was squeaking: "My lord, my lord, it went in here!"
"Shere Khan
does us great honor," said Father Wolf, but his eyes
were very angry. "What does Shere Khan need?"
"My quarry.
A man's cub went this way," said Shere Khan. "Its
parents have run off. Give it to me."
Shere Khan
had jumped at a woodcutter's campfire, as Father
Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his
burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of
the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by.
Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and
forepaws were cramped for want of room, as a man's
would be if he tried to fight in a barrel.
"The Wolves
are a free people," said Father Wolf. "They take
orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from any
striped cattle-killer. The man's cub is ours—to kill
if we choose."
"Ye choose
and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing?
By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into
your dog's den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere
Khan, who speak!"
The tiger's
roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook
herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her
eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing
the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.
"And it is
I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man's cub is
mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He
shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the
Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little
naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer—he shall hunt
thee! Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed
(I eat no starved cattle), back thou goest to thy
mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever
thou camest into the world! Go!"
Father Wolf
looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days
when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five
other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not
called The Demon for compliment's sake. Shere Khan
might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand
up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he
was she had all the advantage of the ground, and
would fight to the death. So he backed out of the
cave mouth growling, and when he was clear he
shouted:
"Each dog
barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack
will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is
mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, O
bush-tailed thieves!"
Mother Wolf
threw herself down panting among the cubs, and
Father Wolf said to her gravely:
"Shere Khan
speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the
Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?"
"Keep him!"
she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and very
hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed
one of my babes to one side already. And that lame
butcher would have killed him and would have run off
to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted
through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him?
Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O
thou Mowgli—for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee—the
time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he
has hunted thee."
"But what
will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.

The Law of
the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may,
when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs
to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand
on their feet he must bring them to the Pack
Council, which is generally held once a month at
full moon, in order that the other wolves may
identify them. After that inspection the cubs are
free to run where they please, and until they have
killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a
grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The
punishment is death where the murderer can be found;
and if you think for a minute you will see that this
must be so.
Father Wolf
waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on
the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli
and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—a hilltop
covered with stones and boulders where a hundred
wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf,
who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay
out at full length on his rock, and below him sat
forty or more wolves of every size and color, from
badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck
alone to young black three-year-olds who thought
they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year
now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his
youth, and once he had been beaten and left for
dead; so he knew the manners and customs of men.
There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs
tumbled over each other in the center of the circle
where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and
again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub,
look at him carefully, and return to his place on
noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push her
cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that he
had not been overlooked. Akela from his rock would
cry: "Ye know the Law—ye know the Law. Look well, O
Wolves!" And the anxious mothers would take up the
call: "Look—look well, O Wolves!"
At last—and
Mother Wolf's neck bristles lifted as the time
came—Father Wolf pushed "Mowgli the Frog," as they
called him, into the center, where he sat laughing
and playing with some pebbles that glistened in the
moonlight.
Akela never
raised his head from his paws, but went on with the
monotonous cry: "Look well!" A muffled roar came up
from behind the rocks—the voice of Shere Khan
crying: "The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have
the Free People to do with a man's cub?" Akela never
even twitched his ears. All he said was: "Look well,
O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the
orders of any save the Free People? Look well!"
There was a
chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his
fourth year flung back Shere Khan's question to
Akela: "What have the Free People to do with a man's
cub?" Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if
there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be
accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at
least two members of the Pack who are not his father
and mother.
"Who speaks
for this cub?" said Akela. "Among the Free People
who speaks?" There was no answer and Mother Wolf got
ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if
things came to fighting.
Then the
only other creature who is allowed at the Pack
Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the
wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can
come and go where he pleases because he eats only
nuts and roots and honey—rose upon his hind quarters
and grunted.
"The man's
cub—the man's cub?" he said. "I speak for the man's
cub. There is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift
of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with
the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself
will teach him."
"We need yet
another," said Akela. "Baloo has spoken, and he is
our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides
Baloo?"
A black
shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera
the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the
panther markings showing up in certain lights like
the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera,
and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as
cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and
as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a
voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree,
and a skin softer than down.
"O Akela,
and ye the Free People," he purred, "I have no right
in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says
that if there is a doubt which is not a killing
matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub
may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say
who may or may not pay that price. Am I right?"
"Good!
Good!" said the young wolves, who are always hungry.
"Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a
price. It is the Law."
"Knowing
that I have no right to speak here, I ask your
leave."
"Speak
then," cried twenty voices.
"To kill a
naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better
sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in
his behalf. Now to Baloo's word I will add one bull,
and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from
here, if ye will accept the man's cub according to
the Law. Is it difficult?"
There was a
clamor of scores of voices, saying: "What matter? He
will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the
sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run
with the Pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him
be accepted." And then came Akela's deep bay,
crying: "Look well—look well, O Wolves!"
Mowgli was
still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did
not notice when the wolves came and looked at him
one by one. At last they all went down the hill for
the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and
Mowgli's own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared
still in the night, for he was very angry that
Mowgli had not been handed over to him.
"Ay, roar
well," said Bagheera, under his whiskers, "for the
time will come when this naked thing will make thee
roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man."
"It was well
done," said Akela. "Men and their cubs are very
wise. He may be a help in time."
"Truly, a
help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the
Pack forever," said Bagheera.
Akela said
nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to
every leader of every pack when his strength goes
from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at
last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader
comes up—to be killed in his turn.
"Take him
away," he said to Father Wolf, "and train him as
befits one of the Free People."
And that is
how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack
for the price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.
Now you must
be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and
only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led
among the wolves, because if it were written out it
would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the
cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves
almost before he was a child. And Father Wolf taught
him his business, and the meaning of things in the
jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath
of the warm night air, every note of the owls above
his head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it
roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of
every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as
much to him as the work of his office means to a
business man. When he was not learning he sat out in
the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleep again.
When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest
pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that
honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw
meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed
him how to do. Bagheera would lie out on a branch
and call, "Come along, Little Brother," and at first
Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he
would fling himself through the branches almost as
boldly as the gray ape. He took his place at the
Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he
discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the
wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he
used to stare for fun. At other times he would pick
the long thorns out of the pads of his friends, for
wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their
coats. He would go down the hillside into the
cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously
at the villagers in their huts, but he had a
mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square
box with a drop gate so cunningly hidden in the
jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him
that it was a trap. He loved better than anything
else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of
the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and
at night see how Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera
killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did
Mowgli—with one exception. As soon as he was old
enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that
he must never touch cattle because he had been
bought into the Pack at the price of a bull's life.
"All the jungle is thine," said Bagheera, "and thou
canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to
kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee
thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old.
That is the Law of the Jungle." Mowgli obeyed
faithfully.
And he grew
and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know
that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing
in the world to think of except things to eat.
Mother Wolf
told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a
creature to be trusted, and that some day he must
kill Shere Khan. But though a young wolf would have
remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot it
because he was only a boy—though he would have
called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak
in any human tongue.
Shere Khan
was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as
Akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come
to be great friends with the younger wolves of the
Pack, who followed him for scraps, a thing Akela
would never have allowed if he had dared to push his
authority to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan
would flatter them and wonder that such fine young
hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a
man's cub. "They tell me," Shere Khan would say,
"that at Council ye dare not look him between the
eyes." And the young wolves would growl and bristle.
Bagheera,
who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of
this, and once or twice he told Mowgli in so many
words that Shere Khan would kill him some day.
Mowgli would laugh and answer: "I have the Pack and
I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might
strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be
afraid?"
It was one
very warm day that a new notion came to
Bagheera—born of something that he had heard.
Perhaps Ikki the Porcupine had told him; but he said
to Mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the
boy lay with his head on Bagheera's beautiful black
skin, "Little Brother, how often have I told thee
that Shere Khan is thy enemy?"
"As many
times as there are nuts on that palm," said Mowgli,
who, naturally, could not count. "What of it? I am
sleepy, Bagheera, and Shere Khan is all long tail
and loud talk—like Mao, the Peacock."
"But this is
no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the
Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer
know. Tabaqui has told thee too."
"Ho! ho!"
said Mowgli. "Tabaqui came to me not long ago with
some rude talk that I was a naked man's cub and not
fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaqui by the
tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to
teach him better manners."
"That was
foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker,
he would have told thee of something that concerned
thee closely. Open those eyes, Little Brother. Shere
Khan dare not kill thee in the jungle. But remember,
Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he
cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no
more. Many of the wolves that looked thee over when
thou wast brought to the Council first are old too,
and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has
taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the
Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a man."
"And what is
a man that he should not run with his brothers?"
said Mowgli. "I was born in the jungle. I have
obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf
of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn.
Surely they are my brothers!"
Bagheera
stretched himself at full length and half shut his
eyes. "Little Brother," said he, "feel under my
jaw."
Mowgli put
up his strong brown hand, and just under Bagheera's
silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all
hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald
spot.
"There is no
one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry
that mark—the mark of the collar; and yet, Little
Brother, I was born among men, and it was among men
that my mother died—in the cages of the king's
palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I
paid the price for thee at the Council when thou
wast a little naked cub. Yes, I too was born among
men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind
bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I
was Bagheera—the Panther—and no man's plaything, and
I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and
came away. And because I had learned the ways of
men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere
Khan. Is it not so?"
"Yes," said
Mowgli, "all the jungle fear Bagheera—all except
Mowgli."
"Oh, thou
art a man's cub," said the Black Panther very
tenderly. "And even as I returned to my jungle, so
thou must go back to men at last—to the men who are
thy brothers—if thou art not killed in the Council."
"But why—but
why should any wish to kill me?" said Mowgli.
"Look at
me," said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him
steadily between the eyes. The big panther turned
his head away in half a minute.
"That is
why," he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. "Not
even I can look thee between the eyes, and I was
born among men, and I love thee, Little Brother. The
others they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet
thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast
pulled out thorns from their feet—because thou art a
man."
"I did not
know these things," said Mowgli sullenly, and he
frowned under his heavy black eyebrows.
"What is the
Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give
tongue. By thy very carelessness they know that thou
art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when
Akela misses his next kill—and at each hunt it costs
him more to pin the buck—the Pack will turn against
him and against thee. They will hold a jungle
Council at the Rock, and then—and then—I have it!"
said Bagheera, leaping up. "Go thou down quickly to
the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the
Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the
time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend
than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee.
Get the Red Flower."
By Red
Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the
jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every
beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a
hundred ways of describing it.
"The Red
Flower?" said Mowgli. "That grows outside their huts
in the twilight. I will get some."
"There
speaks the man's cub," said Bagheera proudly.
"Remember that it grows in little pots. Get one
swiftly, and keep it by thee for time of need."
"Good!" said
Mowgli. "I go. But art thou sure, O my Bagheera"—he
slipped his arm around the splendid neck and looked
deep into the big eyes—"art thou sure that all this
is Shere Khan's doing?"
"By the
Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little
Brother."
"Then, by
the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full
tale for this, and it may be a little over," said
Mowgli, and he bounded away.
"That is a
man. That is all a man," said Bagheera to himself,
lying down again. "Oh, Shere Khan, never was a
blacker hunting than that frog-hunt of thine ten
years ago!"
Mowgli was
far and far through the forest, running hard, and
his heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the
evening mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down
the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother Wolf, at
the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that
something was troubling her frog.
"What is it,
Son?" she said.
"Some bat's
chatter of Shere Khan," he called back. "I hunt
among the plowed fields tonight," and he plunged
downward through the bushes, to the stream at the
bottom of the valley. There he checked, for he heard
the yell of the Pack hunting, heard the bellow of a
hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at
bay. Then there were wicked, bitter howls from the
young wolves: "Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show
his strength. Room for the leader of the Pack!
Spring, Akela!"
The Lone
Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for
Mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp
as the Sambhur knocked him over with his forefoot.
He did not
wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells
grew fainter behind him as he ran into the croplands
where the villagers lived.
"Bagheera
spoke truth," he panted, as he nestled down in some
cattle fodder by the window of a hut. "To-morrow is
one day both for Akela and for me."
Then he
pressed his face close to the window and watched the
fire on the hearth. He saw the husbandman's wife get
up and feed it in the night with black lumps. And
when the morning came and the mists were all white
and cold, he saw the man's child pick up a wicker
pot plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps
of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and
go out to tend the cows in the byre.
"Is that
all?" said Mowgli. "If a cub can do it, there is
nothing to fear." So he strode round the corner and
met the boy, took the pot from his hand, and
disappeared into the mist while the boy howled with
fear.
"They are
very like me," said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as
he had seen the woman do. "This thing will die if I
do not give it things to eat"; and he dropped twigs
and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway up the hill
he met Bagheera with the morning dew shining like
moonstones on his coat.
"Akela has
missed," said the Panther. "They would have killed
him last night, but they needed thee also. They were
looking for thee on the hill."
"I was among
the plowed lands. I am ready. See!" Mowgli held up
the fire-pot.
"Good! Now,
I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff,
and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of
it. Art thou not afraid?"
"No. Why
should I fear? I remember now—if it is not a
dream—how, before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red
Flower, and it was warm and pleasant."
All that day
Mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire pot and
dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked.
He found a branch that satisfied him, and in the
evening when Tabaqui came to the cave and told him
rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council
Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran away. Then Mowgli
went to the Council, still laughing.
Akela the
Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that
the leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan
with his following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and
fro openly being flattered. Bagheera lay close to
Mowgli, and the fire pot was between Mowgli's knees.
When they were all gathered together, Shere Khan
began to speak—a thing he would never have dared to
do when Akela was in his prime.
"He has no
right," whispered Bagheera. "Say so. He is a dog's
son. He will be frightened."
Mowgli
sprang to his feet. "Free People," he cried, "does
Shere Khan lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do
with our leadership?"
"Seeing that
the leadership is yet open, and being asked to
speak—" Shere Khan began.
"By whom?"
said Mowgli. "Are we all jackals, to fawn on this
cattle butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with
the Pack alone."
There were
yells of "Silence, thou man's cub!" "Let him speak.
He has kept our Law"; and at last the seniors of the
Pack thundered: "Let the Dead Wolf speak." When a
leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called
the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not
long.
Akela raised
his old head wearily:—
"Free
People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for
twelve seasons I have led ye to and from the kill,
and in all that time not one has been trapped or
maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that
plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an
untried buck to make my weakness known. It was
cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on the
Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to
make an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by
the Law of the Jungle, that ye come one by one."
There was a
long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela
to the death. Then Shere Khan roared: "Bah! What
have we to do with this toothless fool? He is doomed
to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long.
Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him
to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has
troubled the jungle for ten seasons. Give me the
man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not give
you one bone. He is a man, a man's child, and from
the marrow of my bones I hate him!"
Then more
than half the Pack yelled: "A man! A man! What has a
man to do with us? Let him go to his own place."
"And turn
all the people of the villages against us?" clamored
Shere Khan. "No, give him to me. He is a man, and
none of us can look him between the eyes."
Akela lifted
his head again and said, "He has eaten our food. He
has slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has
broken no word of the Law of the Jungle."
"Also, I
paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The
worth of a bull is little, but Bagheera's honor is
something that he will perhaps fight for," said
Bagheera in his gentlest voice.
"A bull paid
ten years ago!" the Pack snarled. "What do we care
for bones ten years old?"
"Or for a
pledge?" said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under
his lip. "Well are ye called the Free People!"
"No man's
cub can run with the people of the jungle," howled
Shere Khan. "Give him to me!"
"He is our
brother in all but blood," Akela went on, "and ye
would kill him here! In truth, I have lived too
long. Some of ye are eaters of cattle, and of others
I have heard that, under Shere Khan's teaching, ye
go by dark night and snatch children from the
villager's doorstep. Therefore I know ye to be
cowards, and it is to cowards I speak. It is certain
that I must die, and my life is of no worth, or I
would offer that in the man-cub's place. But for the
sake of the Honor of the Pack,—a little matter that
by being without a leader ye have forgotten,—I
promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own
place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare
one tooth against ye. I will die without fighting.
That will at least save the Pack three lives. More I
cannot do; but if ye will, I can save ye the shame
that comes of killing a brother against whom there
is no fault—a brother spoken for and bought into the
Pack according to the Law of the Jungle."
"He is a
man—a man—a man!" snarled the Pack. And most of the
wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail
was beginning to switch.
"Now the
business is in thy hands," said Bagheera to Mowgli.
"We can do no more except fight."
Mowgli stood
upright—the fire pot in his hands. Then he stretched
out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council;
but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for,
wolflike, the wolves had never told him how they
hated him. "Listen you!" he cried. "There is no need
for this dog's jabber. Ye have told me so often
tonight that I am a man (and indeed I would have
been a wolf with you to my life's end) that I feel
your words are true. So I do not call ye my brothers
any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye
will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to
say. That matter is with me; and that we may see the
matter more plainly, I, the man, have brought here a
little of the Red Flower which ye, dogs, fear."
He flung the
fire pot on the ground, and some of the red coals
lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the
Council drew back in terror before the leaping
flames.
Mowgli
thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs
lit and crackled, and whirled it above his head
among the cowering wolves.
"Thou art
the master," said Bagheera in an undertone. "Save
Akela from the death. He was ever thy friend."
Akela, the
grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his
life, gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy
stood all naked, his long black hair tossing over
his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch
that made the shadows jump and quiver.
"Good!" said
Mowgli, staring round slowly. "I see that ye are
dogs. I go from you to my own people—if they be my
own people. The jungle is shut to me, and I must
forget your talk and your companionship. But I will
be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but
your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a
man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have
betrayed me." He kicked the fire with his foot, and
the sparks flew up. "There shall be no war between
any of us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay
before I go." He strode forward to where Shere Khan
sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and caught him
by the tuft on his chin. Bagheera followed in case
of accidents. "Up, dog!" Mowgli cried. "Up, when a
man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze!"
Shere Khan's
ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his
eyes, for the blazing branch was very near.
"This
cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council
because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus
and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men.
Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower
down thy gullet!" He beat Shere Khan over the head
with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined
in an agony of fear.
"Pah! Singed
jungle cat—go now! But remember when next I come to
the Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be
with Shere Khan's hide on my head. For the rest,
Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will not
kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I
think that ye will sit here any longer, lolling out
your tongues as though ye were somebodies, instead
of dogs whom I drive out—thus! Go!" The fire was
burning furiously at the end of the branch, and
Mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and
the wolves ran howling with the sparks burning their
fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and
perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli's part.
Then something began to hurt Mowgli inside him, as
he had never been hurt in his life before, and he
caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down
his face.
"What is it?
What is it?" he said. "I do not wish to leave the
jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying,
Bagheera?"
"No, Little
Brother. That is only tears such as men use," said
Bagheera. "Now I know thou art a man, and a man's
cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee
henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only
tears." So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart
would break; and he had never cried in all his life
before.
"Now," he
said, "I will go to men. But first I must say
farewell to my mother." And he went to the cave
where she lived with Father Wolf, and he cried on
her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably.
"Ye will not
forget me?" said Mowgli.
"Never while
we can follow a trail," said the cubs. "Come to the
foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will
talk to thee; and we will come into the croplands to
play with thee by night."
"Come soon!"
said Father Wolf. "Oh, wise little frog, come again
soon; for we be old, thy mother and I."
"Come soon,"
said Mother Wolf, "little naked son of mine. For,
listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I
loved my cubs."
"I will
surely come," said Mowgli. "And when I come it will
be to lay out Shere Khan's hide upon the Council
Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them in the jungle
never to forget me!"
The dawn was
beginning to break when Mowgli went down the
hillside alone, to meet those mysterious things that
are called men.

Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled
Once, twice and again!
And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scouting alone, beheld,
Once, twice and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled
Once, twice and again!
And a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back
To carry the word to the waiting pack,
And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track
Once, twice and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Wolf Pack yelled
Once, twice and again!
Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark!
Tongue—give tongue to it! Hark! O hark!
Once, twice and again!

Kaa's Hunting
His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the
Buffalo's pride.
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the
gloss of his hide.
If ye find that the Bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed
Sambhur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten seasons
before.
Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister
and Brother,
For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is
their mother.
"There is none like to me!" says the Cub in the pride of his
earliest kill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him
think and be still.
Maxims of Baloo
All that is
told here happened some time before Mowgli was
turned out of the Seeonee Wolf Pack, 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 Strangers' Hunting Call, which
must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever
one of the Jungle-People hunts outside his own
grounds. It means, translated, "Give me leave to
hunt here because I am hungry." And the answer is,
"Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure."
All this
will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart,
and he grew very tired of 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 man's cub is a man's cub, and he must
learn all the Law of the Jungle."
"But think
how small he is," said the Black Panther, who would
have spoiled Mowgli if he had had his own way. "How
can his little head carry all thy long talk?"
"Is there
anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No.
That is why I teach him these things, and that is
why I hit him, very softly, when he forgets."
"Softly!
What dost thou know of softness, old Iron-feet?"
Bagheera grunted. "His face is all bruised today by
thy—softness. Ugh."
"Better he
should be bruised from head to foot by me who love
him than that he should come to harm through
ignorance," Baloo answered very earnestly. "I am now
teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that
shall protect him with the birds and the Snake
People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his
own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will
only remember the words, from all in the jungle. Is
not that worth a little beating?"
"Well, look
to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He
is no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon.
But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to
give help than to ask it"—Bagheera stretched out one
paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel
talons at the end of it—"still I should like to
know."
"I will call
Mowgli and he shall say them—if he will. Come,
Little Brother!"
"My head is
ringing like a bee tree," said a sullen 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.
"Thou hast
been with the Monkey People—the gray apes—the people
without a law—the eaters of everything. That is
great shame."
"When Baloo
hurt my head," said Mowgli (he was still on his
back), "I went away, and the gray apes came down
from the trees and had pity on me. No one else
cared." He snuffled a little.
"The pity of
the Monkey People!" Baloo snorted. "The stillness of
the mountain stream! The cool of the summer sun! And
then, man-cub?"
"And then,
and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to
eat, and they—they carried me in their arms up to
the top of the trees and said I was their blood
brother except that I had no tail, and should be
their leader some day."
"They have
no leader," said Bagheera. "They lie. They have
always lied."
"They were
very kind and bade me come again. Why have I never
been taken among the Monkey People? They stand on
their feet as I do. They do not hit me with their
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 today?"
"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. 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 everyone else
would notice and envy them. Therefore they followed
Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jungle
very quietly till it was time for the midday nap,
and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of himself,
slept between the Panther and the Bear, resolving to
have no more to do with the Monkey People.
The next
thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs
and arms—hard, strong, little hands—and then a swash
of branches in his face, and then he was staring
down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the
jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up
the trunk with every tooth bared. The Bandar-log
howled with triumph and scuffled away to the upper
branches where Bagheera dared not follow, shouting:
"He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. All the
Jungle-People admire us for our skill and our
cunning." Then they began their flight; and the
flight of the Monkey-People through tree-land is one
of the things nobody can describe. They have their
regular roads and crossroads, 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 treetops, twenty feet
at a bound. Had they been alone they could have gone
twice as fast, but the boy's weight held them back.
Sick and giddy as Mowgli was he could not help
enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth
far down below frightened him, and the terrible
check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing
but empty air brought his heart between his teeth.
His escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the
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.
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 topsides of the branches, so he stared
upward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann the Kite
balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the
jungle waiting for things to die. Rann saw that the
monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a few
hundred yards to find out whether their load was
good to eat. He whistled with surprise when he saw
Mowgli being dragged up to a treetop and heard him
give the Kite call for—"We be of one blood, thou and
I." The waves of the branches closed over the boy,
but Rann balanced away to the next tree in time to
see the little brown face come up again. "Mark my
trail!" Mowgli shouted. "Tell Baloo of the Seeonee
Pack and Bagheera of the Council Rock."

"In whose
name, Brother?" Rann had never seen Mowgli before,
though of course he had heard of him.
"Mowgli, the
Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my trail!"
The last
words were shrieked as he was being swung through
the air, but Rann nodded and rose up till he looked
no bigger than a speck of dust, and there he hung,
watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the
treetops as Mowgli's escort whirled along.
"They never
go far," he said with a chuckle. "They never do what
they set out to do. Always pecking at new things are
the Bandar-log. This time, if I have any eye-sight,
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! O
haste! We—we may catch them yet!" Baloo panted.
"At that
speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher of
the Law—cub-beater—a mile of that rolling to and fro
would burst thee open. Sit still and think! Make a
plan. This is no time for chasing. They may drop him
if we follow too close."
"Arrula!
Whoo! They may have dropped him already, being tired
of carrying him. Who can trust the Bandar-log? Put
dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat!
Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may
be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyaena, for
I am most miserable of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O
Mowgli, Mowgli! Why did I not warn thee against the
Monkey-Folk instead of breaking thy head? Now
perhaps I may have knocked the day's lesson out of
his mind, and he will be alone in the jungle without
the Master Words."
Baloo
clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro
moaning.
"At least he
gave me all the Words correctly a little time ago,"
said Bagheera impatiently. "Baloo, thou hast neither
memory nor respect. What would the jungle think if
I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki the
Porcupine, and howled?"
"What do I
care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead by now."
"Unless and
until they drop him from the branches in sport, or
kill him out of idleness, I have no fear for the
man-cub. He is wise and well taught, and above all
he has the eyes that make the Jungle-People afraid.
But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of
the Bandar-log, and they, because they live in
trees, have no fear of any of our people." Bagheera
licked one forepaw thoughtfully.
"Fool that I
am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that I am,"
said Baloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk, "it is
true what Hathi the Wild Elephant says: `To each his
own fear'; and they, the Bandar-log, fear Kaa the
Rock Snake. He can climb as well as they can. He
steals the young monkeys in the night. The 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. Psshaw! The branches are not what they were
when I was young. Rotten twigs and dry boughs are
they all."
"Maybe thy
great weight has something to do with the matter,"
said Baloo.
"I am a fair
length—a fair length," said Kaa with a little pride.
"But for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown
timber. I came very near to falling on my last
hunt—very near indeed—and the noise of my slipping,
for my tail was not tight wrapped around 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 today 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."
"Ts! Ts!"
said Kaa, weaving 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-ssp!
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
Rann the Kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on
the upturned flanges of his wings. It was near
Rann's bedtime, but he had ranged all over the
jungle looking for the Bear and 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, Rann," cried Bagheera. "I
will remember thee in my next kill, and put aside
the head for thee alone, O best of kites!"
"It is
nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master
Word. I could have done no less," and Rann circled
up again to his roost.
"He has not
forgotten to use his tongue," said Baloo with a
chuckle of pride. "To think of one so young
remembering the Master Word for the birds 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 drought,
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."
"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 much pleased with
themselves for the time. Mowgli had never seen an
Indian city before, and though this was almost a
heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid.
Some king had built it long ago on a little hill.
You could still trace the stone causeways that led
up to the ruined gates where the last splinters of
wood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had
grown into and out of the walls; the battlements
were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers
hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls
in bushy hanging clumps.
A great
roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of
the courtyards and the fountains was split, and
stained with red and green, and the very
cobblestones in the courtyard where the king's
elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart
by grasses and young trees. From the palace you
could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that
made up the city looking like empty honeycombs
filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone
that had been an idol in the square where four roads
met; the pits and dimples at street corners where
the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes
of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides.
The monkeys called the place their city, and
pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they
lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what
the buildings were made for nor how to use them.
They would sit in circles on the hall of the king's
council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend
to be men; or they would run in and out of the
roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and
old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had
hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds,
and then break off to play up and down the terraces
of the king's garden, where they would shake the
rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit
and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and
dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of
little dark rooms, but they never remembered what
they had seen and what they had not; and so drifted
about in ones and twos or crowds telling 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 lost 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 Strangers' Hunting Call from time to
time, but no one answered him, and Mowgli felt that
he had reached a very bad place indeed. "All that
Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true," he
thought to himself. "They have no Law, no Hunting
Call, and no leaders—nothing but foolish words and
little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or
killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must
try to return to my own jungle. Baloo will surely
beat me, but that is better than chasing silly rose
leaves with the Bandar-log."
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 center of the terrace, built for
queens dead a hundred years ago. The domed roof had
half fallen in and blocked up the underground
passage from the palace by which the queens used to
enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble
tracery—beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with
agates and cornelians and jasper and lapis lazuli,
and as the moon came up behind the hill it shone
through the 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 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 favor.
They will not throw themselves upon my back in their
hundreds, but—"
"I know it,"
said Bagheera. "Would that Baloo were here, but we
must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon
I shall go to the terrace. They hold some sort of
council there over the boy."
"Good
hunting," said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the
west wall. That happened to be the least ruined of
any, and the big snake was delayed awhile before he
could find a way up the stones. The cloud hid the
moon, and as Mowgli wondered what would come next he
heard Bagheera's light feet on the terrace. The
Black Panther had raced up the slope almost without
a sound and was striking—he knew better than to
waste time in biting—right and left among the
monkeys, who were seated round Mowgli in circles
fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl of fright and
rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling
kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: "There
is only one here! Kill him! Kill." A scuffling mass
of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, and
pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five or six
laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the
summerhouse and pushed him through the hole of the
broken dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly
bruised, for the fall was a good 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 a dozen low voices (every
ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling
place of snakes, and the old summerhouse 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 tanks. Roll and
plunge! Get to the water!"
Bagheera
heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe
gave him new courage. He worked his way desperately,
inch by inch, straight for the reservoirs, halting
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 forepaws,
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 the 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 round Bagheera, and Mang the Bat, flying to and
fro, carried the news of the great battle over the
jungle, till even Hathi the Wild Elephant trumpeted,
and, far away, scattered bands of the Monkey-Folk
woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help
their comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of
the fight roused all the day birds for miles round.
Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious to
kill. The fighting strength of a python is in the
driving blow of his head backed by all the strength
and weight of his body. If you can imagine a lance,
or a battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half
a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the
handle of it, you can 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. It was sent home with shut mouth
in silence, and there was no need of a second. The
monkeys scattered with cries of—"Kaa! It is Kaa!
Run! Run!"
Generations
of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the
stories their elders told them of Kaa, the night
thief, who could slip along the branches as quietly
as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey
that ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make himself
look so like a dead branch or a rotten stump that
the wisest were deceived, till the branch caught
them. 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 defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed
where they were, cowering, till the loaded branches
bent and crackled under them. The monkeys on the
walls and the empty houses stopped their cries, and
in the stillness that fell upon the city Mowgli
heard Bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up
from the tank. Then the clamor broke out again. The
monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They clung
around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked
as they skipped along the battlements, while Mowgli,
dancing in the summerhouse, put his eye to the
screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front
teeth, to show his derision and contempt.
"Get the
man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more,"
Bagheera gasped. "Let us take the man-cub and go.
They may attack again."
"They will
not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!" Kaa
hissed, and the city was silent once more. "I could
not come before, Brother, but I think I heard thee
call"—this was to Bagheera.
"I—I may
have cried out in the battle," Bagheera answered.
"Baloo, art thou hurt?
"I am not
sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little
bearlings," said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg
after the other. "Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee,
I think, our lives—Bagheera and I."
"No matter.
Where is the manling?"
"Here, in a
trap. I cannot climb out," cried Mowgli. The curve
of the broken dome was above his head.
"Take him
away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will crush
our young," said the cobras inside.
"Hah!" said
Kaa with a chuckle, "he has friends everywhere, this
manling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O Poison
People. I break down the wall."
Kaa looked
carefully till he found a discolored crack in the
marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or
three light taps with his head to get the distance,
and then lifting up six feet of his body clear of
the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power
smashing blows, nose-first. The 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 around 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, oh, 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 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 one
blood, thou and I," Mowgli answered. "I take my life
from thee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever
thou art hungry, O Kaa."
"All thanks,
Little Brother," said Kaa, though his eyes twinkled.
"And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I
may follow when next he goes abroad."
"I kill
nothing,—I am too little,—but I drive goats toward
such as can use them. When thou art empty come to me
and see if I speak the truth. I have some skill in
these [he held out his hands], and if ever thou art
in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee,
to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good hunting to ye
all, my masters."
"Well said,"
growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned thanks very
prettily. The Python dropped his head lightly for a
minute on Mowgli's shoulder. "A brave heart and a
courteous tongue," said he. "They shall carry thee
far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence
quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon
sets, and what follows it is not well that thou
shouldst see."
The moon was
sinking behind the hills and the lines of trembling
monkeys huddled together on the walls and
battlements looked like ragged shaky fringes of
things. Baloo went down to the tank for a drink and
Bagheera began to put his fur in order, as Kaa
glided out into the center of the terrace and
brought his jaws together with a ringing snap that
drew all the monkeys' eyes upon him.
"The moon
sets," he said. "Is there yet light enough to see?"
From the
walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-tops—"We
see, O Kaa."
"Good.
Begins now the dance—the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa.
Sit still and watch."
He turned
twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving his head
from right to left. Then he began making loops and
figures of eight with his body, and soft, oozy
triangles that melted into squares and five-sided
figures, and coiled mounds, never resting, never
hurrying, and never stopping his low humming song.
It grew darker and darker, till at last the
dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but they could
hear the rustle of the scales.
Baloo and
Bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their
throats, their neck hair bristling, and Mowgli
watched and wondered.
"Bandar-log," said the voice of Kaa at last, "can ye
stir foot or hand without my order? Speak!"
"Without thy
order we cannot stir foot or hand, O Kaa!"
"Good! Come
all one pace nearer to me."
The lines of
the monkeys swayed forward helplessly, and Baloo and
Bagheera took one stiff step forward with them.
"Nearer!"
hissed Kaa, and they all moved again.
Mowgli laid
his hands on Baloo and Bagheera to get them away,
and the two great beasts started as though they had
been waked from a dream.
"Keep thy
hand on my shoulder," Bagheera whispered. "Keep it
there, or I must go back—must go back to Kaa. Aah!"
"It is only
old Kaa making circles on the dust," said Mowgli.
"Let us go." And the three slipped off through a gap
in the walls to the jungle.
"Whoof!"
said Baloo, when he stood under the still trees
again. "Never more will I make an ally of Kaa," and
he shook himself all over.
"He knows
more than we," said Bagheera, trembling. "In a
little time, had I stayed, I should have walked down
his throat."
"Many will
walk 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 honor.
For, remember, Mowgli, I, who am the Black Panther,
was forced to call upon Kaa for protection, and
Baloo and I were both made stupid as little birds by
the Hunger Dance. All this, man-cub, came of thy
playing with the Bandar-log."
"True, it is
true," said Mowgli sorrowfully. "I am an evil
man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me."
"Mf! What
says the Law of the Jungle, Baloo?"
Baloo did
not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trouble, but
he could not tamper with the Law, so he mumbled:
"Sorrow never stays punishment. But remember,
Bagheera, he is very little."
"I will
remember. But he has done mischief, and blows must
be dealt now. Mowgli, hast thou anything to say?"
"Nothing. I
did wrong. Baloo and thou 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 in the
home-cave.

Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half-way up to the jealous moon!
Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
Don't you wish you had extra hands?
Wouldn't you like if your tails were—so—
Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
Now you're angry, but—never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two—
Something noble and wise and good,
Done by merely wishing we could.
We've forgotten, but—never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
All the talk we ever have heard
Uttered by bat or beast or bird—
Hide or fin or scale or feather—
Jabber it quickly and all together!
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again!
Now we are talking just like men!
Let's pretend we are ... never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
This is the way of the Monkey-kind.
Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!

"Tiger! Tiger!"
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair—to die.
Now we must
go back to the first tale. When Mowgli left the
wolf's cave after the fight with the Pack at the
Council Rock, he went down to the plowed lands where
the villagers lived, but he would not stop there
because it was too near to the jungle, and he knew
that he had made at least one bad enemy at the
Council. So he hurried on, keeping to the rough road
that ran down the valley, and followed it at a
steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he
came to a country that he did not know. The valley
opened out into a great plain dotted over with rocks
and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little
village, and at the other the thick jungle came down
in a sweep to the grazing-grounds, and stopped there
as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over
the plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and
when the little boys in charge of the herds saw
Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow
pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village
barked. Mowgli walked on, for he was feeling hungry,
and when he came to the village gate he saw the big
thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at
twilight, pushed to one side.
"Umph!" he
said, for he had come across more than one such
barricade in his night rambles after things to eat.
"So men are afraid of the People of the Jungle here
also." He sat down by the gate, and when a man came
out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down
it to show that he wanted food. The man stared, and
ran back up the one street of the village shouting
for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in
white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead.
The priest came to the gate, and with him at least a
hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted
and pointed at Mowgli.
"They have
no manners, these Men Folk," said Mowgli to himself.
"Only the gray ape would behave as they do." So he
threw back his long hair and frowned at the crowd.
"What is
there to be afraid of?" said the priest. "Look at
the marks on his arms and legs. They are the bites
of wolves. He is but a wolf-child run away from the
jungle."
Of course,
in playing together, the cubs had often nipped
Mowgli harder than they intended, and there were
white scars all over his arms and legs. But he would
have been the last person in the world to call these
bites, for he knew what real biting meant.
"Arre! Arre!"
said two or three women together. "To be bitten by
wolves, poor child! He is a handsome boy. He has
eyes like red fire. By my honor, Messua, he is not
unlike thy boy that was taken by the tiger."
"Let me
look," said a woman with heavy copper rings on her
wrists and ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under
the palm of her hand. "Indeed he is not. He is
thinner, but he has the very look of my boy."
The priest
was a clever man, and he knew that Messua was wife
to the richest villager in the place. So he looked
up at the sky for a minute and said solemnly: "What
the jungle has taken the jungle has restored. Take
the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to
honor the priest who sees so far into the lives of
men."
"By the Bull
that bought me," said Mowgli to himself, "but all
this talking is like another looking-over by the
Pack! Well, if I am a man, a man I must become."
The crowd
parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to her hut,
where there was a red lacquered bedstead, a great
earthen grain chest with funny raised patterns on
it, half a dozen copper cooking pots, an image of a
Hindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall a real
looking glass, such as they sell at the country
fairs.
She gave him
a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she
laid her hand on his head and looked into his eyes;
for she thought perhaps that he might be her real
son come back from the jungle where the tiger had
taken him. So she said, "Nathoo, O Nathoo!" Mowgli
did not show that he knew the name. "Dost thou not
remember the day when I gave thee thy new shoes?"
She touched his foot, and it was almost as hard as
horn. "No," she said sorrowfully, "those feet have
never worn shoes, but thou art very like my Nathoo,
and thou shalt be my son."
Mowgli was
uneasy, because he had never been under a roof
before. But as he looked at the thatch, he saw that
he could tear it out any time if he wanted to get
away, and that the window had no fastenings. "What
is the good of a man," he said to himself at last,
"if he does not understand man's talk? Now I am as
silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the
jungle. I must speak their talk."
It was not
for fun that he had learned while he was with the
wolves to imitate the challenge of bucks in the
jungle and the grunt of the little wild pig. So, as
soon as Messua pronounced a word Mowgli would
imitate it almost perfectly, and before dark he had
learned the names of many things in the hut.
There was a
difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would not
sleep under anything that looked so like a panther
trap as that hut, and when they shut the door he
went through the window. "Give him his will," said
Messua's husband. "Remember he can never till now
have slept on a bed. If he is indeed sent in the
place of our son he will not run away."
So Mowgli
stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the
edge of the field, but before he had closed his eyes
a soft gray nose poked him under the chin.
"Phew!" said
Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Mother Wolf's
cubs). "This is a poor reward for following thee
twenty miles. Thou smellest of wood smoke and
cattle—altogether like a man already. Wake, Little
Brother; I bring news."
"Are all
well in the jungle?" said Mowgli, hugging him.
"All except
the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower.
Now, listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far
off till his coat grows again, for he is badly
singed. When he returns he swears that he will lay
thy bones in the Waingunga."
"There are
two words to that. I also have made a little
promise. But news is always good. I am tired
to-night,—very tired with new things, Gray
Brother,—but bring me the news always."
"Thou wilt
not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make
thee forget?" said Gray Brother anxiously.
"Never. I
will always remember that I love thee and all in our
cave. But also I will always remember that I have
been cast out of the Pack."
"And that
thou mayest be cast out of another pack. Men are
only men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the
talk of frogs in a pond. When I come down here
again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at the
edge of the grazing-ground."
For three
months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the
village gate, he was so busy learning the ways and
customs of men. First he had to wear a cloth round
him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had to
learn about money, which he did not in the least
understand, and about plowing, of which he did not
see the use. Then the little children in the village
made him very angry. Luckily, the Law of the Jungle
had taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle
life and food depend on keeping your temper; but
when they made fun of him because he would not play
games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some
word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike
to kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them
up and breaking them in two.
He did not
know his own strength in the least. In the jungle he
knew he was weak compared with the beasts, but in
the village people said that he was as strong as a
bull.
And Mowgli
had not the faintest idea of the difference that
caste makes between man and man. When the potter's
donkey slipped in the clay pit, Mowgli hauled it out
by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their
journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very
shocking, too, for the potter is a low-caste man,
and his donkey is worse. When the priest scolded
him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey too,
and the priest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had
better be set to work as soon as possible; and the
village head-man told Mowgli that he would have to
go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them
while they grazed. No one was more pleased than
Mowgli; and that night, because he had been
appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he
went off to a circle that met every evening on a
masonry platform under a great fig-tree. It was the
village club, and the head-man and the watchman and
the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village,
and old Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower
musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked
in the upper branches, and there was a hole under
the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his
little platter of milk every night because he was
sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and
talked, and pulled at the big huqas (the
water-pipes) till far into the night. They told
wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts; and
Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of
beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of the children
sitting outside the circle bulged out of their
heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the
jungle was always at their door. The deer and the
wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again
the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within
sight of the village gates.
Mowgli, who
naturally knew something about what they were
talking of, had to cover his face not to show that
he was laughing, while Buldeo, the Tower musket
across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful
story to another, and Mowgli's shoulders shook.
Buldeo was
explaining how the tiger that had carried away
Messua's son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was
inhabited by the ghost of a wicked, old
money-lender, who had died some years ago. "And I
know that this is true," he said, "because Purun
Dass always limped from the blow that he got in a
riot when his account books were burned, and the
tiger that I speak of he limps, too, for the tracks
of his pads are unequal."
"True, true,
that must be the truth," said the gray-beards,
nodding together.
"Are all
these tales such cobwebs and moon talk?" said
Mowgli. "That tiger limps because he was born lame,
as everyone knows. To talk of the soul of a
money-lender in a beast that never had the courage
of a jackal is child's talk."
Buldeo was
speechless with surprise for a moment, and the
head-man stared.
"Oho! It is
the jungle brat, is it?" said Buldeo. "If thou art
so wise, better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for
the Government has set a hundred rupees on his life.
Better still, talk not when thy elders speak."
Mowgli rose
to go. "All the evening I have lain here listening,"
he called back over his shoulder, "and, except once
or twice, Buldeo has not said one word of truth
concerning the jungle, which is at his very doors.
How, then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and
gods and goblins which he says he has seen?"
"It is full
time that boy went to herding," said the head-man,
while Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli's
impertinence.
The custom
of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take
the cattle and buffaloes out to graze in the early
morning, and bring them back at night. The very
cattle that would trample a white man to death allow
themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at
by children that hardly come up to their noses. So
long as the boys keep with the herds they are safe,
for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cattle.
But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt
lizards, they are sometimes carried off. Mowgli went
through the village street in the dawn, sitting on
the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-blue
buffaloes, with their long, backward-sweeping horns
and savage eyes, rose out their byres, one by one,
and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to
the children with him that he was the master. He
beat the buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and
told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the cattle by
themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and
to be very careful not to stray away from the herd.
An Indian
grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks
and little ravines, among which the herds scatter
and disappear. The buffaloes generally keep to the
pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing or
basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them
on to the edge of the plain where the Waingunga came
out of the jungle; then he dropped from Rama's neck,
trotted off to a bamboo clump, and found Gray
Brother. "Ah," said Gray Brother, "I have waited
here very many days. What is the meaning of this
cattle-herding work?"
"It is an
order," said Mowgli. "I am a village herd for a
while. What news of Shere Khan?"
"He has come
back to this country, and has waited here a long
time for thee. Now he has gone off again, for the
game is scarce. But he means to kill thee."
"Very good,"
said Mowgli. "So long as he is away do thou or one
of the four brothers sit on that rock, so that I can
see thee as I come out of the village. When he comes
back wait for me in the ravine by the dhak tree in
the center of the plain. We need not walk into Shere
Khan's mouth."
Then Mowgli
picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept
while the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in
India is one of the laziest things in the world. The
cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move on
again, and they do not even low. They only grunt,
and the buffaloes very seldom say anything, but get
down into the muddy pools one after another, and
work their way into the mud till only their noses
and staring china-blue eyes show above the surface,
and then they lie like logs. The sun makes the rocks
dance in the heat, and the herd children hear one
kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight
overhead, and they know that if they died, or a cow
died, that kite would sweep down, and the next kite
miles away would see him drop and follow, and the
next, and the next, and almost before they were dead
there would be a score of hungry kites come out of
nowhere. Then they sleep and wake and sleep again,
and weave little baskets of dried grass and put
grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying mantises
and make them fight; or string a necklace of red and
black jungle nuts; or watch a lizard basking on a
rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows.
Then they sing long, long songs with odd native
quavers at the end of them, and the day seems longer
than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they
make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses
and buffaloes, and put reeds into the men's hands,
and pretend that they are kings and the figures are
their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped.
Then evening comes and the children call, and the
buffaloes lumber up out of the sticky mud with
noises like gunshots going off one after the other,
and they all string across the gray plain back to
the twinkling village lights.
Day after
day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their
wallows, and day after day he would see Gray
Brother's back a mile and a half away across the
plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come
back), and day after day he would lie on the grass
listening to the noises round him, and dreaming of
old days in the jungle. If Shere Khan had made a
false step with his lame paw up in the jungles by
the Waingunga, Mowgli would have heard him in those
long, still mornings.
At last a
day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the
signal place, and he laughed and headed the
buffaloes for the ravine by the dhk tree, which was
all covered with golden-red flowers. There sat Gray
Brother, every bristle on his back lifted.
"He has
hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He
crossed the ranges last night with Tabaqui, hot-foot
on thy trail," said the Wolf, panting.
Mowgli
frowned. "I am not afraid of Shere Khan, but Tabaqui
is very cunning."
"Have no
fear," said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little.
"I met Tabaqui in the dawn. Now he is telling all
his wisdom to the kites, but he told me everything
before I broke his back. Shere Khan's plan is to
wait for thee at the village gate this evening—for
thee and for no one else. He is lying up now, in the
big dry ravine of the Waingunga."
"Has he
eaten today, or does he hunt empty?" said Mowgli,
for the answer meant life and death to him.
"He killed
at dawn,—a pig,—and he has drunk too. Remember,
Shere Khan could never fast, even for the sake of
revenge."
"Oh! Fool,
fool! What a cub's cub it is! Eaten and drunk too,
and he thinks that I shall wait till he has slept!
Now, where does he lie up? If there were but ten of
us we might pull him down as he lies. These
buffaloes will not charge unless they wind him, and
I cannot speak their language. Can we get behind his
track so that they may smell it?"
"He swam far
down the Waingunga to cut that off," said Gray
Brother.
"Tabaqui
told him that, I know. He would never have thought
of it alone." Mowgli stood with his finger in his
mouth, thinking. "The big ravine of the Waingunga.
That opens out on the plain not half a mile from
here. I can take the herd round through the jungle
to the head of the ravine and then sweep down—but he
would slink out at the foot. We must block that end.
Gray Brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for
me?"
"Not I,
perhaps—but I have brought a wise helper." Gray
Brother trotted off and dropped into a hole. Then
there lifted up a huge gray head that Mowgli knew
well, and the hot air was filled with the most
desolate cry of all the jungle—the hunting howl of a
wolf at midday.
"Akela!
Akela!" said Mowgli, clapping his hands. "I might
have known that thou wouldst not forget me. We have
a big work in hand. Cut the herd in two, Akela. Keep
the cows and calves together, and the bulls and the
plow buffaloes by themselves."
The two
wolves ran, ladies'-chain fashion, in and out of the
herd, which snorted and threw up its head, and
separated into two clumps. In one, the cow-buffaloes
stood with their calves in the center, and glared
and pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still,
to charge down and trample the life out of him. In
the other, the bulls and the young bulls snorted and
stamped, but though they looked more imposing they
were much less dangerous, for they had no calves to
protect. No six men could have divided the herd so
neatly.
"What
orders!" panted Akela. "They are trying to join
again."
Mowgli
slipped on to Rama's back. "Drive the bulls away to
the left, Akela. Gray Brother, when we are gone,
hold the cows together, and drive them into the foot
of the ravine."
"How far?"
said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.
"Till the
sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump," shouted
Mowgli. "Keep them there till we come down." The
bulls swept off as Akela bayed, and Gray Brother
stopped in front of the cows. They charged down on
him, and he ran just before them to the foot of the
ravine, as Akela drove the bulls far to the left.
"Well done!
Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful,
now—careful, Akela. A snap too much and the bulls
will charge. Hujah! This is wilder work than driving
black-buck. Didst thou think these creatures could
move so swiftly?" Mowgli called.
"I have—have
hunted these too in my time," gasped Akela in the
dust. "Shall I turn them into the jungle?"
"Ay! Turn.
Swiftly turn them! Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I
could only tell him what I need of him to-day."
The bulls
were turned, to the right this time, and crashed
into the standing thicket. The other herd children,
watching with the cattle half a mile away, hurried
to the village as fast as their legs could carry
them, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run
away.
But Mowgli's
plan was simple enough. All he wanted to do was to
make a big circle uphill and get at the head of the
ravine, and then take the bulls down it and catch
Shere Khan between the bulls and the cows; for he
knew that after a meal and a full drink Shere Khan
would not be in any condition to fight or to clamber
up the sides of the ravine. He was soothing the
buffaloes now by voice, and Akela had dropped far to
the rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the
rear-guard. It was a long, long circle, for they did
not wish to get too near the ravine and give Shere
Khan warning. At last Mowgli rounded up the
bewildered herd at the head of the ravine on a
grassy patch that sloped steeply down to the ravine
itself. From that height you could see across the
tops of the trees down to the plain below; but what
Mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he
saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran
nearly straight up and down, while the vines and
creepers that hung over them would give no foothold
to a tiger who wanted to get out.
"Let them
breathe, Akela," he said, holding up his hand. "They
have not winded him yet. Let them breathe. I must
tell Shere Khan who comes. We have him in the trap."
He put his
hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine—it
was almost like shouting down a tunnel—and the
echoes jumped from rock to rock.
After a long
time there came back the drawling, sleepy snarl of a
full-fed tiger just wakened.
"Who calls?"
said Shere Khan, and a splendid peacock fluttered up
out of the ravine screeching.
"I, Mowgli.
Cattle thief, it is time to come to the Council
Rock! Down—hurry them down, Akela! Down, Rama,
down!"
The herd
paused for an instant at the edge of the slope, but
Akela gave tongue in the full hunting-yell, and they
pitched over one after the other, just as steamers
shoot rapids, the sand and stones spurting up round
them. Once started, there was no chance of stopping,
and before they were fairly in the bed of the ravine
Rama winded Shere Khan and bellowed.
"Ha! Ha!"
said Mowgli, on his back. "Now thou knowest!" and
the torrent of black horns, foaming muzzles, and
staring eyes whirled down the ravine just as
boulders go down in floodtime; the weaker buffaloes
being shouldered out to the sides of the ravine
where they tore through the creepers. They knew what
the business was before them—the terrible charge of
the buffalo herd against which no tiger can hope to
stand. Shere Khan heard the thunder of their hoofs,
picked himself up, and lumbered down the ravine,
looking from side to side for some way of escape,
but the walls of the ravine were straight and he had
to hold on, heavy with his dinner and his drink,
willing to do anything rather than fight. The herd
splashed through the pool he had just left,
bellowing till the narrow cut rang. Mowgli heard an
answering bellow from the foot of the ravine, saw
Shere Khan turn (the tiger knew if the worst came to
the worst it was better to meet the bulls than the
cows with their calves), and then Rama tripped,
stumbled, and went on again over something soft,
and, with the bulls at his heels, crashed full into
the other herd, while the weaker buffaloes were
lifted clean off their feet by the shock of the
meeting. That charge carried both herds out into the
plain, goring and stamping and snorting. Mowgli
watched his time, and slipped off Rama's neck,
laying about him right and left with his stick.
"Quick,
Akela! Break them up. Scatter them, or they will be
fighting one another. Drive them away, Akela. Hai,
Rama! Hai, hai, hai! my children. Softly now,
softly! It is all over."
Akela and
Gray Brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes'
legs, and though the herd wheeled once to charge up
the ravine again, Mowgli managed to turn Rama, and
the others followed him to the wallows.
Shere Khan
needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites
were coming for him already.
"Brothers,
that was a dog's death," said Mowgli, feeling for
the knife he always carried in a sheath round his
neck now that he lived with men. "But he would never
have shown fight. His hide will look well on the
Council Rock. We must get to work swiftly."
A boy
trained among men would never have dreamed of
skinning a ten-foot tiger alone, but Mowgli knew
better than anyone else how an animal's skin is
fitted on, and how it can be taken off. But it was
hard work, and Mowgli slashed and tore and grunted
for an hour, while the wolves lolled out their
tongues, or came forward and tugged as he ordered
them. Presently a hand fell on his shoulder, and
looking up he saw Buldeo with the Tower musket. The
children had told the village about the buffalo
stampede, and Buldeo went out angrily, only too
anxious to correct Mowgli for not taking better care
of the herd. The wolves dropped out of sight as soon
as they saw the man coming.
"What is
this folly?" said Buldeo angrily. "To think that
thou canst skin a tiger! Where did the buffaloes
kill him? It is the Lame Tiger too, and there is a
hundred rupees on his head. Well, well, we will
overlook thy letting the herd run off, and perhaps I
will give thee one of the rupees of the reward when
I have taken the skin to Khanhiwara." He fumbled in
his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped
down to singe Shere Khan's whiskers. Most native
hunters always singe a tiger's whiskers to prevent
his ghost from haunting them.
"Hum!" said
Mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin
of a forepaw. "So thou wilt take the hide to
Khanhiwara for the reward, and perhaps give me one
rupee? Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for
my own use. Heh! Old man, take away that fire!"
"What talk
is this to the chief hunter of the village? Thy luck
and the stupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee
to this kill. The tiger has just fed, or he would
have gone twenty miles by this time. Thou canst not
even skin him properly, little beggar brat, and
forsooth I, Buldeo, must be told not to singe his
whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give thee one anna of
the reward, but only a very big beating. Leave the
carcass!"
"By the Bull
that bought me," said Mowgli, who was trying to get
at the shoulder, "must I stay babbling to an old ape
all noon? Here, Akela, this man plagues me."
Buldeo, who
was still stooping over Shere Khan's head, found
himself sprawling on the grass, with a gray wolf
standing over him, while Mowgli went on skinning as
though he were alone in all India.
"Ye-es," he
said, between his teeth. "Thou art altogether right,
Buldeo. Thou wilt never give me one anna of the
reward. There is an old war between this lame tiger
and myself—a very old war, and—I have won."
To do Buldeo
justice, if he had been ten years younger he would
have taken his chance with Akela had he met the wolf
in the woods, but a wolf who obeyed the orders of
this boy who had private wars with man-eating tigers
was not a common animal. It was sorcery, magic of
the worst kind, thought Buldeo, and he wondered
whether the amulet round his neck would protect him.
He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to
see Mowgli turn into a tiger too.
"Maharaj!
Great King," he said at last in a husky whisper.
"Yes," said
Mowgli, without turning his head, chuckling a
little.
"I am an old
man. I did not know that thou wast anything more
than a herdsboy. May I rise up and go away, or will
thy servant tear me to pieces?"
"Go, and
peace go with thee. Only, another time do not meddle
with my game. Let him go, Akela."
Buldeo
hobbled away to the village as fast as he could,
looking back over his shoulder in case Mowgli should
change into something terrible. When he got to the
village he told a tale of magic and enchantment and
sorcery that made the priest look very grave.
Mowgli went
on with his work, but it was nearly twilight before
he and the wolves had drawn the great gay skin clear
of the body.
"Now we must
hide this and take the buffaloes home! Help me to
herd them, Akela."
The herd
rounded up in the misty twilight, and when they got
near the village Mowgli saw lights, and heard the
conches and bells in the temple blowing and banging.
Half the village seemed to be waiting for him by the
gate. "That is because I have killed Shere Khan," he
said to himself. But a shower of stones whistled
about his ears, and the villagers shouted:
"Sorcerer! Wolf's brat! Jungle demon! Go away! Get
hence quickly or the priest will turn thee into a
wolf again. Shoot, Buldeo, shoot!"
The old
Tower musket went off with a bang, and a young
buffalo bellowed in pain.
"More
sorcery!" shouted the villagers. "He can turn
bullets. Buldeo, that was thy buffalo."
"Now what is
this?" said Mowgli, bewildered, as the stones flew
thicker.
"They are
not unlike the Pack, these brothers of thine," said
Akela, sitting down composedly. "It is in my head
that, if bullets mean anything, they would cast thee
out."
"Wolf!
Wolf's cub! Go away!" shouted the priest, waving a
sprig of the sacred tulsi plant.
"Again? Last
time it was because I was a man. This time it is
because I am a wolf. Let us go, Akela."
A woman—it
was Messua—ran across to the herd, and cried: "Oh,
my son, my son! They say thou art a sorcerer who can
turn himself into a beast at will. I do not believe,
but go away or they will kill thee. Buldeo says thou
art a wizard, but I know thou hast avenged Nathoo's
death."
"Come back,
Messua!" shouted the crowd. "Come back, or we will
stone thee."
Mowgli
laughed a little short ugly laugh, for a stone had
hit him in the mouth. "Run back, Messua. This is one
of the foolish tales they tell under the big tree at
dusk. I have at least paid for thy son's life.
Farewell; and run quickly, for I shall send the herd
in more swiftly than their brickbats. I am no
wizard, Messua. Farewell!"
"Now, once
more, Akela," he cried. "Bring the herd in."
The
buffaloes were anxious enough to get to the village.
They hardly needed Akela's yell, but charged through
the gate like a whirlwind, scattering the crowd
right and left.
"Keep
count!" shouted Mowgli scornfully. "It may be that I
have stolen one of them. Keep count, for I will do
your herding no more. Fare you well, children of
men, and thank Messua that I do not come in with my
wolves and hunt you up and down your street."
He turned on
his heel and walked away with the Lone Wolf, and as
he looked up at the stars he felt happy. "No more
sleeping in traps for me, Akela. Let us get Shere
Khan's skin and go away. No, we will not hurt the
village, for Messua was kind to me."
When the
moon rose over the plain, making it look all milky,
the horrified villagers saw Mowgli, with two wolves
at his heels and a bundle on his head, trotting
across at the steady wolf's trot that eats up the
long miles like fire. Then they banged the temple
bells and blew the conches louder than ever. And
Messua cried, and Buldeo embroidered the story of
his adventures in the jungle, till he ended by
saying that Akela stood up on his hind legs and
talked like a man.
The moon was
just going down when Mowgli and the two wolves came
to the hill of the Council Rock, and they stopped at
Mother Wolf's cave.
"They have
cast me out from the Man-Pack, Mother," shouted
Mowgli, "but I come with the hide of Shere Khan to
keep my word."
Mother Wolf
walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind
her, and her eyes glowed as she saw the skin.
"I told him
on that day, when he crammed his head and shoulders
into this cave, hunting for thy life, Little Frog—I
told him that the hunter would be the hunted. It is
well done."
"Little
Brother, it is well done," said a deep voice in the
thicket. "We were lonely in the jungle without
thee," and Bagheera came running to Mowgli's bare
feet. They clambered up the Council Rock together,
and Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone
where Akela used to sit, and pegged it down with
four slivers of bamboo, and Akela lay down upon it,
and called the old call to the Council, "Look—look
well, O Wolves," exactly as he had called when
Mowgli was first brought there.
Ever since
Akela had been deposed, the Pack had been without a
leader, hunting and fighting at their own pleasure.
But they answered the call from habit; and some of
them were lame from the traps they had fallen into,
and some limped from shot wounds, and some were
mangy from eating bad food, and many were missing.
But they came to the Council Rock, all that were
left of them, and saw Shere Khan's striped hide on
the rock, and the huge claws dangling at the end of
the empty dangling feet. It was then that Mowgli
made up a song that came up into his throat all by
itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down
on the rattling skin, and beating time with his
heels till he had no more breath left, while Gray
Brother and Akela howled between the verses.
"Look well,
O Wolves. Have I kept my word?" said Mowgli. And the
wolves bayed "Yes," and one tattered wolf howled:
"Lead us
again, O Akela. Lead us again, O Man-cub, for we be
sick of this lawlessness, and we would be the Free
People once more."
"Nay,"
purred Bagheera, "that may not be. When ye are
full-fed, the madness may come upon you again. Not
for nothing are ye called the Free People. Ye fought
for freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves."
"Man-Pack
and Wolf-Pack have cast me out," said Mowgli. "Now I
will hunt alone in the jungle."
"And we will
hunt with thee," said the four cubs.
So Mowgli
went away and hunted with the four cubs in the
jungle from that day on. But he was not always
alone, because, years afterward, he became a man and
married.
But that is
a story for grown-ups.

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

The White Seal
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!
Seal Lullaby
All these
things happened several years ago at a place called
Novastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of
St. Paul, away and away in the Bering Sea.
Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when
he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to
Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed
and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to
fly back to St. Paul's again. Limmershin is a very
quaint little bird, but he knows how to tell the
truth.
Nobody comes
to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only
people who have regular business there are the
seals. They come in the summer months by hundreds
and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea.
For Novastoshnah Beach has the finest accommodation
for seals of any place in all the world.
Sea Catch
knew that, and every spring would swim from whatever
place he happened to be in—would swim like a
torpedo-boat straight for Novastoshnah and spend a
month fighting with his companions for a good place
on the rocks, as close to the sea as possible. Sea
Catch was fifteen years old, a huge gray fur seal
with almost a mane on his shoulders, and long,
wicked dog teeth. When he heaved himself up on his
front flippers he stood more than four feet clear of
the ground, and his weight, if anyone had been bold
enough to weigh him, was nearly seven hundred
pounds. He was scarred all over with the marks of
savage fights, but he was always ready for just one
fight more. He would put his head on one side, as
though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face;
then he would shoot it out like lightning, and when
the big teeth were firmly fixed on the other seal's
neck, the other seal might get away if he could, but
Sea Catch would not help him.
Yet Sea
Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was
against the Rules of the Beach. He only wanted room
by the sea for his nursery. But as there were forty
or fifty thousand other seals hunting for the same
thing each spring, the whistling, bellowing,
roaring, and blowing on the beach was something
frightful.
From a
little hill called Hutchinson's Hill, you could look
over three and a half miles of ground covered with
fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over
with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin
their share of the fighting. They fought in the
breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought
on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries,
for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as
men. Their wives never came to the island until late
in May or early in June, for they did not care to be
torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, and
four-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping
went inland about half a mile through the ranks of
the fighters and played about on the sand dunes in
droves and legions, and rubbed off every single
green thing that grew. They were called the
holluschickie—the bachelors—and there were perhaps
two or three hundred thousand of them at
Novastoshnah alone.
Sea Catch
had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring
when Matkah, his soft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife, came
up out of the sea, and he caught her by the scruff
of the neck and dumped her down on his reservation,
saying gruffly: "Late as usual. Where have you
been?"
It was not
the fashion for Sea Catch to eat anything during the
four months he stayed on the beaches, and so his
temper was generally bad. Matkah knew better than to
answer back. She looked round and cooed: "How
thoughtful of you. You've taken the old place
again."
"I should
think I had," said Sea Catch. "Look at me!"
He was
scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was
almost out, and his sides were torn to ribbons.
"Oh, you
men, you men!" Matkah said, fanning herself with her
hind flipper. "Why can't you be sensible and settle
your places quietly? You look as though you had been
fighting with the Killer Whale."
"I haven't
been doing anything but fight since the middle of
May. The beach is disgracefully crowded this season.
I've met at least a hundred seals from Lukannon
Beach, house hunting. Why can't people stay where
they belong?"
"I've often
thought we should be much happier if we hauled out
at Otter Island instead of this crowded place," said
Matkah.
"Bah! Only
the holluschickie go to Otter Island. If we went
there they would say we were afraid. We must
preserve appearances, my dear."
Sea Catch
sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and
pretended to go to sleep for a few minutes, but all
the time he was keeping a sharp lookout for a fight.
Now that all the seals and their wives were on the
land, you could hear their clamor miles out to sea
above the loudest gales. At the lowest counting
there were over a million seals on the beach—old
seals, mother seals, tiny babies, and holluschickie,
fighting, scuffling, bleating, crawling, and playing
together—going down to the sea and coming up from it
in gangs and regiments, lying over every foot of
ground as far as the eye could reach, and
skirmishing about in brigades through the fog. It is
nearly always foggy at Novastoshnah, except when the
sun comes out and makes everything look all pearly
and rainbow-colored for a little while.
Kotick,
Matkah's baby, was born in the middle of that
confusion, and he was all head and shoulders, with
pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny seals must be, but
there was something about his coat that made his
mother look at him very closely.
"Sea Catch,"
she said, at last, "our baby's going to be white!"
"Empty
clam-shells and dry seaweed!" snorted Sea Catch.
"There never has been such a thing in the world as a
white seal."
"I can't
help that," said Matkah; "there's going to be now."
And she sang the low, crooning seal song that all
the mother seals sing to their babies:
You mustn't swim till you're six weeks old,
Or your head will be sunk by your heels;
And summer gales and Killer Whales
Are bad for baby seals.
Are bad for baby seals, dear rat,
As bad as bad can be;
But splash and grow strong,
And you can't be wrong.
Child of the Open Sea!
Of course
the little fellow did not understand the words at
first. He paddled and scrambled about by his
mother's side, and learned to scuffle out of the way
when his father was fighting with another seal, and
the two rolled and roared up and down the slippery
rocks. Matkah used to go to sea to get things to
eat, and the baby was fed only once in two days, but
then he ate all he could and throve upon it.
The first
thing he did was to crawl inland, and there he met
tens of thousands of babies of his own age, and they
played together like puppies, went to sleep on the
clean sand, and played again. The old people in the
nurseries took no notice of them, and the
holluschickie kept to their own grounds, and the
babies had a beautiful playtime.
When Matkah
came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go
straight to their playground and call as a sheep
calls for a lamb, and wait until she heard Kotick
bleat. Then she would take the straightest of
straight lines in his direction, striking out with
her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters head
over heels right and left. There were always a few
hundred mothers hunting for their children through
the playgrounds, and the babies were kept lively.
But, as Matkah told Kotick, "So long as you don't
lie in muddy water and get mange, or rub the hard
sand into a cut or scratch, and so long as you never
go swimming when there is a heavy sea, nothing will
hurt you here."
Little seals
can no more swim than little children, but they are
unhappy till they learn. The first time that Kotick
went down to the sea a wave carried him out beyond
his depth, and his big head sank and his little hind
flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him
in the song, and if the next wave had not thrown him
back again he would have drowned.
After that,
he learned to lie in a beach pool and let the wash
of the waves just cover him and lift him up while he
paddled, but he always kept his eye open for big
waves that might hurt. He was two weeks learning to
use his flippers; and all that while he floundered
in and out of the water, and coughed and grunted and
crawled up the beach and took catnaps on the sand,
and went back again, until at last he found that he
truly belonged to the water.
Then you can
imagine the times that he had with his companions,
ducking under the rollers; or coming in on top of a
comber and landing with a swash and a splutter as
the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or
standing up on his tail and scratching his head as
the old people did; or playing "I'm the King of the
Castle" on slippery, weedy rocks that just stuck out
of the wash. Now and then he would see a thin fin,
like a big shark's fin, drifting along close to
shore, and he knew that that was the Killer Whale,
the Grampus, who eats young seals when he can get
them; and Kotick would head for the beach like an
arrow, and the fin would jig off slowly, as if it
were looking for nothing at all.
Late in
October the seals began to leave St. Paul's for the
deep sea, by families and tribes, and there was no
more fighting over the nurseries, and the
holluschickie played anywhere they liked. "Next
year," said Matkah to Kotick, "you will be a
holluschickie; but this year you must learn how to
catch fish."
They set out
together across the Pacific, and Matkah showed
Kotick how to sleep on his back with his flippers
tucked down by his side and his little nose just out
of the water. No cradle is so comfortable as the
long, rocking swell of the Pacific. When Kotick felt
his skin tingle all over, Matkah told him he was
learning the "feel of the water," and that tingly,
prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he
must swim hard and get away.
"In a little
time," she said, "you'll know where to swim to, but
just now we'll follow Sea Pig, the Porpoise, for he
is very wise." A school of porpoises were ducking
and tearing through the water, and little Kotick
followed them as fast as he could. "How do you know
where to go to?" he panted. The leader of the school
rolled his white eye and ducked under. "My tail
tingles, youngster," he said. "That means there's a
gale behind me. Come along! When you're south of the
Sticky Water [he meant the Equator] and your tail
tingles, that means there's a gale in front of you
and you must head north. Come along! The water feels
bad here."
This was one
of very many things that Kotick learned, and he was
always learning. Matkah taught him to follow the cod
and the halibut along the under-sea banks and wrench
the rockling out of his hole among the weeds; how to
skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water
and dart like a rifle bullet in at one porthole and
out at another as the fishes ran; how to dance on
the top of the waves when the lightning was racing
all over the sky, and wave his flipper politely to
the stumpy-tailed Albatross and the Man-of-war Hawk
as they went down the wind; how to jump three or
four feet clear of the water like a dolphin,
flippers close to the side and tail curved; to leave
the flying fish alone because they are all bony; to
take the shoulder-piece out of a cod at full speed
ten fathoms deep, and never to stop and look at a
boat or a ship, but particularly a row-boat. At the
end of six months what Kotick did not know about
deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing. And all
that time he never set flipper on dry ground.
One day,
however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm
water somewhere off the Island of Juan Fernandez, he
felt faint and lazy all over, just as human people
do when the spring is in their legs, and he
remembered the good firm beaches of Novastoshnah
seven thousand miles away, the games his companions
played, the smell of the seaweed, the seal roar, and
the fighting. That very minute he turned north,
swimming steadily, and as he went on he met scores
of his mates, all bound for the same place, and they
said: "Greeting, Kotick! This year we are all
holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in
the breakers off Lukannon and play on the new grass.
But where did you get that coat?"
Kotick's fur
was almost pure white now, and though he felt very
proud of it, he only said, "Swim quickly! My bones
are aching for the land." And so they all came to
the beaches where they had been born, and heard the
old seals, their fathers, fighting in the rolling
mist.
That night
Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the yearling
seals. The sea is full of fire on summer nights all
the way down from Novastoshnah to Lukannon, and each
seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him and a
flaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in
great phosphorescent streaks and swirls. Then they
went inland to the holluschickie grounds and rolled
up and down in the new wild wheat and told stories
of what they had done while they had been at sea.
They talked about the Pacific as boys would talk
about a wood that they had been nutting in, and if
anyone had understood them he could have gone away
and made such a chart of that ocean as never was.
The three- and four-year-old holluschickie romped
down from Hutchinson's Hill crying: "Out of the way,
youngsters! The sea is deep and you don't know all
that's in it yet. Wait till you've rounded the Horn.
Hi, you yearling, where did you get that white
coat?"
"I didn't
get it," said Kotick. "It grew." And just as he was
going to roll the speaker over, a couple of
black-haired men with flat red faces came from
behind a sand dune, and Kotick, who had never seen a
man before, coughed and lowered his head. The
holluschickie just bundled off a few yards and sat
staring stupidly. The men were no less than Kerick
Booterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the
island, and Patalamon, his son. They came from the
little village not half a mile from the sea
nurseries, and they were deciding what seals they
would drive up to the killing pens—for the seals
were driven just like sheep—to be turned into
seal-skin jackets later on.
"Ho!" said
Patalamon. "Look! There's a white seal!"
Kerick
Booterin turned nearly white under his oil and
smoke, for he was an Aleut, and Aleuts are not clean
people. Then he began to mutter a prayer. "Don't
touch him, Patalamon. There has never been a white
seal since—since I was born. Perhaps it is old
Zaharrof's ghost. He was lost last year in the big
gale."
"I'm not
going near him," said Patalamon. "He's unlucky. Do
you really think he is old Zaharrof come back? I owe
him for some gulls' eggs."
"Don't look
at him," said Kerick. "Head off that drove of
four-year-olds. The men ought to skin two hundred
to-day, but it's the beginning of the season and
they are new to the work. A hundred will do. Quick!"
Patalamon
rattled a pair of seal's shoulder bones in front of
a herd of holluschickie and they stopped dead,
puffing and blowing. Then he stepped near and the
seals began to move, and Kerick headed them inland,
and they never tried to get back to their
companions. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
seals watched them being driven, but they went on
playing just the same. Kotick was the only one who
asked questions, and none of his companions could
tell him anything, except that the men always drove
seals in that way for six weeks or two months of
every year.
"I am going
to follow," he said, and his eyes nearly popped out
of his head as he shuffled along in the wake of the
herd.
"The white
seal is coming after us," cried Patalamon. "That's
the first time a seal has ever come to the
killing-grounds alone."
"Hsh! Don't
look behind you," said Kerick. "It is Zaharrof's
ghost! I must speak to the priest about this."
The distance
to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it
took an hour to cover, because if the seals went too
fast Kerick knew that they would get heated and then
their fur would come off in patches when they were
skinned. So they went on very slowly, past Sea
Lion's Neck, past Webster House, till they came to
the Salt House just beyond the sight of the seals on
the beach. Kotick followed, panting and wondering.
He thought that he was at the world's end, but the
roar of the seal nurseries behind him sounded as
loud as the roar of a train in a tunnel. Then Kerick
sat down on the moss and pulled out a heavy pewter
watch and let the drove cool off for thirty minutes,
and Kotick could hear the fog-dew dripping off the
brim of his cap. Then ten or twelve men, each with
an iron-bound club three or four feet long, came up,
and Kerick pointed out one or two of the drove that
were bitten by their companions or too hot, and the
men kicked those aside with their heavy boots made
of the skin of a walrus's throat, and then Kerick
said, "Let go!" and then the men clubbed the seals
on the head as fast as they could.
Ten minutes
later little Kotick did not recognize his friends
any more, for their skins were ripped off from the
nose to the hind flippers, whipped off and thrown
down on the ground in a pile. That was enough for
Kotick. He turned and galloped (a seal can gallop
very swiftly for a short time) back to the sea; his
little new mustache bristling with horror. At Sea
Lion's Neck, where the great sea lions sit on the
edge of the surf, he flung himself flipper-overhead
into the cool water and rocked there, gasping
miserably. "What's here?" said a sea lion gruffly,
for as a rule the sea lions keep themselves to
themselves.
"Scoochnie!
Ochen scoochnie!" ("I'm lonesome, very lonesome!")
said Kotick. "They're killing all the holluschickie
on all the beaches!"
The Sea Lion
turned his head inshore. "Nonsense!" he said. "Your
friends are making as much noise as ever. You must
have seen old Kerick polishing off a drove. He's
done that for thirty years."
"It's
horrible," said Kotick, backing water as a wave went
over him, and steadying himself with a screw stroke
of his flippers that brought him all standing within
three inches of a jagged edge of rock.
"Well done
for a yearling!" said the Sea Lion, who could
appreciate good swimming. "I suppose it is rather
awful from your way of looking at it, but if you
seals will come here year after year, of course the
men get to know of it, and unless you can find an
island where no men ever come you will always be
driven."
"Isn't there
any such island?" began Kotick.
"I've
followed the poltoos [the halibut] for twenty years,
and I can't say I've found it yet. But look here—you
seem to have a fondness for talking to your
betters—suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to
Sea Vitch. He may know something. Don't flounce off
like that. It's a six-mile swim, and if I were you I
should haul out and take a nap first, little one."
Kotick
thought that that was good advice, so he swam round
to his own beach, hauled out, and slept for half an
hour, twitching all over, as seals will. Then he
headed straight for Walrus Islet, a little low sheet
of rocky island almost due northeast from
Novastoshnah, all ledges and rock and gulls' nests,
where the walrus herded by themselves.
He landed
close to old Sea Vitch—the big, ugly, bloated,
pimpled, fat-necked, long-tusked walrus of the North
Pacific, who has no manners except when he is
asleep—as he was then, with his hind flippers half
in and half out of the surf.
"Wake up!"
barked Kotick, for the gulls were making a great
noise.
"Hah! Ho!
Hmph! What's that?" said Sea Vitch, and he struck
the next walrus a blow with his tusks and waked him
up, and the next struck the next, and so on till
they were all awake and staring in every direction
but the right one.
"Hi! It's
me," said Kotick, bobbing in the surf and looking
like a little white slug.
"Well! May I
be—skinned!" said Sea Vitch, and they all looked at
Kotick as you can fancy a club full of drowsy old
gentlemen would look at a little boy. Kotick did not
care to hear any more about skinning just then; he
had seen enough of it. So he called out: "Isn't
there any place for seals to go where men don't ever
come?"
"Go and find
out," said Sea Vitch, shutting his eyes. "Run away.
We're busy here."
Kotick made
his dolphin-jump in the air and shouted as loud as
he could: "Clam-eater! Clam-eater!" He knew that Sea
Vitch never caught a fish in his life but always
rooted for clams and seaweed; though he pretended to
be a very terrible person. Naturally the Chickies
and the Gooverooskies and the Epatkas—the
Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the
Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be
rude, took up the cry, and—so Limmershin told me—for
nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun
fired on Walrus Islet. All the population was
yelling and screaming "Clam-eater! Stareek [old
man]!" while Sea Vitch rolled from side to side
grunting and coughing.
"Now will
you tell?" said Kotick, all out of breath.
"Go and ask
Sea Cow," said Sea Vitch. "If he is living still,
he'll be able to tell you."
"How shall I
know Sea Cow when I meet him?" said Kotick, sheering
off.
"He's the
only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch,"
screamed a Burgomaster gull, wheeling under Sea
Vitch's nose. "Uglier, and with worse manners!
Stareek!"
Kotick swam
back to Novastoshnah, leaving the gulls to scream.
There he found that no one sympathized with him in
his little attempt to discover a quiet place for the
seals. They told him that men had always driven the
holluschickie—it was part of the day's work—and that
if he did not like to see ugly things he should not
have gone to the killing grounds. But none of the
other seals had seen the killing, and that made the
difference between him and his friends. Besides,
Kotick was a white seal.
"What you
must do," said old Sea Catch, after he had heard his
son's adventures, "is to grow up and be a big seal
like your father, and have a nursery on the beach,
and then they will leave you alone. In another five
years you ought to be able to fight for yourself."
Even gentle Matkah, his mother, said: "You will
never be able to stop the killing. Go and play in
the sea, Kotick." And Kotick went off and danced the
Fire-dance with a very heavy little heart.
That autumn
he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off
alone because of a notion in his bullet-head. He was
going to find Sea Cow, if there was such a person in
the sea, and he was going to find a quiet island
with good firm beaches for seals to live on, where
men could not get at them. So he explored and
explored by himself from the North to the South
Pacific, swimming as much as three hundred miles in
a day and a night. He met with more adventures than
can be told, and narrowly escaped being caught by
the Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, and the
Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy
ruffians that loaf up and down the seas, and the
heavy polite fish, and the scarlet spotted scallops
that are moored in one place for hundreds of years,
and grow very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow,
and he never found an island that he could fancy.
If the beach
was good and hard, with a slope behind it for seals
to play on, there was always the smoke of a whaler
on the horizon, boiling down blubber, and Kotick
knew what that meant. Or else he could see that
seals had once visited the island and been killed
off, and Kotick knew that where men had come once
they would come again.
He picked up
with an old stumpy-tailed albatross, who told him
that Kerguelen Island was the very place for peace
and quiet, and when Kotick went down there he was
all but smashed to pieces against some wicked black
cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with lightning and
thunder. Yet as he pulled out against the gale he
could see that even there had once been a seal
nursery. And it was so in all the other islands that
he visited.
Limmershin
gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick
spent five seasons exploring, with a four months'
rest each year at Novastoshnah, when the
holluschickie used to make fun of him and his
imaginary islands. He went to the Gallapagos, a
horrid dry place on the Equator, where he was nearly
baked to death; he went to the Georgia Islands, the
Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale Island,
Gough's Island, Bouvet's Island, the Crossets, and
even to a little speck of an island south of the
Cape of Good Hope. But everywhere the People of the
Sea told him the same things. Seals had come to
those islands once upon a time, but men had killed
them all off. Even when he swam thousands of miles
out of the Pacific and got to a place called Cape
Corrientes (that was when he was coming back from
Gough's Island), he found a few hundred mangy seals
on a rock and they told him that men came there too.
That nearly
broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn back
to his own beaches; and on his way north he hauled
out on an island full of green trees, where he found
an old, old seal who was dying, and Kotick caught
fish for him and told him all his sorrows. "Now,"
said Kotick, "I am going back to Novastoshnah, and
if I am driven to the killing-pens with the
holluschickie I shall not care."
The old seal
said, "Try once more. I am the last of the Lost
Rookery of Masafuera, and in the days when men
killed us by the hundred thousand there was a story
on the beaches that some day a white seal would come
out of the North and lead the seal people to a quiet
place. I am old, and I shall never live to see that
day, but others will. Try once more."
And Kotick
curled up his mustache (it was a beauty) and said,
"I am the only white seal that has ever been born on
the beaches, and I am the only seal, black or white,
who ever thought of looking for new islands."
This cheered
him immensely; and when he came back to Novastoshnah
that summer, Matkah, his mother, begged him to marry
and settle down, for he was no longer a holluschick
but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly white mane
on his shoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as
his father. "Give me another season," he said.
"Remember, Mother, it is always the seventh wave
that goes farthest up the beach."
Curiously
enough, there was another seal who thought that she
would put off marrying till the next year, and
Kotick danced the Fire-dance with her all down
Lukannon Beach the night before he set off on his
last exploration. This time he went westward,
because he had fallen on the trail of a great shoal
of halibut, and he needed at least one hundred
pounds of fish a day to keep him in good condition.
He chased them till he was tired, and then he curled
himself up and went to sleep on the hollows of the
ground swell that sets in to Copper Island. He knew
the coast perfectly well, so about midnight, when he
felt himself gently bumped on a weed-bed, he said, "Hm,
tide's running strong tonight," and turning over
under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched.
Then he jumped like a cat, for he saw huge things
nosing about in the shoal water and browsing on the
heavy fringes of the weeds.
"By the
Great Combers of Magellan!" he said, beneath his
mustache. "Who in the Deep Sea are these people?"
They were
like no walrus, sea lion, seal, bear, whale, shark,
fish, squid, or scallop that Kotick had ever seen
before. They were between twenty and thirty feet
long, and they had no hind flippers, but a
shovel-like tail that looked as if it had been
whittled out of wet leather. Their heads were the
most foolish-looking things you ever saw, and they
balanced on the ends of their tails in deep water
when they weren't grazing, bowing solemnly to each
other and waving their front flippers as a fat man
waves his arm.
"Ahem!" said
Kotick. "Good sport, gentlemen?" The big things
answered by bowing and waving their flippers like
the Frog Footman. When they began feeding again
Kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two
pieces that they could twitch apart about a foot and
bring together again with a whole bushel of seaweed
between the splits. They tucked the stuff into their
mouths and chumped solemnly.
"Messy style
of feeding, that," said Kotick. They bowed again,
and Kotick began to lose his temper. "Very good," he
said. "If you do happen to have an extra joint in
your front flipper you needn't show off so. I see
you bow gracefully, but I should like to know your
names." The split lips moved and twitched; and the
glassy green eyes stared, but they did not speak.
"Well!" said
Kotick. "You're the only people I've ever met uglier
than Sea Vitch—and with worse manners."
Then he
remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster gull had
screamed to him when he was a little yearling at
Walrus Islet, and he tumbled backward in the water,
for he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.
The sea cows
went on schlooping and grazing and chumping in the
weed, and Kotick asked them questions in every
language that he had picked up in his travels; and
the Sea People talk nearly as many languages as
human beings. But the sea cows did not answer
because Sea Cow cannot talk. He has only six bones
in his neck where he ought to have seven, and they
say under the sea that that prevents him from
speaking even to his companions. But, as you know,
he has an extra joint in his foreflipper, and by
waving it up and down and about he makes what
answers to a sort of clumsy telegraphic code.
By daylight
Kotick's mane was standing on end and his temper was
gone where the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began
to travel northward very slowly, stopping to hold
absurd bowing councils from time to time, and Kotick
followed them, saying to himself, "People who are
such idiots as these are would have been killed long
ago if they hadn't found out some safe island. And
what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good enough
for the Sea Catch. All the same, I wish they'd
hurry."
It was weary
work for Kotick. The herd never went more than forty
or fifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night,
and kept close to the shore all the time; while
Kotick swam round them, and over them, and under
them, but he could not hurry them up one-half mile.
As they went farther north they held a bowing
council every few hours, and Kotick nearly bit off
his mustache with impatience till he saw that they
were following up a warm current of water, and then
he respected them more.
One night
they sank through the shiny water—sank like
stones—and for the first time since he had known
them began to swim quickly. Kotick followed, and the
pace astonished him, for he never dreamed that Sea
Cow was anything of a swimmer. They headed for a
cliff by the shore—a cliff that ran down into deep
water, and plunged into a dark hole at the foot of
it, twenty fathoms under the sea. It was a long,
long swim, and Kotick badly wanted fresh air before
he was out of the dark tunnel they led him through.
"My wig!" he
said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into open
water at the farther end. "It was a long dive, but
it was worth it."
The sea cows
had separated and were browsing lazily along the
edges of the finest beaches that Kotick had ever
seen. There were long stretches of smooth-worn rock
running for miles, exactly fitted to make
seal-nurseries, and there were play-grounds of hard
sand sloping inland behind them, and there were
rollers for seals to dance in, and long grass to
roll in, and sand dunes to climb up and down, and,
best of all, Kotick knew by the feel of the water,
which never deceives a true sea catch, that no men
had ever come there.
The first
thing he did was to assure himself that the fishing
was good, and then he swam along the beaches and
counted up the delightful low sandy islands half
hidden in the beautiful rolling fog. Away to the
northward, out to sea, ran a line of bars and shoals
and rocks that would never let a ship come within
six miles of the beach, and between the islands and
the mainland was a stretch of deep water that ran up
to the perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the
cliffs was the mouth of the tunnel.
"It's
Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better," said
Kotick. "Sea Cow must be wiser than I thought. Men
can't come down the cliffs, even if there were any
men; and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship to
splinters. If any place in the sea is safe, this is
it."
He began to
think of the seal he had left behind him, but though
he was in a hurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he
thoroughly explored the new country, so that he
would be able to answer all questions.
Then he
dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and
raced through to the southward. No one but a sea cow
or a seal would have dreamed of there being such a
place, and when he looked back at the cliffs even
Kotick could hardly believe that he had been under
them.
He was six
days going home, though he was not swimming slowly;
and when he hauled out just above Sea Lion's Neck
the first person he met was the seal who had been
waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyes
that he had found his island at last.
But the
holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all the
other seals laughed at him when he told them what he
had discovered, and a young seal about his own age
said, "This is all very well, Kotick, but you can't
come from no one knows where and order us off like
this. Remember we've been fighting for our
nurseries, and that's a thing you never did. You
preferred prowling about in the sea."
The other
seals laughed at this, and the young seal began
twisting his head from side to side. He had just
married that year, and was making a great fuss about
it.
"I've no
nursery to fight for," said Kotick. "I only want to
show you all a place where you will be safe. What's
the use of fighting?"
"Oh, if
you're trying to back out, of course I've no more to
say," said the young seal with an ugly chuckle.
"Will you
come with me if I win?" said Kotick. And a green
light came into his eye, for he was very angry at
having to fight at all.
"Very good,"
said the young seal carelessly. "If you win, I'll
come."
He had no
time to change his mind, for Kotick's head was out
and his teeth sunk in the blubber of the young
seal's neck. Then he threw himself back on his
haunches and hauled his enemy down the beach, shook
him, and knocked him over. Then Kotick roared to the
seals: "I've done my best for you these five seasons
past. I've found you the island where you'll be
safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your
silly necks you won't believe. I'm going to teach
you now. Look out for yourselves!"
Limmershin
told me that never in his life—and Limmershin sees
ten thousand big seals fighting every year—never in
all his little life did he see anything like
Kotick's charge into the nurseries. He flung himself
at the biggest sea catch he could find, caught him
by the throat, choked him and bumped him and banged
him till he grunted for mercy, and then threw him
aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotick had
never fasted for four months as the big seals did
every year, and his deep-sea swimming trips kept him
in perfect condition, and, best of all, he had never
fought before. His curly white mane stood up with
rage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dog teeth
glistened, and he was splendid to look at. Old Sea
Catch, his father, saw him tearing past, hauling the
grizzled old seals about as though they had been
halibut, and upsetting the young bachelors in all
directions; and Sea Catch gave a roar and shouted:
"He may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the
beaches! Don't tackle your father, my son! He's with
you!"
Kotick
roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in with
his mustache on end, blowing like a locomotive,
while Matkah and the seal that was going to marry
Kotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. It
was a gorgeous fight, for the two fought as long as
there was a seal that dared lift up his head, and
when there were none they paraded grandly up and
down the beach side by side, bellowing.
At night,
just as the Northern Lights were winking and
flashing through the fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock
and looked down on the scattered nurseries and the
torn and bleeding seals. "Now," he said, "I've
taught you your lesson."
"My wig!"
said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for
he was fearfully mauled. "The Killer Whale himself
could not have cut them up worse. Son, I'm proud of
you, and what's more, I'll come with you to your
island—if there is such a place."
"Hear you,
fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to the Sea
Cow's tunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again,"
roared Kotick.
There was a
murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down
the beaches. "We will come," said thousands of tired
voices. "We will follow Kotick, the White Seal."
Then Kotick
dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his
eyes proudly. He was not a white seal any more, but
red from head to tail. All the same he would have
scorned to look at or touch one of his wounds.
A week later
he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie
and old seals) went away north to the Sea Cow's
tunnel, Kotick leading them, and the seals that
stayed at Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next
spring, when they all met off the fishing banks of
the Pacific, Kotick's seals told such tales of the
new beaches beyond Sea Cow's tunnel that more and
more seals left Novastoshnah. Of course it was not
all done at once, for the seals are not very clever,
and they need a long time to turn things over in
their minds, but year after year more seals went
away from Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other
nurseries, to the quiet, sheltered beaches where
Kotick sits all the summer through, getting bigger
and fatter and stronger each year, while the
holluschickie play around him, in that sea where no
man comes.

Lukannon
This is the
great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals sing
when they are heading back to their beaches in the
summer. It is a sort of very sad seal National
Anthem.
I met my mates in the morning (and, oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers' song—
The Beaches of Lukannon—two million voices strong.
The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,
The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame—
The Beaches of Lukannon—before the sealers came!
I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!);
They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.
And o'er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach
We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.
The Beaches of Lukannon—the winter wheat so tall—
The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!
The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!
The Beaches of Lukannon—the home where we were born!
I met my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.
Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;
Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,
And still we sing Lukannon—before the sealers came.
Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska, go!
And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe;
Ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore,
The Beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!

"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death!"
Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist—
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)
This is the
story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought
single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big
bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the
Tailorbird, 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 roadside ditch. He
found a little wisp of grass floating there, and
clung to it till he lost his senses. When he
revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle
of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small
boy was saying, "Here's a dead mongoose. Let's have
a funeral."
"No," said
his mother, "let's take him in and dry him. Perhaps
he isn't really dead."
They took
him into the house, and a big man picked him up
between his finger and thumb and said he was not
dead but half choked. So they wrapped him in cotton
wool, and warmed him over a little fire, 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 burned it on the end of the
big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's
lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran
into Teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene lamps
were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki
climbed up too. But he was a restless companion,
because he had to get up and attend to every noise
all through the night, and find out what made it.
Teddy's mother and father came in, the last thing,
to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on
the pillow. "I don't like that," said Teddy's
mother. "He may bite the child." "He'll do no such
thing," said the father. "Teddy's safer with that
little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch
him. If a snake came into the nursery now—"
But Teddy's
mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.
Early in the
morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the
veranda riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave
him banana and some boiled egg. 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 Tailorbird, and his wife. They had made
a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together
and stitching them up the edges with fibers, and had
filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The
nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and
cried.
"What is the
matter?" asked Rikki-tikki.
"We are very
miserable," said Darzee. "One of our babies fell out
of the nest yesterday and Nag ate him."
"H'm!" said
Rikki-tikki, "that is very sad—but I am a stranger
here. Who is Nag?"
Darzee and
his wife only cowered down in the nest without
answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of
the bush there came a low hiss—a horrid cold sound
that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then
inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and
spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was
five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had
lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he
stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion
tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at
Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never
change their expression, whatever the snake may be
thinking of.
"Who is
Nag?" 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. 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, this 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 wriggled 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 his lip. But Rikki
did not know. His eyes were all red, and he rocked
back and forth, looking for a good place to hold.
Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried
to run in, but the wicked little dusty gray head
lashed within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had
to jump over the body, and the head followed his
heels close.
Teddy
shouted to the house: "Oh, look here! Our mongoose
is killing a snake." And Rikki-tikki heard a scream
from Teddy's mother. His father ran out with a
stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged
out once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped
on the snake's back, dropped his head far between
his forelegs, bitten as high up the back as he could
get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralyzed
Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up
from the tail, after the custom of his family at
dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a
slow mongoose, and if he wanted all his strength and
quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.
He went away
for a dust bath under the castor-oil bushes, while
Teddy's father beat the dead Karait. "What is the
use of that?" thought Rikki-tikki. "I have settled
it all;" and then Teddy's mother picked him up from
the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved
Teddy from death, and Teddy's father said that he
was a providence, and Teddy looked on with big
scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all
the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand.
Teddy's mother might just as well have petted Teddy
for playing in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly
enjoying himself.
That night
at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses
on the table, he might 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 around 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!"
"Do you
think a snake-killer kills muskrats?" said
Rikki-tikki scornfully.
"Those who
kill snakes get killed by snakes," said Chuchundra,
more sorrowfully than ever. "And how am I to be sure
that Nag won't mistake me for you some dark night?"
"There's not
the least danger," said Rikki-tikki. "But Nag is in
the garden, and I know you don't go there."
"My cousin
Chua, the rat, told me—" said Chuchundra, and then
he stopped.
"Told you
what?"
"H'sh! Nag
is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked
to Chua in the garden."
"I didn't—so
you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I'll bite
you!"
Chuchundra
sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his
whiskers. "I am a very poor man," he sobbed. "I
never had spirit enough to run out into the middle
of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything.
Can't you hear, Rikki-tikki?"
Rikki-tikki
listened. The house was as still as still, but he
thought he could just catch the faintest
scratch-scratch in the world—a noise as faint as
that of a wasp walking on a window-pane—the dry
scratch of a snake's scales on brick-work.
"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 bathroom. At the bottom
of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled
out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as
Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the
bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering
together outside in the moonlight.
"When the
house is emptied of people," said Nagaina to her
husband, "he will have to go away, and then the
garden will be our own again. Go in quietly, and
remember that the big man who killed Karait is the
first one to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we
will hunt for Rikki-tikki together."
"But are you
sure that there is anything to be gained by killing
the people?" said Nag.
"Everything.
When there were no people in the bungalow, did we
have any mongoose in the garden? So long as the
bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the
garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the
melon bed hatch (as they may tomorrow), our children
will need room and quiet."
"I had not
thought of that," said Nag. "I will go, but there is
no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki
afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife, and
the child if I can, and come away quietly. Then the
bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go."
Rikki-tikki
tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and
then Nag's head came through the sluice, and his
five feet of cold body followed it. Angry as he was,
Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the size
of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised his
head, and looked into the bathroom in the dark, and
Rikki could see his eyes glitter.
"Now, if I
kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him
on the open floor, the odds are in his favor. What
am I to do?" said Rikki-tikki-tavi.
Nag waved to
and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking
from the biggest water-jar that was used to fill the
bath. "That is good," said the snake. "Now, when
Karait was killed, the big man had a stick. He may
have that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe
in the morning he will not have a stick. I shall
wait here till he comes. Nagaina—do you hear me?—I
shall wait here in the cool till daytime."
There was no
answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had
gone away. Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil,
round the bulge at the bottom of the water jar, and
Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he
began to move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag
was asleep, and Rikki-tikki looked at his big back,
wondering which would be the best place for a good
hold. "If I don't break his back at the first jump,"
said Rikki, "he can still fight. And if he fights—O
Rikki!" He looked at the thickness of the neck below
the hood, but that was too much for him; and a bite
near the tail would only make Nag savage.
"It must be
the head"' he said at last; "the head above the
hood. And, when I am once there, I must not let go."
Then he
jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the
water jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth
met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the
red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him
just one second's purchase, and he made the most of
it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is
shaken by a dog—to and fro on the floor, up and
down, and around 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 honor of his family, he
preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was
dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when
something went off like a thunderclap just behind
him. A hot wind knocked him senseless and red fire
singed his fur. The big man had been wakened by the
noise, and had fired both barrels of a shotgun into
Nag just behind the hood.
Rikki-tikki
held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite
sure he was dead. But the head did not move, and the
big man picked him up and said, "It's the mongoose
again, Alice. The little chap has saved our lives
now."
Then Teddy's
mother came in with a very white face, and saw what
was left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself to
Teddy's bedroom and spent half the rest of the night
shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he
really was broken into forty pieces, as he fancied.
When morning
came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his
doings. "Now I have Nagaina to settle with, and she
will be worse than five Nags, and there's no knowing
when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness! I
must go and see Darzee," he said.
Without
waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the
thornbush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph
at the top of his voice. The news of Nag's death was
all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the
body on the rubbish-heap.
"Oh, you
stupid tuft of feathers!" said Rikki-tikki angrily.
"Is this the time to sing?"
"Nag is
dead—is dead—is dead!" sang Darzee. "The valiant
Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast.
The big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell in
two pieces! He will never eat my babies again."
"All that's
true enough. But where's Nagaina?" said Rikki-tikki,
looking carefully round him.
"Nagaina
came to the bathroom sluice and called for Nag,"
Darzee went on, "and Nag came out on the end of a
stick—the sweeper picked him up on the end of a
stick and threw him upon the rubbish heap. Let us
sing about the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki!" And
Darzee filled his throat and sang.
"If I could
get up to your nest, I'd roll 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 above 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 around, 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. 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 bathroom."
Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet
together, his head close to the floor. "He threw me
to and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was
dead before the big man blew him in two. I did it!
Rikki-tikki-tck-tck! Come then, Nagaina. Come and
fight with me. You shall not be a widow long."
Nagaina saw
that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and
the egg lay between Rikki-tikki's paws. "Give me the
egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I
will go away and never come back," she said,
lowering her hood.
"Yes, you
will go away, and you will never come back. For you
will go to the rubbish heap with Nag. Fight, widow!
The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!"
Rikki-tikki
was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of
reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals.
Nagaina gathered herself together and flung out at
him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and
again and again she struck, and each time her head
came with a whack on the matting of the veranda and
she gathered herself together like a watch spring.
Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind
her, and Nagaina spun round to keep her head to his
head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting
sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.
He had
forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and
Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last,
while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it
in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and flew
like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind
her. When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like
a whip-lash flicked across a horse's neck.
Rikki-tikki
knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble
would begin again. She headed straight for the long
grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running
Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish
little song of triumph. But Darzee's wife was wiser.
She flew off her nest as Nagaina came along, and
flapped her wings about Nagaina's head. If Darzee
had helped they might have turned her, but Nagaina
only lowered her hood and went on. Still, the
instant's delay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and
as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag
used to live, his little white teeth were clenched
on her tail, and he went down with her—and very few
mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to
follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the
hole; and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open
out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him.
He held on savagely, and stuck 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-tock!" That set all the
birds in the garden singing, and the frogs croaking,
for Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as well as
little birds.
When Rikki
got to the house, Teddy and Teddy's mother (she
looked very white still, for she had been fainting)
and Teddy's father came out and almost cried over
him; and that night he ate all that was given him
till he could eat no more, and went to bed on
Teddy's shoulder, where Teddy's mother saw him when
she came to look late at night.
"He saved
our lives and Teddy's life," she said to her
husband. "Just think, he saved all our lives."
Rikki-tikki
woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are light
sleepers.
"Oh, it's
you," said he. "What are you bothering for? All the
cobras are dead. And if they weren't, I'm here."
Rikki-tikki
had a right to be proud of himself. But he did not
grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a
mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and
spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its
head inside the walls.

Darzee's Chant
(Sung in honor of Rikki-tikki-tavi)
Singer and tailor am I—
Doubled the joys that I know—
Proud of my lilt to the sky,
Proud of the house that I sew—
Over and under, so weave I my music—so weave I the house that I
sew.
Sing to your fledglings again,
Mother, oh lift up your head!
Evil that plagued us is slain,
Death in the garden lies dead.
Terror that hid in the roses is impotent—flung on the dung-hill
and dead!
Who has delivered us, who?
Tell me his nest and his name.
Rikki, the valiant, the true,
Tikki, with eyeballs of flame,
Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of
flame!
Give him the Thanks of the Birds,
Bowing with tail feathers spread!
Praise him with nightingale words—
Nay, I will praise him instead.
Hear! I will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed Rikki, with
eyeballs of red!
(Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is
lost.)

Toomai of the Elephants
I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain—
I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.
I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane:
I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.
I will go out until the day, until the morning break—
Out to the wind's untainted kiss, the water's clean caress;
I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.
I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!
Kala Nag,
which means Black Snake, had served the Indian
Government in every way that an elephant could serve
it for forty-seven years, and as he was fully twenty
years old when he was caught, that makes him nearly
seventy—a ripe age for an elephant. He remembered
pushing, with a big leather pad on his forehead, at
a gun stuck in deep mud, and that was before the
Afghan War of 1842, and he had not then come to his
full strength.
His mother
Radha Pyari,—Radha the darling,—who had been caught
in the same drive with Kala Nag, told him, before
his little milk tusks had dropped out, that
elephants who were afraid always got hurt. Kala Nag
knew that that advice was good, for the first time
that he saw a shell burst he backed, screaming, into
a stand of piled rifles, and the bayonets pricked
him in all his softest places. So, before he was
twenty-five, he gave up being afraid, and so he was
the best-loved and the best-looked-after elephant in
the service of the Government of India. He had
carried tents, twelve hundred pounds' weight of
tents, on the march in Upper India. He had been
hoisted into a ship at the end of a steam crane and
taken for days across the water, and made to carry a
mortar on his back in a strange and rocky country
very far from India, and had seen the Emperor
Theodore lying dead in Magdala, and had come back
again in the steamer entitled, so the soldiers said,
to the Abyssinian War medal. He had seen his fellow
elephants die of cold and epilepsy and starvation
and sunstroke up at a place called Ali Musjid, ten
years later; and afterward he had been sent down
thousands of miles south to haul and pile big balks
of teak in the timberyards at Moulmein. There he had
half killed an insubordinate young elephant who was
shirking his fair share of work.
After that
he was taken off timber-hauling, and employed, with
a few score other elephants who were trained to the
business, in helping to catch wild elephants among
the Garo hills. Elephants are very strictly
preserved by the Indian Government. There is one
whole department which does nothing else but hunt
them, and catch them, and break them in, and send
them up and down the country as they are needed for
work.
Kala Nag
stood ten fair feet at the shoulders, and his tusks
had been cut off short at five feet, and bound round
the ends, to prevent them splitting, with bands of
copper; but he could do more with those stumps than
any untrained elephant could do with the real
sharpened ones. When, after weeks and weeks of
cautious driving of scattered elephants across the
hills, the forty or fifty wild monsters were driven
into the last stockade, and the big drop gate, made
of tree trunks lashed together, jarred down behind
them, Kala Nag, at the word of command, would go
into that flaring, trumpeting pandemonium (generally
at night, when the flicker of the torches made it
difficult to judge distances), and, picking out the
biggest and wildest tusker of the mob, would hammer
him and hustle him into quiet while the men on the
backs of the other elephants roped and tied the
smaller ones.
There was
nothing in the way of fighting that Kala Nag, the
old wise Black Snake, did not know, for he had stood
up more than once in his time to the charge of the
wounded tiger, and, curling up his soft trunk to be
out of harm's way, had knocked the springing brute
sideways in mid-air with a quick sickle cut of his
head, that he had invented all by himself; had
knocked him over, and kneeled upon him with his huge
knees till the life went out with a gasp and a howl,
and there was only a fluffy striped thing on the
ground for Kala Nag to pull by the tail.
"Yes," said
Big Toomai, his driver, the son of Black Toomai who
had taken him to Abyssinia, and grandson of Toomai
of the Elephants who had seen him caught, "there is
nothing that the Black Snake fears except me. He has
seen three generations of us feed him and groom him,
and he will live to see four."
"He is
afraid of me also," said Little Toomai, standing up
to his full height of four feet, with only one rag
upon him. He was ten years old, the eldest son of
Big Toomai, and, according to custom, he would take
his father's place on Kala Nag's neck when he grew
up, and would handle the heavy iron ankus, the
elephant goad, that had been worn smooth by his
father, and his grandfather, and his
great-grandfather.
He knew what
he was talking of; for he had been born under Kala
Nag's shadow, had played with the end of his trunk
before he could walk, had taken him down to water as
soon as he could walk, and Kala Nag would no more
have dreamed of disobeying his shrill little orders
than he would have dreamed of killing him on that
day when Big Toomai carried the little brown baby
under Kala Nag's tusks, and told him to salute his
master that was to be.
"Yes," said
Little Toomai, "he is afraid of me," and he took
long strides up to Kala Nag, called him a fat old
pig, and made him lift up his feet one after the
other.
"Wah!" said
Little Toomai, "thou art a big elephant," and he
wagged his fluffy head, quoting his father. "The
Government may pay for elephants, but they belong to
us mahouts. When thou art old, Kala Nag, there will
come some rich rajah, and he will buy thee from the
Government, on account of thy size and thy manners,
and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry
gold earrings in thy ears, and a gold howdah on thy
back, and a red cloth covered with gold on thy
sides, and walk at the head of the processions of
the King. Then I shall sit on thy neck, O Kala Nag,
with a silver ankus, and men will run before us with
golden sticks, crying, `Room for the King's
elephant!' That will be good, Kala Nag, but not so
good as this hunting in the jungles."

"Umph!" said
Big Toomai. "Thou art a boy, and as wild as a
buffalo-calf. This running up and down among the
hills is not the best Government service. I am
getting old, and I do not love wild elephants. Give
me brick elephant lines, one stall to each elephant,
and big stumps to tie them to safely, and flat,
broad roads to exercise upon, instead of this
come-and-go camping. Aha, the Cawnpore barracks were
good. There was a bazaar close by, and only three
hours' work a day."
Little
Toomai remembered the Cawnpore elephant-lines and
said nothing. He very much preferred the camp life,
and hated those broad, flat roads, with the daily
grubbing for grass in the forage reserve, and the
long hours when there was nothing to do except to
watch Kala Nag fidgeting in his pickets.
What Little
Toomai liked was to scramble up bridle paths that
only an elephant could take; the dip into the valley
below; the glimpses of the wild elephants browsing
miles away; the rush of the frightened pig and
peacock under Kala Nag's feet; the blinding warm
rains, when all the hills and valleys smoked; the
beautiful misty mornings when nobody knew where they
would camp that night; the steady, cautious drive of
the wild elephants, and the mad rush and blaze and
hullabaloo of the last night's drive, when the
elephants poured into the stockade like boulders in
a landslide, found that they could not get out, and
flung themselves at the heavy posts only to be
driven back by yells and flaring torches and volleys
of blank cartridge.
Even a
little boy could be of use there, and Toomai was as
useful as three boys. He would get his torch and
wave it, and yell with the best. But the really good
time came when the driving out began, and the Keddah—that
is, the stockade—looked like a picture of the end of
the world, and men had to make signs to one another,
because they could not hear themselves speak. Then
Little Toomai would climb up to the top of one of
the quivering stockade posts, his sun-bleached brown
hair flying loose all over his shoulders, and he
looking like a goblin in the torch-light. And as
soon as there was a lull you could hear his
high-pitched yells of encouragement to Kala Nag,
above the trumpeting and crashing, and snapping of
ropes, and groans of the tethered elephants. "Mael,
mael, Kala Nag! (Go on, go on, Black Snake!) Dant
do! (Give him the tusk!) Somalo! Somalo! (Careful,
careful!) Maro! Mar! (Hit him, hit him!) Mind the
post! Arre! Arre! Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah!" he would
shout, and the big fight between Kala Nag and the
wild elephant would sway to and fro across the
Keddah, and the old elephant catchers would wipe the
sweat out of their eyes, and find time to nod to
Little Toomai wriggling with joy on the top of the
posts.
He did more
than wriggle. One night he slid down from the post
and slipped in between the elephants and threw up
the loose end of a rope, which had dropped, to a
driver who was trying to get a purchase on the leg
of a kicking young calf (calves always give more
trouble than full-grown animals). Kala Nag saw him,
caught him in his trunk, and handed him up to Big
Toomai, who slapped him then and there, and put him
back on the post.
Next morning
he gave him a scolding and said, "Are not good brick
elephant lines and a little tent carrying enough,
that thou must needs go elephant catching on thy own
account, little worthless? Now those foolish
hunters, whose pay is less than my pay, have spoken
to Petersen Sahib of the matter." Little Toomai was
frightened. He did not know much of white men, but
Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the
world to him. He was the head of all the Keddah
operations—the man who caught all the elephants for
the Government of India, and who knew more about the
ways of elephants than any living man.
"What—what
will happen?" said Little Toomai.
"Happen! The
worst that can happen. Petersen Sahib is a madman.
Else why should he go hunting these wild devils? He
may even require thee to be an elephant catcher, to
sleep anywhere in these fever-filled jungles, and at
last to be trampled to death in the Keddah. It is
well that this nonsense ends safely. Next week the
catching is over, and we of the plains are sent back
to our stations. Then we will march on smooth roads,
and forget all this hunting. But, son, I am angry
that thou shouldst meddle in the business that
belongs to these dirty Assamese jungle folk. Kala
Nag will obey none but me, so I must go with him
into the Keddah, but he is only a fighting elephant,
and he does not help to rope them. So I sit at my
ease, as befits a mahout,—not a mere hunter,—a
mahout, I say, and a man who gets a pension at the
end of his service. Is the family of Toomai of the
Elephants to be trodden underfoot in the dirt of a
Keddah? Bad one! Wicked one! Worthless son! Go and
wash Kala Nag and attend to his ears, and see that
there are no thorns in his feet. Or else Petersen
Sahib will surely catch thee and make thee a wild
hunter—a follower of elephant's foot tracks, a
jungle bear. Bah! Shame! Go!"
Little
Toomai went off without saying a word, but he told
Kala Nag all his grievances while he was examining
his feet. "No matter," said Little Toomai, turning
up the fringe of Kala Nag's huge right ear. "They
have said my name to Petersen Sahib, and perhaps—and
perhaps—and perhaps—who knows? Hai! That is a big
thorn that I have pulled out!"
The next few
days were spent in getting the elephants together,
in walking the newly caught wild elephants up and
down between a couple of tame ones to prevent them
giving too much trouble on the downward march to the
plains, and in taking stock of the blankets and
ropes and things that had been worn out or lost in
the forest.
Petersen
Sahib came in on his clever she-elephant Pudmini; he
had been paying off other camps among the hills, for
the season was coming to an end, and there was a
native clerk sitting at a table under a tree, to pay
the drivers their wages. As each man was paid he
went back to his elephant, and joined the line that
stood ready to start. The catchers, and hunters, and
beaters, the men of the regular Keddah, who stayed
in the jungle year in and year out, sat on the backs
of the elephants that belonged to Petersen Sahib's
permanent force, or leaned against the trees with
their guns across their arms, and made fun of the
drivers who were going away, and laughed when the
newly caught elephants broke the line and ran about.
Big Toomai
went up to the clerk with Little Toomai behind him,
and Machua Appa, the head tracker, said in an
undertone to a friend of his, "There goes one piece
of good elephant stuff at least. 'Tis a pity to send
that young jungle-cock to molt in the plains."
Now Petersen
Sahib had ears all over him, as a man must have who
listens to the most silent of all living things—the
wild elephant. He turned where he was lying all
along on Pudmini's back and said, "What is that? I
did not know of a man among the plains-drivers who
had wit enough to rope even a dead elephant."
"This is not
a man, but a boy. He went into the Keddah at the
last drive, and threw Barmao there the rope, when we
were trying to get that young calf with the blotch
on his shoulder away from his mother."
Machua Appa
pointed at Little Toomai, and Petersen Sahib looked,
and Little Toomai bowed to the earth.
"He throw a
rope? He is smaller than a picket-pin. Little one,
what is thy name?" said Petersen Sahib.
Little
Toomai was too frightened to speak, but Kala Nag was
behind him, and Toomai made a sign with his hand,
and the elephant caught him up in his trunk and held
him level with Pudmini's forehead, in front of the
great Petersen Sahib. Then Little Toomai covered his
face with his hands, for he was only a child, and
except where elephants were concerned, he was just
as bashful as a child could be.
"Oho!" said
Petersen Sahib, smiling underneath his mustache,
"and why didst thou teach thy elephant that trick?
Was it to help thee steal green corn from the roofs
of the houses when the ears are put out to dry?"
"Not green
corn, Protector of the Poor,—melons," said Little
Toomai, and all the men sitting about broke into a
roar of laughter. Most of them had taught their
elephants that trick when they were boys. Little
Toomai was hanging eight feet up in the air, and he
wished very much that he were eight feet
underground.
"He is
Toomai, my son, Sahib," said Big Toomai, scowling.
"He is a very bad boy, and he will end in a jail,
Sahib."
"Of that I
have my doubts," said Petersen Sahib. "A boy who can
face a full Keddah at his age does not end in jails.
See, little one, here are four annas to spend in
sweetmeats because thou hast a little head under
that great thatch of hair. In time thou mayest
become a hunter too." Big Toomai scowled more than
ever. "Remember, though, that Keddahs are not good
for children to play in," Petersen Sahib went on.
"Must I
never go there, Sahib?" asked Little Toomai with a
big gasp.
"Yes."
Petersen Sahib smiled again. "When thou hast seen
the elephants dance. That is the proper time. Come
to me when thou hast seen the elephants dance, and
then I will let thee go into all the Keddahs."
There was
another roar of laughter, for that is an old joke
among elephant-catchers, and it means just never.
There are great cleared flat places hidden away in
the forests that are called elephants' ball-rooms,
but even these are only found by accident, and no
man has ever seen the elephants dance. When a driver
boasts of his skill and bravery the other drivers
say, "And when didst thou see the elephants dance?"
Kala Nag put
Little Toomai down, and he bowed to the earth again
and went away with his father, and gave the silver
four-anna piece to his mother, who was nursing his
baby brother, and they all were put up on Kala Nag's
back, and the line of grunting, squealing elephants
rolled down the hill path to the plains. It was a
very lively march on account of the new elephants,
who gave trouble at every ford, and needed coaxing
or beating every other minute.
Big Toomai
prodded Kala Nag spitefully, for he was very angry,
but Little Toomai was too happy to speak. Petersen
Sahib had noticed him, and given him money, so he
felt as a private soldier would feel if he had been
called out of the ranks and praised by his
commander-in-chief.
"What did
Petersen Sahib mean by the elephant dance?" he said,
at last, softly to his mother.
Big Toomai
heard him and grunted. "That thou shouldst never be
one of these hill buffaloes of trackers. That was
what he meant. Oh, you in front, what is blocking
the way?"
An Assamese
driver, two or three elephants ahead, turned round
angrily, crying: "Bring up Kala Nag, and knock this
youngster of mine into good behavior. Why should
Petersen Sahib have chosen me to go down with you
donkeys of the rice fields? Lay your beast
alongside, Toomai, and let him prod with his tusks.
By all the Gods of the Hills, these new elephants
are possessed, or else they can smell their
companions in the jungle." Kala Nag hit the new
elephant in the ribs and knocked the wind out of
him, as Big Toomai said, "We have swept the hills of
wild elephants at the last catch. It is only your
carelessness in driving. Must I keep order along the
whole line?"
"Hear him!"
said the other driver. "We have swept the hills! Ho!
Ho! You are very wise, you plains people. Anyone but
a mud-head who never saw the jungle would know that
they know that the drives are ended for the season.
Therefore all the wild elephants to-night will—but
why should I waste wisdom on a river-turtle?"
"What will
they do?" Little Toomai called out.
"Ohe, little
one. Art thou there? Well, I will tell thee, for
thou hast a cool head. They will dance, and it
behooves thy father, who has swept all the hills of
all the elephants, to double-chain his pickets
to-night."
"What talk
is this?" said Big Toomai. "For forty years, father
and son, we have tended elephants, and we have never
heard such moonshine about dances."
"Yes; but a
plainsman who lives in a hut knows only the four
walls of his hut. Well, leave thy elephants
unshackled tonight and see what comes. As for their
dancing, I have seen the place where—Bapree-bap! How
many windings has the Dihang River? Here is another
ford, and we must swim the calves. Stop still, you
behind there."
And in this
way, talking and wrangling and splashing through the
rivers, they made their first march to a sort of
receiving camp for the new elephants. But they lost
their tempers long before they got there.
Then the
elephants were chained by their hind legs to their
big stumps of pickets, and extra ropes were fitted
to the new elephants, and the fodder was piled
before them, and the hill drivers went back to
Petersen Sahib through the afternoon light, telling
the plains drivers to be extra careful that night,
and laughing when the plains drivers asked the
reason.
Little
Toomai attended to Kala Nag's supper, and as evening
fell, wandered through the camp, unspeakably happy,
in search of a tom-tom. When an Indian child's heart
is full, he does not run about and make a noise in
an irregular fashion. He sits down to a sort of
revel all by himself. And Little Toomai had been
spoken to by Petersen Sahib! If he had not found
what he wanted, I believe he would have been ill.
But the sweetmeat seller in the camp lent him a
little tom-tom—a drum beaten with the flat of the
hand—and he sat down, cross-legged, before Kala Nag
as the stars began to come out, the tom-tom in his
lap, and he thumped and he thumped and he thumped,
and the more he thought of the great honor that had
been done to him, the more he thumped, all alone
among the elephant fodder. There was no tune and no
words, but the thumping made him happy.
The new
elephants strained at their ropes, and squealed and
trumpeted from time to time, and he could hear his
mother in the camp hut putting his small brother to
sleep with an old, old song about the great God Shiv,
who once told all the animals what they should eat.
It is a very soothing lullaby, and the first verse
says:
Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,
Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,
Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,
From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the gate.
All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all—
Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,
And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!
Little
Toomai came in with a joyous tunk-a-tunk at the end
of each verse, till he felt sleepy and stretched
himself on the fodder at Kala Nag's side. At last
the elephants began to lie down one after another as
is their custom, till only Kala Nag at the right of
the line was left standing up; and he rocked slowly
from side to side, his ears put forward to listen to
the night wind as it blew very slowly across the
hills. The air was full of all the night noises
that, taken together, make one big silence—the click
of one bamboo stem against the other, the rustle of
something alive in the undergrowth, the scratch and
squawk of a half-waked bird (birds are awake in the
night much more often than we imagine), and the fall
of water ever so far away. Little Toomai slept for
some time, and when he waked it was brilliant
moonlight, and Kala Nag was still standing up with
his ears cocked. Little Toomai turned, rustling in
the fodder, and watched the curve of his big back
against half the stars in heaven, and while he
watched he heard, so far away that it sounded no
more than a pinhole of noise pricked through the
stillness, the "hoot-toot" of a wild elephant.
All the
elephants in the lines jumped up as if they had been
shot, and their grunts at last waked the sleeping
mahouts, and they came out and drove in the picket
pegs with big mallets, and tightened this rope and
knotted that till all was quiet. One new elephant
had nearly grubbed up his picket, and Big Toomai
took off Kala Nag's leg chain and shackled that
elephant fore-foot to hind-foot, but slipped a loop
of grass string round Kala Nag's leg, and told him
to remember that he was tied fast. He knew that he
and his father and his grandfather had done the very
same thing hundreds of times before. Kala Nag did
not answer to the order by gurgling, as he usually
did. He stood still, looking out across the
moonlight, his head a little raised and his ears
spread like fans, up to the great folds of the Garo
hills.
"Tend to him
if he grows restless in the night," said Big Toomai
to Little Toomai, and he went into the hut and
slept. Little Toomai was just going to sleep, too,
when he heard the coir string snap with a little
"tang," and Kala Nag rolled out of his pickets as
slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls out of the
mouth of a valley. Little Toomai pattered after him,
barefooted, down the road in the moonlight, calling
under his breath, "Kala Nag! Kala Nag! Take me with
you, O Kala Nag!" The elephant turned, without a
sound, took three strides back to the boy in the
moonlight, put down his trunk, swung him up to his
neck, and almost before Little Toomai had settled
his knees, slipped into the forest.
There was
one blast of furious trumpeting from the lines, and
then the silence shut down on everything, and Kala
Nag began to move. Sometimes a tuft of high grass
washed along his sides as a wave washes along the
sides of a ship, and sometimes a cluster of
wild-pepper vines would scrape along his back, or a
bamboo would creak where his shoulder touched it.
But between those times he moved absolutely without
any sound, drifting through the thick Garo forest as
though it had been smoke. He was going uphill, but
though Little Toomai watched the stars in the rifts
of the trees, he could not tell in what direction.
Then Kala
Nag reached the crest of the ascent and stopped for
a minute, and Little Toomai could see the tops of
the trees lying all speckled and furry under the
moonlight for miles and miles, and the blue-white
mist over the river in the hollow. Toomai leaned
forward and looked, and he felt that the forest was
awake below him—awake and alive and crowded. A big
brown fruit-eating bat brushed past his ear; a
porcupine's quills rattled in the thicket; and in
the darkness between the tree stems he heard a
hog-bear digging hard in the moist warm earth, and
snuffing as it digged.
Then the
branches closed over his head again, and Kala Nag
began to go down into the valley—not quietly this
time, but as a runaway gun goes down a steep bank—in
one rush. The huge limbs moved as steadily as
pistons, eight feet to each stride, and the wrinkled
skin of the elbow points rustled. The undergrowth on
either side of him ripped with a noise like torn
canvas, and the saplings that he heaved away right
and left with his shoulders sprang back again and
banged him on the flank, and great trails of
creepers, all matted together, hung from his tusks
as he threw his head from side to side and plowed
out his pathway. Then Little Toomai laid himself
down close to the great neck lest a swinging bough
should sweep him to the ground, and he wished that
he were back in the lines again.
The grass
began to get squashy, and Kala Nag's feet sucked and
squelched as he put them down, and the night mist at
the bottom of the valley chilled Little Toomai.
There was a splash and a trample, and the rush of
running water, and Kala Nag strode through the bed
of a river, feeling his way at each step. Above the
noise of the water, as it swirled round the
elephant's legs, Little Toomai could hear more
splashing and some trumpeting both upstream and
down—great grunts and angry snortings, and all the
mist about him seemed to be full of rolling, wavy
shadows.
"Ai!" he
said, half aloud, his teeth chattering. "The
elephant-folk are out tonight. It is the dance,
then!"
Kala Nag
swashed out of the water, blew his trunk clear, and
began another climb. But this time he was not alone,
and he had not to make his path. That was made
already, six feet wide, in front of him, where the
bent jungle-grass was trying to recover itself and
stand up. Many elephants must have gone that way
only a few minutes before. Little Toomai looked
back, and behind him a great wild tusker with his
little pig's eyes glowing like hot coals was just
lifting himself out of the misty river. Then the
trees closed up again, and they went on and up, with
trumpetings and crashings, and the sound of breaking
branches on every side of them.
At last Kala
Nag stood still between two tree-trunks at the very
top of the hill. They were part of a circle of trees
that grew round an irregular space of some three or
four acres, and in all that space, as Little Toomai
could see, the ground had been trampled down as hard
as a brick floor. Some trees grew in the center of
the clearing, but their bark was rubbed away, and
the white wood beneath showed all shiny and polished
in the patches of moonlight. There were creepers
hanging from the upper branches, and the bells of
the flowers of the creepers, great waxy white things
like convolvuluses, hung down fast asleep. But
within the limits of the clearing there was not a
single blade of green—nothing but the trampled
earth.
The
moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some
elephants stood upon it, and their shadows were inky
black. Little Toomai looked, holding his breath,
with his eyes starting out of his head, and as he
looked, more and more and more elephants swung out
into the open from between the tree trunks. Little
Toomai could only count up to ten, and he counted
again and again on his fingers till he lost count of
the tens, and his head began to swim. Outside the
clearing he could hear them crashing in the
undergrowth as they worked their way up the
hillside, but as soon as they were within the circle
of the tree trunks they moved like ghosts.
There were
white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts
and twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and
the folds of their ears; fat, slow-footed
she-elephants, with restless, little pinky black
calves only three or four feet high running under
their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks
just beginning to show, and very proud of them;
lanky, scraggy old-maid elephants, with their hollow
anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; savage
old bull elephants, scarred from shoulder to flank
with great weals and cuts of bygone fights, and the
caked dirt of their solitary mud baths dropping from
their shoulders; and there was one with a broken
tusk and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible
drawing scrape, of a tiger's claws on his side.
They were
standing head to head, or walking to and fro across
the ground in couples, or rocking and swaying all by
themselves—scores and scores of elephants.
Toomai knew
that so long as he lay still on Kala Nag's neck
nothing would happen to him, for even in the rush
and scramble of a Keddah drive a wild elephant does
not reach up with his trunk and drag a man off the
neck of a tame elephant. And these elephants were
not thinking of men that night. Once they started
and put their ears forward when they heard the
chinking of a leg iron in the forest, but it was
Pudmini, Petersen Sahib's pet elephant, her chain
snapped short off, grunting, snuffling up the
hillside. She must have broken her pickets and come
straight from Petersen Sahib's camp; and Little
Toomai saw another elephant, one that he did not
know, with deep rope galls on his back and breast.
He, too, must have run away from some camp in the
hills about.
At last
there was no sound of any more elephants moving in
the forest, and Kala Nag rolled out from his station
between the trees and went into the middle of the
crowd, clucking and gurgling, and all the elephants
began to talk in their own tongue, and to move
about.
Still lying
down, Little Toomai looked down upon scores and
scores of broad backs, and wagging ears, and tossing
trunks, and little rolling eyes. He heard the click
of tusks as they crossed other tusks by accident,
and the dry rustle of trunks twined together, and
the chafing of enormous sides and shoulders in the
crowd, and the incessant flick and hissh of the
great tails. Then a cloud came over the moon, and he
sat in black darkness. But the quiet, steady
hustling and pushing and gurgling went on just the
same. He knew that there were elephants all round
Kala Nag, and that there was no chance of backing
him out of the assembly; so he set his teeth and
shivered. In a Keddah at least there was torchlight
and shouting, but here he was all alone in the dark,
and once a trunk came up and touched him on the
knee.
Then an
elephant trumpeted, and they all took it up for five
or ten terrible seconds. The dew from the trees
above spattered down like rain on the unseen backs,
and a dull booming noise began, not very loud at
first, and Little Toomai could not tell what it was.
But it grew and grew, and Kala Nag lifted up one
forefoot and then the other, and brought them down
on the ground—one-two, one-two, as steadily as
trip-hammers. The elephants were stamping all
together now, and it sounded like a war drum beaten
at the mouth of a cave. The dew fell from the trees
till there was no more left to fall, and the booming
went on, and the ground rocked and shivered, and
Little Toomai put his hands up to his ears to shut
out the sound. But it was all one gigantic jar that
ran through him—this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet
on the raw earth. Once or twice he could feel Kala
Nag and all the others surge forward a few strides,
and the thumping would change to the crushing sound
of juicy green things being bruised, but in a minute
or two the boom of feet on hard earth began again. A
tree was creaking and groaning somewhere near him.
He put out his arm and felt the bark, but Kala Nag
moved forward, still tramping, and he could not tell
where he was in the clearing. There was no sound
from the elephants, except once, when two or three
little calves squeaked together. Then he heard a
thump and a shuffle, and the booming went on. It
must have lasted fully two hours, and Little Toomai
ached in every nerve, but he knew by the smell of
the night air that the dawn was coming.
The morning
broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green
hills, and the booming stopped with the first ray,
as though the light had been an order. Before Little
Toomai had got the ringing out of his head, before
even he had shifted his position, there was not an
elephant in sight except Kala Nag, Pudmini, and the
elephant with the rope-galls, and there was neither
sign nor rustle nor whisper down the hillsides to
show where the others had gone.
Little
Toomai stared again and again. The clearing, as he
remembered it, had grown in the night. More trees
stood in the middle of it, but the undergrowth and
the jungle grass at the sides had been rolled back.
Little Toomai stared once more. Now he understood
the trampling. The elephants had stamped out more
room—had stamped the thick grass and juicy cane to
trash, the trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny
fibers, and the fibers into hard earth.
"Wah!" said
Little Toomai, and his eyes were very heavy. "Kala
Nag, my lord, let us keep by Pudmini and go to
Petersen Sahib's camp, or I shall drop from thy
neck."
The third
elephant watched the two go away, snorted, wheeled
round, and took his own path. He may have belonged
to some little native king's establishment, fifty or
sixty or a hundred miles away.
Two hours
later, as Petersen Sahib was eating early breakfast,
his elephants, who had been double chained that
night, began to trumpet, and Pudmini, mired to the
shoulders, with Kala Nag, very footsore, shambled
into the camp. Little Toomai's face was gray and
pinched, and his hair was full of leaves and
drenched with dew, but he tried to salute Petersen
Sahib, and cried faintly: "The dance—the elephant
dance! I have seen it, and—I die!" As Kala Nag sat
down, he slid off his neck in a dead faint.
But, since
native children have no nerves worth speaking of, in
two hours he was lying very contentedly in Petersen
Sahib's hammock with Petersen Sahib's shooting-coat
under his head, and a glass of warm milk, a little
brandy, with a dash of quinine, inside of him, and
while the old hairy, scarred hunters of the jungles
sat three deep before him, looking at him as though
he were a spirit, he told his tale in short words,
as a child will, and wound up with:
"Now, if I
lie in one word, send men to see, and they will find
that the elephant folk have trampled down more room
in their dance-room, and they will find ten and ten,
and many times ten, tracks leading to that
dance-room. They made more room with their feet. I
have seen it. Kala Nag took me, and I saw. Also Kala
Nag is very leg-weary!"
Little
Toomai lay back and slept all through the long
afternoon and into the twilight, and while he slept
Petersen Sahib and Machua Appa followed the track of
the two elephants for fifteen miles across the
hills. Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in
catching elephants, and he had only once before
found such a dance-place. Machua Appa had no need to
look twice at the clearing to see what had been done
there, or to scratch with his toe in the packed,
rammed earth.
"The child
speaks truth," said he. "All this was done last
night, and I have counted seventy tracks crossing
the river. See, Sahib, where Pudmini's leg-iron cut
the bark of that tree! Yes; she was there too."
They looked
at one another and up and down, and they wondered.
For the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any
man, black or white, to fathom.
"Forty years
and five," said Machua Appa, "have I followed my
lord, the elephant, but never have I heard that any
child of man had seen what this child has seen. By
all the Gods of the Hills, it is—what can we say?"
and he shook his head.
When they
got back to camp it was time for the evening meal.
Petersen Sahib ate alone in his tent, but he gave
orders that the camp should have two sheep and some
fowls, as well as a double ration of flour and rice
and salt, for he knew that there would be a feast.
Big Toomai
had come up hotfoot from the camp in the plains to
search for his son and his elephant, and now that he
had found them he looked at them as though he were
afraid of them both. And there was a feast by the
blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed
elephants, and Little Toomai was the hero of it all.
And the big brown elephant catchers, the trackers
and drivers and ropers, and the men who know all the
secrets of breaking the wildest elephants, passed
him from one to the other, and they marked his
forehead with blood from the breast of a newly
killed jungle-cock, to show that he was a forester,
initiated and free of all the jungles.
And at last,
when the flames died down, and the red light of the
logs made the elephants look as though they had been
dipped in blood too, Machua Appa, the head of all
the drivers of all the Keddahs—Machua Appa, Petersen
Sahib's other self, who had never seen a made road
in forty years: Machua Appa, who was so great that
he had no other name than Machua Appa,—leaped to his
feet, with Little Toomai held high in the air above
his head, and shouted: "Listen, my brothers. Listen,
too, you my lords in the lines there, for I, Machua
Appa, am speaking! This little one shall no more be
called Little Toomai, but Toomai of the Elephants,
as his great-grandfather was called before him. What
never man has seen he has seen through the long
night, and the favor of the elephant-folk and of the
Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall become a
great tracker. He shall become greater than I, even
I, Machua Appa! He shall follow the new trail, and
the stale trail, and the mixed trail, with a clear
eye! He shall take no harm in the Keddah when he
runs under their bellies to rope the wild tuskers;
and if he slips before the feet of the charging bull
elephant, the bull elephant shall know who he is and
shall not crush him. Aihai! my lords in the
chains,"—he whirled up the line of pickets—"here is
the little one that has seen your dances in your
hidden places,—the sight that never man saw! Give
him honor, my lords! Salaam karo, my children. Make
your salute to Toomai of the Elephants! Gunga
Pershad, ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi Guj, Kuttar Guj,
ahaa! Pudmini,—thou hast seen him at the dance, and
thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among elephants!—ahaa!
Together! To Toomai of the Elephants. Barrao!"
And at that
last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks
till the tips touched their foreheads, and broke out
into the full salute—the crashing trumpet-peal that
only the Viceroy of India hears, the Salaamut of the
Keddah.
But it was
all for the sake of Little Toomai, who had seen what
never man had seen before—the dance of the elephants
at night and alone in the heart of the Garo hills!

Shiv and the Grasshopper
(The song that Toomai's mother sang to the baby)
Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,
Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,
Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,
From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the gate.
All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all,—
Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,
And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!
Wheat he gave to rich folk, millet to the poor,
Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door;
Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite,
And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night.
Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low—
Parbati beside him watched them come and go;
Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest—
Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast.
So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver.
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! Turn and see.
Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine,
But this was Least of Little Things, O little son of mine!
When the dole was ended, laughingly she said,
"Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?"
Laughing, Shiv made answer, "All have had their part,
Even he, the little one, hidden 'neath thy heart."
From her breast she plucked it, Parbati the thief,
Saw the Least of Little Things gnawed a new-grown leaf!
Saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to Shiv,
Who hath surely given meat to all that live.
All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all,—
Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,
And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!

Her Majesty's Servants
You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three,
But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee.
You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop,
But the way of Pilly Winky's not the way of Winkie Pop!
It had been
raining heavily for one whole month—raining on a
camp of thirty thousand men and thousands of camels,
elephants, horses, bullocks, and mules all gathered
together at a place called Rawal Pindi, to be
reviewed by the Viceroy of India. He was receiving a
visit from the Amir of Afghanistan—a wild king of a
very wild country. The Amir had brought with him for
a bodyguard eight hundred men and horses who had
never seen a camp or a locomotive before in their
lives—savage men and savage horses from somewhere at
the back of Central Asia. Every night a mob of these
horses would be sure to break their heel ropes and
stampede up and down the camp through the mud in the
dark, or the camels would break loose and run about
and fall over the ropes of the tents, and you can
imagine how pleasant that was for men trying to go
to sleep. My tent lay far away from the camel lines,
and I thought it was safe. But one night a man
popped his head in and shouted, "Get out, quick!
They're coming! My tent's gone!"
I knew who
"they" were, so I put on my boots and waterproof and
scuttled out into the slush. Little Vixen, my fox
terrier, went out through the other side; and then
there was a roaring and a grunting and bubbling, and
I saw the tent cave in, as the pole snapped, and
begin to dance about like a mad ghost. A camel had
blundered into it, and wet and angry as I was, I
could not help laughing. Then I ran on, because I
did not know how many camels might have got loose,
and before long I was out of sight of the camp,
plowing my way through the mud.
At last I
fell over the tail-end of a gun, and by that knew I
was somewhere near the artillery lines where the
cannon were stacked at night. As I did not want to
plowter about any more in the drizzle and the dark,
I put my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun, and
made a sort of wigwam with two or three rammers that
I found, and lay along the tail of another gun,
wondering where Vixen had got to, and where I might
be.
Just as I
was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle of
harness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking
his wet ears. He belonged to a screw-gun battery,
for I could hear the rattle of the straps and rings
and chains and things on his saddle pad. The
screw-guns are tiny little cannon made in two
pieces, that are screwed together when the time
comes to use them. They are taken up mountains,
anywhere that a mule can find a road, and they are
very useful for fighting in rocky country.
Behind the
mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet
squelching and slipping in the mud, and his neck
bobbing to and fro like a strayed hen's. Luckily, I
knew enough of beast language—not wild-beast
language, but camp-beast language, of course—from
the natives to know what he was saying.
He must have
been the one that flopped into my tent, for he
called to the mule, "What shall I do? Where shall I
go? I have fought with a white thing that waved, and
it took a stick and hit me on the neck." (That was
my broken tent pole, and I was very glad to know
it.) "Shall we run on?"
"Oh, it was
you," said the mule, "you and your friends, that
have been disturbing the camp? All right. You'll be
beaten for this in the morning. But I may as well
give you something on account now."
I heard the
harness jingle as the mule backed and caught the
camel two kicks in the ribs that rang like a drum.
"Another time," he said, "you'll know better than to
run through a mule battery at night, shouting
`Thieves and fire!' Sit down, and keep your silly
neck quiet."
The camel
doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot rule, and
sat down whimpering. There was a regular beat of
hoofs in the darkness, and a big troop-horse
cantered up as steadily as though he were on parade,
jumped a gun tail, and landed close to the mule.
"It's
disgraceful," he said, blowing out his nostrils.
"Those camels have racketed through our lines
again—the third time this week. How's a horse to
keep his condition if he isn't allowed to sleep.
Who's here?"
"I'm the
breech-piece mule of number two gun of the First
Screw Battery," said the mule, "and the other's one
of your friends. He's waked me up too. Who are you?"
"Number
Fifteen, E troop, Ninth Lancers—Dick Cunliffe's
horse. Stand over a little, there."
"Oh, beg
your pardon," said the mule. "It's too dark to see
much. Aren't these camels too sickening for
anything? I walked out of my lines to get a little
peace and quiet here."
"My lords,"
said the camel humbly, "we dreamed bad dreams in the
night, and we were very much afraid. I am only a
baggage camel of the 39th Native Infantry, and I am
not as brave as you are, my lords."
"Then why
didn't you stay and carry baggage for the 39th
Native Infantry, instead of running all round the
camp?" said the mule.
"They were
such very bad dreams," said the camel. "I am sorry.
Listen! What is that? Shall we run on again?"
"Sit down,"
said the mule, "or you'll snap your long stick-legs
between the guns." He cocked one ear and listened.
"Bullocks!" he said. "Gun bullocks. On my word, you
and your friends have waked the camp very
thoroughly. It takes a good deal of prodding to put
up a gun-bullock."
I heard a
chain dragging along the ground, and a yoke of the
great sulky white bullocks that drag the heavy siege
guns when the elephants won't go any nearer to the
firing, came shouldering along together. And almost
stepping on the chain was another battery mule,
calling wildly for "Billy."
"That's one
of our recruits," said the old mule to the troop
horse. "He's calling for me. Here, youngster, stop
squealing. The dark never hurt anybody yet."
The
gun-bullocks lay down together and began chewing the
cud, but the young mule huddled close to Billy.
"Things!" he
said. "Fearful and horrible, Billy! They came into
our lines while we were asleep. D'you think they'll
kill us?"
"I've a very
great mind to give you a number-one kicking," said
Billy. "The idea of a fourteen-hand mule with your
training disgracing the battery before this
gentleman!"
"Gently,
gently!" said the troop-horse. "Remember they are
always like this to begin with. The first time I
ever saw a man (it was in Australia when I was a
three-year-old) I ran for half a day, and if I'd
seen a camel, I should have been running still."
Nearly all
our horses for the English cavalry are brought to
India from Australia, and are broken in by the
troopers themselves.
"True
enough," said Billy. "Stop shaking, youngster. The
first time they put the full harness with all its
chains on my back I stood on my forelegs and kicked
every bit of it off. I hadn't learned the real
science of kicking then, but the battery said they
had never seen anything like it."
"But this
wasn't harness or anything that jingled," said the
young mule. "You know I don't mind that now, Billy.
It was Things like trees, and they fell up and down
the lines and bubbled; and my head-rope broke, and I
couldn't find my driver, and I couldn't find you,
Billy, so I ran off with—with these gentlemen."
"H'm!" said
Billy. "As soon as I heard the camels were loose I
came away on my own account. When a battery—a
screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks gentlemen, he must
be very badly shaken up. Who are you fellows on the
ground there?"
The gun
bullocks rolled their cuds, and answered both
together: "The seventh yoke of the first gun of the
Big Gun Battery. We were asleep when the camels
came, but when we were trampled on we got up and
walked away. It is better to lie quiet in the mud
than to be disturbed on good bedding. We told your
friend here that there was nothing to be afraid of,
but he knew so much that he thought otherwise. Wah!"
They went on
chewing.
"That comes
of being afraid," said Billy. "You get laughed at by
gun-bullocks. I hope you like it, young un."
The young
mule's teeth snapped, and I heard him say something
about not being afraid of any beefy old bullock in
the world. But the bullocks only clicked their horns
together and went on chewing.
"Now, don't
be angry after you've been afraid. That's the worst
kind of cowardice," said the troop-horse. "Anybody
can be forgiven for being scared in the night, I
think, if they see things they don't understand.
We've broken out of our pickets, again and again,
four hundred and fifty of us, just because a new
recruit got to telling tales of whip snakes at home
in Australia till we were scared to death of the
loose ends of our head-ropes."
"That's all
very well in camp," said Billy. "I'm not above
stampeding myself, for the fun of the thing, when I
haven't been out for a day or two. But what do you
do on active service?"
"Oh, that's
quite another set of new shoes," said the troop
horse. "Dick Cunliffe's on my back then, and drives
his knees into me, and all I have to do is to watch
where I am putting my feet, and to keep my hind legs
well under me, and be bridle-wise."
"What's
bridle-wise?" said the young mule.
"By the Blue
Gums of the Back Blocks," snorted the troop-horse,
"do you mean to say that you aren't taught to be
bridle-wise in your business? How can you do
anything, unless you can spin round at once when the
rein is pressed on your neck? It means life or death
to your man, and of course that's life and death to
you. Get round with your hind legs under you the
instant you feel the rein on your neck. If you
haven't room to swing round, rear up a little and
come round on your hind legs. That's being
bridle-wise."
"We aren't
taught that way," said Billy the mule stiffly.
"We're taught to obey the man at our head: step off
when he says so, and step in when he says so. I
suppose it comes to the same thing. Now, with all
this fine fancy business and rearing, which must be
very bad for your hocks, what do you do?"
"That
depends," said the troop-horse. "Generally I have to
go in among a lot of yelling, hairy men with
knives—long shiny knives, worse than the farrier's
knives—and I have to take care that Dick's boot is
just touching the next man's boot without crushing
it. I can see Dick's lance to the right of my right
eye, and I know I'm safe. I shouldn't care to be the
man or horse that stood up to Dick and me when we're
in a hurry."
"Don't the
knives hurt?" said the young mule.
"Well, I got
one cut across the chest once, but that wasn't
Dick's fault—"
"A lot I
should have cared whose fault it was, if it hurt!"
said the young mule.
"You must,"
said the troop horse. "If you don't trust your man,
you may as well run away at once. That's what some
of our horses do, and I don't blame them. As I was
saying, it wasn't Dick's fault. The man was lying on
the ground, and I stretched myself not to tread on
him, and he slashed up at me. Next time I have to go
over a man lying down I shall step on him—hard."
"H'm!" said
Billy. "It sounds very foolish. Knives are dirty
things at any time. The proper thing to do is to
climb up a mountain with a well-balanced saddle,
hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and
creep and crawl and wriggle along, till you come out
hundreds of feet above anyone else on a ledge where
there's just room enough for your hoofs. Then you
stand still and keep quiet—never ask a man to hold
your head, young un—keep quiet while the guns are
being put together, and then you watch the little
poppy shells drop down into the tree-tops ever so
far below."
"Don't you
ever trip?" said the troop-horse.
"They say
that when a mule trips you can split a hen's ear,"
said Billy. "Now and again perhaps a badly packed
saddle will upset a mule, but it's very seldom. I
wish I could show you our business. It's beautiful.
Why, it took me three years to find out what the men
were driving at. The science of the thing is never
to show up against the sky line, because, if you do,
you may get fired at. Remember that, young un.
Always keep hidden as much as possible, even if you
have to go a mile out of your way. I lead the
battery when it comes to that sort of climbing."
"Fired at
without the chance of running into the people who
are firing!" said the troop-horse, thinking hard. "I
couldn't stand that. I should want to charge—with
Dick."
"Oh, no, you
wouldn't. You know that as soon as the guns are in
position they'll do all the charging. That's
scientific and neat. But knives—pah!"
The
baggage-camel had been bobbing his head to and fro
for some time past, anxious to get a word in
edgewise. Then I heard him say, as he cleared his
throat, nervously:
"I—I—I have
fought a little, but not in that climbing way or
that running way."
"No. Now you
mention it," said Billy, "you don't look as though
you were made for climbing or running—much. Well,
how was it, old Hay-bales?"
"The proper
way," said the camel. "We all sat down—"
"Oh, my
crupper and breastplate!" said the troop-horse under
his breath. "Sat down!"
"We sat
down—a hundred of us," the camel went on, "in a big
square, and the men piled our packs and saddles,
outside the square, and they fired over our backs,
the men did, on all sides of the square."
"What sort
of men? Any men that came along?" said the
troop-horse. "They teach us in riding school to lie
down and let our masters fire across us, but Dick
Cunliffe is the only man I'd trust to do that. It
tickles my girths, and, besides, I can't see with my
head on the ground."
"What does
it matter who fires across you?" said the camel.
"There are plenty of men and plenty of other camels
close by, and a great many clouds of smoke. I am not
frightened then. I sit still and wait."
"And yet,"
said Billy, "you dream bad dreams and upset the camp
at night. Well, well! Before I'd lie down, not to
speak of sitting down, and let a man fire across me,
my heels and his head would have something to say to
each other. Did you ever hear anything so awful as
that?"
There was a
long silence, and then one of the gun bullocks
lifted up his big head and said, "This is very
foolish indeed. There is only one way of fighting."
"Oh, go on,"
said Billy. "Please don't mind me. I suppose you
fellows fight standing on your tails?"
"Only one
way," said the two together. (They must have been
twins.) "This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of
us to the big gun as soon as Two Tails trumpets."
("Two Tails" is camp slang for the elephant.)
"What does
Two Tails trumpet for?" said the young mule.

"To show
that he is not going any nearer to the smoke on the
other side. Two Tails is a great coward. Then we tug
the big gun all together—Heya—Hullah! Heeyah! Hullah!
We do not climb like cats nor run like calves. We go
across the level plain, twenty yoke of us, till we
are unyoked again, and we graze while the big guns
talk across the plain to some town with mud walls,
and pieces of the wall fall out, and the dust goes
up as though many cattle were coming home."
"Oh! And you
choose that time for grazing?" said the young mule.
"That time
or any other. Eating is always good. We eat till we
are yoked up again and tug the gun back to where Two
Tails is waiting for it. Sometimes there are big
guns in the city that speak back, and some of us are
killed, and then there is all the more grazing for
those that are left. This is Fate. None the less,
Two Tails is a great coward. That is the proper way
to fight. We are brothers from Hapur. Our father was
a sacred bull of Shiva. We have spoken."
"Well, I've
certainly learned something tonight," said the
troop-horse. "Do you gentlemen of the screw-gun
battery feel inclined to eat when you are being
fired at with big guns, and Two Tails is behind
you?"
"About as
much as we feel inclined to sit down and let men
sprawl all over us, or run into people with knives.
I never heard such stuff. A mountain ledge, a
well-balanced load, a driver you can trust to let
you pick your own way, and I'm your mule. But—the
other things—no!" said Billy, with a stamp of his
foot.
"Of course,"
said the troop horse, "everyone is not made in the
same way, and I can quite see that your family, on
your father's side, would fail to understand a great
many things."
"Never you
mind my family on my father's side," said Billy
angrily, for every mule hates to be reminded that
his father was a donkey. "My father was a Southern
gentleman, and he could pull down and bite and kick
into rags every horse he came across. Remember that,
you big brown Brumby!"
Brumby means
wild horse without any breeding. Imagine the
feelings of Sunol if a car-horse called her a
"skate," and you can imagine how the Australian
horse felt. I saw the white of his eye glitter in
the dark.
"See here,
you son of an imported Malaga jackass," he said
between his teeth, "I'd have you know that I'm
related on my mother's side to Carbine, winner of
the Melbourne Cup, and where I come from we aren't
accustomed to being ridden over roughshod by any
parrot-mouthed, pig-headed mule in a pop-gun
pea-shooter battery. Are you ready?"
"On your
hind legs!" squealed Billy. They both reared up
facing each other, and I was expecting a furious
fight, when a gurgly, rumbly voice, called out of
the darkness to the right—"Children, what are you
fighting about there? Be quiet."
Both beasts
dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither
horse nor mule can bear to listen to an elephant's
voice.
"It's Two
Tails!" said the troop-horse. "I can't stand him. A
tail at each end isn't fair!"
"My feelings
exactly," said Billy, crowding into the troop-horse
for company. "We're very alike in some things."
"I suppose
we've inherited them from our mothers," said the
troop horse. "It's not worth quarreling about. Hi!
Two Tails, are you tied up?"
"Yes," said
Two Tails, with a laugh all up his trunk. "I'm
picketed for the night. I've heard what you fellows
have been saying. But don't be afraid. I'm not
coming over."
The bullocks
and the camel said, half aloud, "Afraid of Two
Tails—what nonsense!" And the bullocks went on, "We
are sorry that you heard, but it is true. Two Tails,
why are you afraid of the guns when they fire?"
"Well," said
Two Tails, rubbing one hind leg against the other,
exactly like a little boy saying a poem, "I don't
quite know whether you'd understand."
"We don't,
but we have to pull the guns," said the bullocks.
"I know it,
and I know you are a good deal braver than you think
you are. But it's different with me. My battery
captain called me a Pachydermatous Anachronism the
other day."
"That's
another way of fighting, I suppose?" said Billy, who
was recovering his spirits.
"You don't
know what that means, of course, but I do. It means
betwixt and between, and that is just where I am. I
can see inside my head what will happen when a shell
bursts, and you bullocks can't."
"I can,"
said the troop-horse. "At least a little bit. I try
not to think about it."
"I can see
more than you, and I do think about it. I know
there's a great deal of me to take care of, and I
know that nobody knows how to cure me when I'm sick.
All they can do is to stop my driver's pay till I
get well, and I can't trust my driver."
"Ah!" said
the troop horse. "That explains it. I can trust
Dick."
"You could
put a whole regiment of Dicks on my back without
making me feel any better. I know just enough to be
uncomfortable, and not enough to go on in spite of
it."
"We do not
understand," said the bullocks.
"I know you
don't. I'm not talking to you. You don't know what
blood is."
"We do,"
said the bullocks. "It is red stuff that soaks into
the ground and smells."
The
troop-horse gave a kick and a bound and a snort.
"Don't talk
of it," he said. "I can smell it now, just thinking
of it. It makes me want to run—when I haven't Dick
on my back."
"But it is
not here," said the camel and the bullocks. "Why are
you so stupid?"
"It's vile
stuff," said Billy. "I don't want to run, but I
don't want to talk about it."
"There you
are!" said Two Tails, waving his tail to explain.
"Surely.
Yes, we have been here all night," said the
bullocks.
Two Tails
stamped his foot till the iron ring on it jingled.
"Oh, I'm not talking to you. You can't see inside
your heads."
"No. We see
out of our four eyes," said the bullocks. "We see
straight in front of us."
"If I could
do that and nothing else, you wouldn't be needed to
pull the big guns at all. If I was like my
captain—he can see things inside his head before the
firing begins, and he shakes all over, but he knows
too much to run away—if I was like him I could pull
the guns. But if I were as wise as all that I should
never be here. I should be a king in the forest, as
I used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when
I liked. I haven't had a good bath for a month."
"That's all
very fine," said Billy. "But giving a thing a long
name doesn't make it any better."
"H'sh!" said
the troop horse. "I think I understand what Two
Tails means."
"You'll
understand better in a minute," said Two Tails
angrily. "Now you just explain to me why you don't
like this!"
He began
trumpeting furiously at the top of his trumpet.
"Stop that!"
said Billy and the troop horse together, and I could
hear them stamp and shiver. An elephant's trumpeting
is always nasty, especially on a dark night.
"I shan't
stop," said Two Tails. "Won't you explain that,
please? Hhrrmph! Rrrt! Rrrmph! Rrrhha!" Then he
stopped suddenly, and I heard a little whimper in
the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last.
She knew as well as I did that if there is one thing
in the world the elephant is more afraid of than
another it is a little barking dog. So she stopped
to bully Two Tails in his pickets, and yapped round
his big feet. Two Tails shuffled and squeaked. "Go
away, little dog!" he said. "Don't snuff at my
ankles, or I'll kick at you. Good little dog—nice
little doggie, then! Go home, you yelping little
beast! Oh, why doesn't someone take her away? She'll
bite me in a minute."
"Seems to
me," said Billy to the troop horse, "that our friend
Two Tails is afraid of most things. Now, if I had a
full meal for every dog I've kicked across the
parade-ground I should be as fat as Two Tails
nearly."
I whistled,
and Vixen ran up to me, muddy all over, and licked
my nose, and told me a long tale about hunting for
me all through the camp. I never let her know that I
understood beast talk, or she would have taken all
sorts of liberties. So I buttoned her into the
breast of my overcoat, and Two Tails shuffled and
stamped and growled to himself.
"Extraordinary! Most extraordinary!" he said. "It
runs in our family. Now, where has that nasty little
beast gone to?"
I heard him
feeling about with his trunk.
"We all seem
to be affected in various ways," he went on, blowing
his nose. "Now, you gentlemen were alarmed, I
believe, when I trumpeted."
"Not
alarmed, exactly," said the troop-horse, "but it
made me feel as though I had hornets where my saddle
ought to be. Don't begin again."
"I'm
frightened of a little dog, and the camel here is
frightened by bad dreams in the night."
"It is very
lucky for us that we haven't all got to fight in the
same way," said the troop-horse.
"What I want
to know," said the young mule, who had been quiet
for a long time—"what I want to know is, why we have
to fight at all."
"Because
we're told to," said the troop-horse, with a snort
of contempt.
"Orders,"
said Billy the mule, and his teeth snapped.
"Hukm hai!"
(It is an order!), said the camel with a gurgle, and
Two Tails and the bullocks repeated, "Hukm hai!"
"Yes, but
who gives the orders?" said the recruit-mule.
"The man who
walks at your head—Or sits on your back—Or holds the
nose rope—Or twists your tail," said Billy and the
troop-horse and the camel and the bullocks one after
the other.
"But who
gives them the orders?"
"Now you
want to know too much, young un," said Billy, "and
that is one way of getting kicked. All you have to
do is to obey the man at your head and ask no
questions."
"He's quite
right," said Two Tails. "I can't always obey,
because I'm betwixt and between. But Billy's right.
Obey the man next to you who gives the order, or
you'll stop all the battery, besides getting a
thrashing."
The
gun-bullocks got up to go. "Morning is coming," they
said. "We will go back to our lines. It is true that
we only see out of our eyes, and we are not very
clever. But still, we are the only people to-night
who have not been afraid. Good-night, you brave
people."
Nobody
answered, and the troop-horse said, to change the
conversation, "Where's that little dog? A dog means
a man somewhere about."
"Here I am,"
yapped Vixen, "under the gun tail with my man. You
big, blundering beast of a camel you, you upset our
tent. My man's very angry."
"Phew!" said
the bullocks. "He must be white!"
"Of course
he is," said Vixen. "Do you suppose I'm looked after
by a black bullock-driver?"
"Huah! Ouach!
Ugh!" said the bullocks. "Let us get away quickly."
They plunged
forward in the mud, and managed somehow to run their
yoke on the pole of an ammunition wagon, where it
jammed.
"Now you
have done it," said Billy calmly. "Don't struggle.
You're hung up till daylight. What on earth's the
matter?"
The bullocks
went off into the long hissing snorts that Indian
cattle give, and pushed and crowded and slued and
stamped and slipped and nearly fell down in the mud,
grunting savagely.
"You'll
break your necks in a minute," said the troop-horse.
"What's the matter with white men? I live with 'em."
"They—eat—us! Pull!" said the near bullock. The yoke
snapped with a twang, and they lumbered off
together.
I never knew
before what made Indian cattle so scared of
Englishmen. We eat beef—a thing that no
cattle-driver touches—and of course the cattle do
not like it.
"May I be
flogged with my own pad-chains! Who'd have thought
of two big lumps like those losing their heads?"
said Billy.
"Never mind.
I'm going to look at this man. Most of the white
men, I know, have things in their pockets," said the
troop-horse.
"I'll leave
you, then. I can't say I'm over-fond of 'em myself.
Besides, white men who haven't a place to sleep in
are more than likely to be thieves, and I've a good
deal of Government property on my back. Come along,
young un, and we'll go back to our lines.
Good-night, Australia! See you on parade to-morrow,
I suppose. Good-night, old Hay-bale!—try to control
your feelings, won't you? Good-night, Two Tails! If
you pass us on the ground tomorrow, don't trumpet.
It spoils our formation."
Billy the
Mule stumped off with the swaggering limp of an old
campaigner, as the troop-horse's head came nuzzling
into my breast, and I gave him biscuits, while
Vixen, who is a most conceited little dog, told him
fibs about the scores of horses that she and I kept.
"I'm coming
to the parade to-morrow in my dog-cart," she said.
"Where will you be?"
"On the left
hand of the second squadron. I set the time for all
my troop, little lady," he said politely. "Now I
must go back to Dick. My tail's all muddy, and he'll
have two hours' hard work dressing me for parade."
The big
parade of all the thirty thousand men was held that
afternoon, and Vixen and I had a good place close to
the Viceroy and the Amir of Afghanistan, with high,
big black hat of astrakhan wool and the great
diamond star in the center. The first part of the
review was all sunshine, and the regiments went by
in wave upon wave of legs all moving together, and
guns all in a line, till our eyes grew dizzy. Then
the cavalry came up, to the beautiful cavalry canter
of "Bonnie Dundee," and Vixen cocked her ear where
she sat on the dog-cart. The second squadron of the
Lancers shot by, and there was the troop-horse, with
his tail like spun silk, his head pulled into his
breast, one ear forward and one back, setting the
time for all his squadron, his legs going as
smoothly as waltz music. Then the big guns came by,
and I saw Two Tails and two other elephants
harnessed in line to a forty-pounder siege gun,
while twenty yoke of oxen walked behind. The seventh
pair had a new yoke, and they looked rather stiff
and tired. Last came the screw guns, and Billy the
mule carried himself as though he commanded all the
troops, and his harness was oiled and polished till
it winked. I gave a cheer all by myself for Billy
the mule, but he never looked right or left.
The rain
began to fall again, and for a while it was too
misty to see what the troops were doing. They had
made a big half circle across the plain, and were
spreading out into a line. That line grew and grew
and grew till it was three-quarters of a mile long
from wing to wing—one solid wall of men, horses, and
guns. Then it came on straight toward the Viceroy
and the Amir, and as it got nearer the ground began
to shake, like the deck of a steamer when the
engines are going fast.
Unless you
have been there you cannot imagine what a
frightening effect this steady come-down of troops
has on the spectators, even when they know it is
only a review. I looked at the Amir. Up till then he
had not shown the shadow of a sign of astonishment
or anything else. But now his eyes began to get
bigger and bigger, and he picked up the reins on his
horse's neck and looked behind him. For a minute it
seemed as though he were going to draw his sword and
slash his way out through the English men and women
in the carriages at the back. Then the advance
stopped dead, the ground stood still, the whole line
saluted, and thirty bands began to play all
together. That was the end of the review, and the
regiments went off to their camps in the rain, and
an infantry band struck up with—
The animals went in two by two,
Hurrah!
The animals went in two by two,
The elephant and the battery mul',
and they all got into the Ark
For to get out of the rain!
Then I heard
an old grizzled, long-haired Central Asian chief,
who had come down with the Amir, asking questions of
a native officer.
"Now," said
he, "in what manner was this wonderful thing done?"
And the
officer answered, "An order was given, and they
obeyed."
"But are the
beasts as wise as the men?" said the chief.
"They obey,
as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he
obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and
the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieutenant his
captain, and the captain his major, and the major
his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier
commanding three regiments, and the brigadier the
general, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant
of the Empress. Thus it is done."
"Would it
were so in Afghanistan!" said the chief, "for there
we obey only our own wills."
"And for
that reason," said the native officer, twirling his
mustache, "your Amir whom you do not obey must come
here and take orders from our Viceroy."

Parade Song of the Camp Animals
ELEPHANTS OF THE GUN TEAMS
We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,
The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees;
We bowed our necks to service: they ne'er were loosed again,—
Make way there—way for the ten-foot teams
Of the Forty-Pounder train!
GUN BULLOCKS
Those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball,
And what they know of powder upsets them one and all;
Then we come into action and tug the guns again—
Make way there—way for the twenty yoke
Of the Forty-Pounder train!
CAVALRY HORSES
By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes
Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons,
And it's sweeter than "Stables" or "Water" to me—
The Cavalry Canter of "Bonnie Dundee"!
Then feed us and break us and handle and groom,
And give us good riders and plenty of room,
And launch us in column of squadron and see
The way of the war-horse to "Bonnie Dundee"!
SCREW-GUN MULES
As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill,
The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still;
For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,
Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to
spare!
Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road;
Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load:
For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,
Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to
spare!
COMMISSARIAT CAMELS
We haven't a camelty tune of our own
To help us trollop along,
But every neck is a hair trombone
(Rtt-ta-ta-ta! is a hair trombone!)
And this our marching-song:
Can't! Don't! Shan't! Won't!
Pass it along the line!
Somebody's pack has slid from his back,
Wish it were only mine!
Somebody's load has tipped off in the road—
Cheer for a halt and a row!
Urrr! Yarrh! Grr! Arrh!
Somebody's catching it now!
ALL THE BEASTS TOGETHER
Children of the Camp are we,
Serving each in his degree;
Children of the yoke and goad,
Pack and harness, pad and load.
See our line across the plain,
Like a heel-rope bent again,
Reaching, writhing, rolling far,
Sweeping all away to war!
While the men that walk beside,
Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed,
Cannot tell why we or they
March and suffer day by day.
Children of the Camp are we,
Serving each in his degree;
Children of the yoke and goad,
Pack and harness, pad and load!