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.
When Mowgli left the wolf's cave after the fight with the Pack at
the Council Rock, he went down to the ploughed 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 thornbush
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 honour, 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 honour 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 be.'
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 for eight cents.
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.'
He had not learned while he was with the wolves to imitate the
challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little wild pig
for fun. So, as soon as Messua pronounced a word Mowgli would imitate
it almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the name 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 Wolfs 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 may'st 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 ploughing, 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. He certainly had
no notion of what fear was, for when the village priest told him that
the god in the temple would be angry with him if he ate the priest's
mangoes, he picked up the image, brought it over to the priest's house,
and asked the priest to make the god angry and he would be happy to
fight him. It was a horrible scandal, but the priest hushed it up, and
Messua's husband paid much good silver to comfort the god. And Mowgli
had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes between
man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the clay-pit, Mowgli
hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their
journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for
the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When the priest
scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey, too, and the
priest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had better be set to work as
soon as possible; and the village headman told Mowgli that he would
have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while they
grazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because he
had been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to
a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great
fig-tree. It was the village club, and the 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 graybeards, nodding
together.
'Are all these tales such cobwebs and moontalk?' said Mowgli. 'That
tiger limps because he was born lame, as every one 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 headman, while
Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli's impertinence.
The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the
cattle and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them
back at night; and the very cattle that would trample a white man to
death allow themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by
children that hardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep
with the herds they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob
of cattle. But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they
are sometimes carried off. Mowgli went through the village street in
the dawn, sitting on the back of Rama, the great herd bull; and the
slaty-blue buffaloes, with their long, backward-sweeping horns and
savage eyes, rose out of their byres, one by one, and followed him, and
Mowgli made it very clear to the children with him that he was the
master. He beat the buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and told
Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the cattle by themselves, while he
went on with the buffaloes, and to be very careful not to stray away
from the herd.
An Indian grazing-ground is all rocks, and scrubs, 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 centre 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 worshipped. 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
dhak-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 to-day, 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 mid-day.
'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 plough-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 centre, and
glared and pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge
down and trample the life out of him. In the other, the bulls and the
young bulls snorted and stamped, but though they looked more imposing
they were much less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. No
six men could have divided the herd so neatly.
'What orders!' panted Akela. 'They are trying to join again.'
Mowgli slipped on to Rama's back. 'Drive the bulls away to the left,
Akela. Gray Brother, when we are gone, hold the cows together, and
drive them into the foot of the ravine.'
'How far?' said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.
'Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump,' shouted
Mowgli. 'Keep them there till we come down.' The bulls swept off as
Akela bayed, and Gray Brother stopped in front of the cows. They
charged down on him, and he ran just before them to the foot of the
ravine, as Akela drove the bulls far to the left.
'Well done! Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful,
now—careful, Akela. A snap too much, and the bulls will charge.
Hujah! This is wilder work than driving black-buck. Didst thou
think these creatures could move so swiftly?' Mowgli called.
'I have—have hunted these too in my time,' gasped Akela in the
dust. 'Shall I turn them into the jungle?'
'Ay! Turn. Swiftly turn them! Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I could
only tell him what I need of him today.'
The bulls were turned, to the right this time, and crashed into the
standing thicket. The other herd-children, watching with the cattle
half a mile away, hurried to the village as fast as their legs could
carry them, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run away. But
Mowgli's plan was simple enough. All he wanted to do was to make a big
circle uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the
bulls down it and catch Shere Khan between the bulls and the cows; for
he knew that after a meal and a full drink Shere Khan would not be in
any condition to fight or to clamber up the sides of the ravine. He was
soothing the buffaloes now by voice, and Akela had dropped far to the
rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the 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. I must tell Shere Khan who comes. We have him in a
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 flood-time; the weaker buffaloes
being shouldered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through
the creepers. They knew what the business was before them—the terrible
charge of the buffalo herd against which no tiger can hope to stand.
Shere Khan heard the thunder of their hoofs, picked himself up and
lumbered down the ravine, looking from side to side for some way of
escape, but the walls of the ravine were straight and he had to hold
on, heavy with his dinner and 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, and 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 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. Wallah! 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 any one 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 gray 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! Wolfs 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.
'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, O wake! Here come I,
and the bulls are behind. Rama the king of the buffaloes stamped
with his foot.
Waters of the Waingunga whither went Shere Khan? He is not Sahi
to dig holes, nor Mor, 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 honour.
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.