UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 ofuvtfun*2 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIllI 
 
 NC 00022226324 
 
 Jcn* sl 
 
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 This BOOK may be kept out TWO WEEKS 
 ONLY, and is subject to a fine of FIVE 
 CENTS a day thereafter. It was taken out on 
 the day indicated below: 
 
The Second Jungle Book 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/secondjunglebookkipl 
 
The Works of Rudyard JGpling 
 
 The Second Jungle Book 
 
 Decorated by 
 John Lockwood Kipling, C. I. £. 
 
 New York 
 
 The Century Co. 
 
 1899 
 
Copyright, 1895, by The Century Co. 
 
 How Fear Came, The Law of the Jungle ; 
 
 The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, A Song of Kabir; 
 
 The Undertakers, A Ripple-song. 
 
 Copyright, 1894, by Bacheller, Johnson & Bacheller. 
 
 Quiquern, "Angutivun tina." 
 Copyright, 1895, by Irving Bacheller. 
 
 The Spring Running, The Outsong. 
 Copyright, 1895, by John Brisben Walker. 
 
 Letting in the Jungle, Mowgli's Song Against People. 
 Copyright, 1894, by Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 Red Dog, Chil's Song. 
 Copyright, 1895, by Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 The King's Ankus, The Song of the Little Hunter. 
 Copyright, 1895, by Tne Century Co. 
 
"Now these are the Laws of the Jiingle, 
 
 and many and mighty are they ; 
 
 But the head and the hoof of the Law 
 
 and the haunch and the hump is — Obey / " 
 
 do 
 T 
 
 t 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 How Fear Came i 
 
 The Law of the Jungle 29 
 
 The Miracle of Purun Bhagat 33 
 
 A Song of Kabir 61 
 
 Letting in the Jungle 63 
 
 Mowgli's Song Against People 112 
 
 The Undertakers 115 
 
 A Ripple-song 155 
 
 The King's Ankus 157 
 
 The Song of the Little Hunter 191 
 
 Quiquern 193 
 
 " angutivun tina " 234 
 
 Red Dog 237 
 
 Chil's Song 281 
 
 The Spring Running 283 
 
 The Outsong 321 
 
THE 
 SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
The stream is shrunk — the pool is dry, 
 And we be comrades, thou and I ; 
 With fevered jowl and sunken flank 
 Each jostling each along the bank; 
 And, by one drouthy fear made still, 
 Foregoing thought of quest or kill. 
 Now 'neath his dam the fawn may see 
 The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he, 
 And the tall buck, unflinching, note 
 The fangs that tore his father's throat. 
 The pools are shrunk — the streams are dry, 
 And we be playmates, thou and I, 
 Till yonder cloud — Good Hunting ! — loose 
 The rain that breaks the Water Truce. 
 
r ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 HOW FEAR CAME 
 
 HE Law of the Jungle — 
 which is by far the old- 
 est law in the world — 
 has arranged for almost 
 every kind of accident 
 that may befall the Jun- 
 gle People, till now its 
 code is as perfect as time 
 and custom can make it. 
 If you have read the other book about Mowgli, 
 you will remember that he spent a great part of 
 his life in the Seeonee Wolf- Pack, learning the Law 
 from Baloo, the Brown Bear; and it was Baloo who 
 told him, when the boy grew impatient at the 
 constant orders, that the Law was like the Giant 
 
2 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Creeper, because it dropped across every one's 
 back and no one could escape. "When thou 
 hast lived as long as I have, Little Brother, thou 
 wilt see how all the Jungle obeys at least one 
 Law. And that will be no pleasant sight," said 
 Baloo. 
 
 This talk went in at one ear and out at the 
 other, for a boy who spends his life eating and 
 sleeping does not worry about anything till it 
 actually stares him in the face. But, one year, 
 Baloo's words came true, and Mowgli saw all the 
 Jungle working under the Law. 
 
 It began when the winter Rains failed almost 
 entirely, and Ikki, the Porcupine, meeting Mowgli 
 in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild yams 
 were drying up. Now everybody knows that 
 Ikki is ridiculously fastidious in his choice of 
 food, and will eat nothing but the very best and 
 ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said, "What is 
 that to me ? " 
 
 " Not much now''' said Ikki, rattling his quills 
 in a stiff, uncomfortable way, "but later we shall 
 see. Is there any more diving into the deep 
 rock-pool below the Bee-Rocks, Little Brother?" 
 
 " No. The foolish water is going all away, 
 and I do not wish to break my head," said 
 Mowgli, who, in those days, was quite sure that 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 3 
 
 he knew as much as any five of the Jungle Peo- 
 ple put together. 
 
 "That is thy loss. A small crack might let in 
 some wisdom." Ikki ducked quickly to prevent 
 Mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and Mow- 
 ofH told Baloo what Ikki had said. Baloo looked 
 very grave, and mumbled half to himself: " If I 
 were alone I would change my ^hunting-grounds 
 now, before the others began to think. And yet 
 — hunting among strangers ends in fighting; 
 and they might hurt the Man-cub. We must 
 wait and see how the mohwa blooms." 
 
 That spring the mohwa tree, that Baloo was 
 so fond of, never flowered. The greeny, cream- 
 colored, waxy blossoms were heat-killed before 
 they were born, and only a few bad-smelling 
 petals came down when he stood on his hind 
 legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the 
 untempered heat crept into the heart of the 
 Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last 
 black. The green growths in the sides of the 
 ravines burned up to broken wires and curled 
 films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down 
 and caked over, keeping the last least footmark 
 on their edges as if it had been cast in iron ; the 
 juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees 
 they clung to and died at their feet ; the bamboos 
 
4 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 withered, clanking when the hot winds blew, and 
 the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the Jungle, 
 till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering 
 blue boulders in the bed of the stream. 
 
 The birds and the monkey-people went north 
 early in the year, for they knew what was com- 
 ing ; and the deer and the wild pig broke far 
 away to the perished fields of the villages, dying 
 sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to 
 kill them. Chil, the Kite, stayed and grew fat, 
 for there was a great deal of carrion, and even- 
 ing- after evening he brought the news to the 
 beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunt- 
 ing-grounds, that the sun was killing the Jungle 
 for three days' flight in every direction. 
 
 Mowgli, who had never known what real hun- 
 ger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years 
 old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives — honey 
 black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He 
 hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the 
 bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their 
 new broods. All the game in the Jungle was no 
 more than skin and bone, and Bagheera could 
 kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. 
 But the want of water was the worst, for though 
 the Jungle People drink seldom they must drink 
 deep. 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 5 
 
 And the heat went on and on, and sucked up 
 all the moisture, till at last the main channel of 
 the Waingunga was the only stream that carried 
 a trickle of water between its dead banks ; and 
 when Hathi, the wild elephant, who lives for a 
 hundred years and more, saw a long, lean blue 
 ridge of rock show dry in the very center of the 
 stream, he knew that he was looking at the Peace 
 Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk 
 and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father be- 
 fore him had proclaimed it fifty years ago. The 
 deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry 
 hoarsely ; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great circles 
 far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning. 
 
 By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at 
 the drinking-places when once the Water Truce 
 has been declared. The reason of this is that 
 drinking comes before eating. Every one in the 
 Jungle can scramble along somehow when only 
 game is scarce ; but water is water, and when 
 there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops 
 while the Jungle People go there for their needs. 
 In good seasons, when water was plentiful, those 
 who came down to drink at the Waingunga — or 
 anywhere else, for that matter — did so at the risk 
 of their lives, and that risk made no small part of 
 the fascination of the night's doings. To move 
 
6 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred ; to 
 wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that 
 drown all noise from behind ; to drink, looking 
 backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready 
 for the first desperate bound of keen terror ; to 
 roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled 
 and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was 
 a thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a 
 delight in, precisely because they knew that at 
 any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap 
 upon them and bear them down. But now all 
 that life-and-death fun was ended, and the Jun- 
 gle People came up, starved and weary, to the 
 shrunken river, — tiger, bear, deer, buffalo, and 
 pig, all together, — drank the fouled waters, and 
 hung above them, too exhausted to move off. 
 
 The deer and the pig had tramped all day in 
 search of something better than dried bark and 
 withered leaves. The buffaloes had found no wal- 
 lows to be cool in, and no green crops to steal. The 
 snakes had left the Jungle and come down to the 
 river in the hope of finding a stray frog. They 
 curled round wet stones, and never offered to 
 strike when the nose of a rooting pig dislodged 
 them. The river-turtles had long ago been killed 
 by Bagheera, cleverest of hunters, and the fish 
 had buried themselves deep in the dry mud. 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 7 
 
 Only the Peace Rock lay across the shallows like 
 a long snake, and the little tired ripples hissed as 
 they dried on its hot side. 
 
 It was here that Mowgli came nightly for the 
 cool and the companionship. The most hungry 
 of his enemies would hardly have cared for 
 the boy then. His naked hide made him seem 
 more lean and wretched than any of his fellows. 
 His hair was bleached to tow color by the sun ; 
 his ribs stood out like the ribs of a basket, and 
 the lumps on his knees and elbows, where he 
 was used to track on all fours, gave his shrunken 
 limbs the look of knotted grass-stems. But his 
 eye, under his matted forelock, was cool and quiet, 
 for Bagheera was his adviser in this time of 
 trouble, and told him to go quietly, hunt slowly, 
 and never, on any account, to lose his temper. 
 
 " It is an evil time," said the Black Panther, 
 one furnace-hot evening, " but it will go if we can 
 live till the end. Is thy stomach full, Man cub ? " 
 
 " There is stuff in my stomach, but I get no 
 good of it. Think you, Bagheera, the Rains have 
 forgotten us and will never come again ? " 
 
 " Not I ! We shall see the mohwa in blossom 
 yet, and the little fawns all fat with new grass. 
 Come down to the Peace Rock and hear the news. 
 On my back, Little Brother." 
 
8 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " This is no time to carry weight. I can still 
 stand alone, but — indeed we be no fatted bul- 
 locks, we too." 
 
 Bagheera looked along his ragged, dusty flank 
 and whispered: "Last night I killed a bullock 
 under the yoke. So low was I brought that I 
 think I should not have dared to spring if he had 
 been loose. Won ! " 
 
 Mowgli laughed. " Yes, we be great hunters 
 now," said he. " I am very bold — to eat grubs," 
 and the two came down together through the 
 crackling undergrowth to the river-bank and the 
 lace-work of shoals that ran out from it in every 
 direction. 
 
 " The water cannot live long," said Baloo, join- 
 ing them. " Look across. Yonder are trails like 
 the roads of Man." 
 
 On the level plain of the further bank the stiff 
 jungle-grass had died standing, and, dying, had 
 mummied. The beaten tracks of the deer and the 
 pig, all heading toward the river, had striped that 
 colorless plain with dusty gullies driven through 
 the ten-foot grass, and, early as it was, each long 
 avenue was full of first-comers hastening to the 
 water. You could hear the does and fawns cough- 
 ing in the snuff-like dust. 
 
 Up-stream, at the bend of the sluggish pool 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 9 
 
 round the Peace Rock, and Warden of the Water 
 Truce, stood Hathi,the wild elephant, with his sons, 
 gaunt and gray in the moonlight, rocking to and 
 fro — always rocking. Below him a little were 
 the vanguard of the deer ; below these, again, the 
 pig and the wild buffalo ; and on the opposite 
 bank, where the tall trees came down to the water's 
 edge, was the place set apart for the Eaters of 
 Flesh — the tiger, the wolves, the panther, and the 
 bear, and the others. 
 
 "We are under one Law, indeed," said Ba- 
 gheera, wading into the water and looking across 
 at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes 
 where the deer and the pig pushed each other to 
 and fro. " Good hunting, all you of my blood," 
 he added, lying down at full length, one flank 
 thrust out of the shallows ; and then, between his 
 teeth, " But for that which is the Law it would be 
 very good hunting." 
 
 The quick-spread ears of the deer caught the 
 last sentence, and a frightened whisper ran along 
 the ranks. "The Truce! Remember the Truce !" 
 
 " Peace there, peace ! " gurgled Hathi, the wild 
 elephant. " The Truce holds, Bagheera. This 
 is no time to talk of hunting." 
 
 "Who should know better than I ? " Bagheera 
 answered, rolling his yellow eyes up-stream. " I 
 
io THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 am an eater of turtles — a fisher of frogs. Ngaa- 
 yah / Would I could get good from chewing 
 branches ! " 
 
 " We wish so, very greatly," bleated a young 
 fawn, who had only been born that spring, and 
 did not at all like it. Wretched as the Jungle 
 People were, even Hathi could not help chuck- 
 ling ; while Mowgli, lying on his elbows in the 
 warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the scum 
 with his feet. 
 
 "Well spoken, little bud-horn," Bagheera 
 purred. "When the Truce ends that shall be 
 remembered in thy favor," and he looked keenly 
 through the darkness to make sure of recognizing 
 the fawn again. 
 
 Gradually the talking spread up and down the 
 drinking-places. One could hear the scuffling, 
 snorting pig asking for more room ; the buffaloes 
 grunting among themselves as they lurched out 
 across the sand-bars, and the deer telling pitiful 
 stories of their long foot- sore wanderings in quest 
 of food. Now and again they asked some ques- 
 tion of the Eaters of Flesh across the river, but all 
 the news was bad, and the roaring hot wind 
 of the Jungle came and went between the rocks 
 and the rattling branches, and scattered twigs 
 and dust on the water. 
 
HOW FEAR CAME II 
 
 " The men-folk, too, they die beside their 
 plows," said a young sambhur. " I passed 
 three between sunset and night. They lay still, 
 and their bullocks with them. We also shall lie 
 still in a little." 
 
 "The river has fallen since last night," said 
 Baloo. " O Hathi, hast thou ever seen the like 
 of this drought ? " 
 
 " It will pass, it will pass," said Hathi, squirt- 
 ing water along his back and sides. 
 
 "We have one here that cannot endure long," 
 said Baloo ; and he looked toward the boy he 
 loved. 
 
 " I ? " said Mowgli indignantly, sitting up in 
 the water. " I have no long fur to cover my 
 bones, but — but if thy hide were taken off, 
 Baloo — " 
 
 Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo 
 said severely : 
 
 " Man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher 
 of the Law. Never have I been seen without 
 my hide." 
 
 " Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo ; but only that 
 thou art, as it were, like the cocoanut in the husk, 
 and I am the same cocoanut all naked. Now 
 that brown husk of thine — " Mowgli was sitting 
 cross-legged, and explaining things with his fore- 
 
12 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 finger in his usual way, when Bagheera put out a 
 paddy paw and pulled him over backward into 
 the water. 
 
 "Worse and worse," said the Black Panther, 
 as the boy rose spluttering. " First, Baloo is to 
 be skinned, and now he is a cocoanut. Be careful 
 that he does not do what the ripe cocoanuts do." 
 
 "And what is that ? " said Mowgli, off his guard 
 for the minute, though that is one of the oldest 
 catches in the Jungle. 
 
 " Break thy head," said Bagheera quietly, pull- 
 ing him under again. 
 
 "It is not good to make a jest of thy teacher," 
 said the bear, when Mowgli had been ducked 
 for the third time. 
 
 "Not good! What would ye have? That 
 naked thing running to and fro makes a monkey- 
 jest of those who have once been good hunters, 
 and pulls the best of us by the whisker for sport." 
 This was Shere Khan, the Lame Tiger, limping 
 down to the water. He waited a little to enjoy 
 the sensation he made among the deer on the 
 opposite bank; then he dropped his square, frilled 
 head and began to lap, growling : " The Jungle 
 has become a whelping-ground for naked cubs 
 now. Look at me, Man-cub ! " 
 
 Mowgli looked — stared, rather — as insolently 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 13 
 
 as he knew how, and in a minute Shere Khan 
 turned away uneasily. "Man-cub this, and Man- 
 cub that," he rumbled, going on with his drink, 
 "the cub is neither man nor cub, or he would 
 have been afraid. Next season I shall have to 
 beg his leave for a drink. Aurgh ! " 
 
 "That may come, too," said Bagheera, looking 
 him steadily between the eyes. " That may 
 come, too — Faugh, Shere Khan ! — what new 
 shame hast thou brought here ? " 
 
 The Lame Tiger had dipped his chin and jowl 
 in the water, and dark oily streaks were floating 
 from it down-stream. 
 
 " Man ! " said Shere Khan coolly, " I killed an 
 hour since." He went on purring and growling 
 to himself. 
 
 The line of beasts shook and wavered to and 
 fro, and a whisper went up that grew to a cry : 
 " Man ! Man ! He has killed Man ! " Then all 
 looked toward Hathi, the wild elephant, but he 
 seemed not to hear. Hathi never does anything 
 till the time comes, and that is one of the reasons 
 why he lives so long. 
 
 "At such a season as this to kill Man ! Was 
 no other game afoot ? " said Bagheera scorn- 
 fully, drawing himself out of the tainted water, 
 and shaking each paw, cat-fashion, as he did so. 
 
H THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " I killed for choice — not for food." The horri- 
 fied whisper began again, and Hathi's watchful 
 little white eye cocked itself in Shere Khan's 
 direction. " For choice," Shere Khan drawled. 
 " Now come I to drink and make me clean again. 
 Is there any to forbid ? " 
 
 Bagheera's back began to curve like a bamboo 
 in a high wind, but Hathi lifted up his trunk and 
 spoke quietly. 
 
 " Thy kill was from choice ? " he asked ; and 
 when Hathi asks a question it is best to answer. 
 
 " Even so. It was my right and my Night. 
 Thou knowest, O Hathi." Shere Khan spoke 
 almost courteously. 
 
 " Yes, I know," Hathi answered ; and, after a 
 little silence, " Hast thou drunk thy fill ? " 
 
 " For to-night, yes." 
 
 " Go, then. The river is to drink, and not to 
 defile. None but the Lame Tiger would so have 
 boasted of his right at this season when — when 
 we suffer together — Man and Jungle People 
 alike. Clean or unclean, get to thy lair, Shere 
 Khan ! " 
 
 The last words rang out like silver trumpets, 
 and Hathi's three sons rolled forward half a pace, 
 though there was no need. Shere Khan slunk 
 away, not daring to growl, for he knew — what 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 15 
 
 every one else knows — that when the last comes 
 to the last, Hathi is the Master of the Jungle. 
 
 " What is this right Shere Khan speaks of?" 
 Mowgli whispered in Bagheera's ear. "To kill 
 Man is always shameful. The Law says so. And 
 yet Hathi says — " 
 
 "Ask him. I do not know, Little Brother. 
 Right or no right, if Hathi had not spoken I 
 would have taught that lame butcher his lesson. 
 To come to the Peace Rock fresh from a kill of 
 Man — and to boast of it — is a jackal's trick. 
 Besides, he tainted the good water." 
 
 Mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his 
 courage, because no one cared to address Hathi 
 directly, and then he cried: "What is Shere 
 Khan's right, O Hathi ? " Both banks echoed his 
 words, for all the People of the Jungle are in- 
 tensely curious, and they had just seen some- 
 thing that none, except Baloo, who looked very 
 thoughtful, seemed to understand. 
 
 " It is an old tale," said Hathi; " a tale older 
 than the Jungle. Keep silence along the banks, 
 and I will tell that tale." 
 
 There was a minute or two of pushing and 
 shouldering among the pigs and the buffalo, and 
 then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after 
 another, "We wait," and Hathi strode forward 
 
16 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 till he was nearly knee-deep in the pool by the 
 Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and yellow- 
 tusked though he was, he looked what the Jungle 
 knew him to be — their master. 
 
 "Ye know, children," he began, "that of all 
 things ye most fear Man "; and there was a mut- 
 ter of agreement. 
 
 "This tale touches thee, Little Brother," said 
 Bagheera to Mowgli. 
 
 " I ? I am of the Pack — a hunter of the Free 
 People," Mowgli answered. "What have I to do 
 with Man ? " 
 
 "And ye do not know why ye fear Man?" 
 Hathi went on. " This is the reason. In the 
 beginning of the Jungle, and none know when 
 that was, we of the Jungle walked together, hav- 
 ing no fear of one another. In those days there 
 was no drought, and leaves and flowers and fruit 
 grew on the same tree, and we ate nothing at all 
 except leaves and flowers and grass and fruit and 
 bark." 
 
 " I am glad I was not born in those days," 
 said Bagheera. " Bark is only good to sharpen 
 claws." 
 
 " And the Lord of the Jungle was Tha, the 
 First of the Elephants. He drew the Jungle out 
 of deep waters with his trunk ; and where he 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 17 
 
 made furrows in the ground with his tusks, there 
 the rivers ran ; and where he struck with his foot, 
 there rose ponds of good water ; and when he 
 blew through his trunk, — thus, — the trees fell. 
 That was the manner in which the Jungle was 
 made by Tha; and so the tale was told to me." 
 
 "It has not lost fat in the telling," Bagheera 
 whispered, and Mowgli laughed behind his hand. 
 
 "In those days there was no corn or melons or 
 pepper or sugar-cane, nor were there any little 
 huts such as ye have all seen ; and the Jungle 
 People knew nothing of Man, but lived in the 
 Jungle together, making one people. But pres- 
 ently they began to dispute over their food, 
 though there was grazing enough for all. They 
 were lazy. Each wished to eat where he lay down, 
 as sometimes we can do now when the spring 
 rains are good. Tha, the First of the Elephants, 
 was busy making new jungles and leading the 
 rivers in their beds. He could not walk in all 
 places: therefore he made the First of the 
 Tigers the master and the judge of the Jungle, to 
 whom the Jungle People should bring their dis- 
 putes. In those days the First of the Tigers ate 
 fruit and grass with the others. He was as large 
 as I am, and he was very beautiful, in color all over 
 like the blossom of the yellow creeper. There was 
 
18 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 never stripe nor bar upon his hide in those good 
 days when this the Jungle was new. All the 
 Jungle People came before him without fear, and 
 his word was the Law of all the Jungle. We 
 were then, remember ye, one people. 
 
 " Yet upon a night there was a dispute between 
 two bucks — a grazing-quarrel such as ye now 
 settle with the horns and the fore feet — and it is 
 said that as the two spoke together before the 
 First of the Tigers lying among the flowers, a 
 buck pushed him with his horns, and the First of 
 the Tigers forgot that he was the master and 
 judge of the Jungle, and, leaping upon that buck, 
 broke his neck. 
 
 "Till that night never one of us had died, and 
 the First of the Tigers, seeing what he had done, 
 and being made foolish by the scent of the blood, 
 ran away into the marshes of the North, and we 
 of the Jungle, left without a judge, fell to fighting 
 among ourselves ; and Tha heard the noise of it 
 and came back. Then some of us said this and 
 some of us said that, but he saw the dead buck 
 among the flowers, and asked who had killed, 
 and we of the Jungle would not tell because the 
 smell of the blood made us foolish. We ran to 
 and fro in circles, capering and crying out and 
 shaking our heads. Then Tha gave an order to 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 19 
 
 the trees that hang low, and to the trailing creep- 
 ers of the Jungle, that they should mark the 
 killer of the buck so that he should know him 
 again, and he said, ' Who will now be master of 
 the Jungle People?' Then up leaped the Gray 
 Ape who lives in the branches, and said, ' I will 
 now be master of the Jungle.' At this Tha 
 laughed, and said, 'So be it,' and went away 
 very angry. 
 
 " Children, ye know the Gray Ape. He was 
 then as he is now. At the first he made a wise 
 face for himself, but in a little while he began to 
 scratch and to leap up and down, and when Tha 
 came back he found the Gray Ape hanging, head 
 down, from a bough, mocking those who stood 
 below ; and they mocked him again. And so 
 there was no Law in the Jungle — only foolish 
 talk and senseless words. 
 
 "Then Tha called us all together and said: 
 ' The first of your masters has brought Death 
 into the Jungle, and the second Shame. Now it 
 is time there was a Law, and a Law that ye must 
 not break. Now ye shall know Fear, and when 
 ye have found him ye shall know that he is your 
 master, and the rest shall follow.' Then we of 
 the Jungle said, 'What is Fear?' And Tha 
 said, ' Seek till ye find.' So we went up and 
 
20 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 down the Jungle seeking for Fear, and presently 
 the buffaloes — " 
 
 " Ugh ! " said Mysa, the leader of the buffaloes, 
 from their sand-bank. 
 
 " Yes, Mysa, it was the buffaloes. They came 
 back with the news that in a cave in the Jungle 
 sat Fear, and that he had no hair, and went upon 
 his hind legs. Then we of the Jungle followed 
 the herd till we came to that cave, and Fear 
 stood at the mouth of it, and he was, as the buf- 
 faloes had said, hairless, and he walked upon his 
 hinder legs. When he saw us he cried out, and 
 his voice filled us with the fear that we have now 
 of that voice when we hear it, and we ran away, 
 tramping upon and tearing each other because we 
 were afraid. That night, so it was told to me, we 
 of the Jungle did not lie down together as used 
 to be our custom, but each tribe drew off by 
 itself — the pig with the pig, the deer with the 
 deer; horn to horn, hoof to hoof, — like keeping to 
 like, and so lay shaking in the Jungle. 
 
 " Only the First of the Tigers was not with us, 
 for he was still hidden in the marshes of the North, 
 and when word was brought to him of the Thing 
 we had seen in the cave, he said : ' I will go to 
 this Tiling and break his neck.' So he ran all the 
 night till he came to the cave; but the trees and 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 21 
 
 the creepers on his path, remembering the order 
 that Tha had given, let down their branches and 
 marked him as he ran, drawing their fingers 
 across his back, his flank, his forehead, and his 
 jowl. Wherever they touched him there was a 
 mark and a stripe upon his yellow hide. And 
 those stripes do his children zvear to this day ! 
 When he came to the cave, Fear, the Hairless 
 One, put out his hand and called him ' The 
 Striped One that comes by night,' and the First 
 of the Tigers was afraid of the Hairless One, and 
 ran back to the swamps howling." 
 
 Mowgli chuckled quietly here, his chin in the 
 water. 
 
 " So loud did he howl that Tha heard him and 
 said, ' What is the sorrow ? ' And the First of 
 the Tigers, lifting up his muzzle to the new-made 
 sky, which is now so old, said: 'Give me back 
 my power, O Tha. I am made ashamed before 
 all the Jungle, and I have run away from a 
 Hairless One, and he has called me a shameful 
 name.' ' And why ? ' said Tha. ' Because I am 
 smeared with the mud of the marshes,' said the 
 First of the Tigers. ' Swim, then, and roll on the 
 wet grass, and if it be mud it will wash away,' 
 said Tha ; and the First of the Tigers swam, and 
 rolled and rolled upon the grass, till the Jungle ran 
 
22 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 round and round before his eyes, but not one little 
 bar upon all his hide was changed, and Tha, watch- 
 ing him, laughed. Then the First of the Tigers 
 said, ' What have I done that this comes to me ? ' 
 Tha said, ' Thou hast killed the buck, and thou 
 hast let Death loose in the Jungle, and with Death 
 has come Fear, so that the people of the Jungle 
 are afraid one of the other, as thou art afraid of 
 the Hairless One.' The First of the Tigers said, 
 ' They will never fear me, for I knew them since 
 the beginning.' Tha said, ' Go and see.' And 
 the First of the Tigers ran to and fro, calling 
 aloud to the deer and the pig and the sambhur 
 and the porcupine and all the Jungle Peoples, 
 and they all ran away from him who had been 
 their judge, because they were afraid. 
 
 "Then the First of the Timers came back, and 
 his pride was broken in him, and, beating his head 
 upon the ground, he tore up the earth with all his 
 feet and said : ' Remember that I was once the 
 Master of the Jungle. Do not forget me, O Tha! 
 Let my children remember that I was once with- 
 out shame or fear ! ' And Tha said : ' This much 
 I will do, because thou and I together saw the 
 Jungle made. For one night in each year it shall 
 be as it was before the buck was killed — for thee 
 and for thy children. In that one night, if ye 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 23 
 
 meet the Hairless One — and his name is Man — 
 ye shall not be afraid of him, but he shall be 
 afraid of you, as though ye were judges of the 
 Jungle and masters of all things. Show him 
 mercy in that night of his fear, for thou hast 
 known what Fear is.' 
 
 "Then the First of the Tigers answered, 'I 
 am content ' ; but when next he drank he saw the 
 black stripes upon his flank and his side, and he 
 remembered the name that the Hairless One had 
 given him, and he was angry. For a year he 
 lived in the marshes, waiting till Tha should keep 
 his promise. And upon a night when the Jackal 
 of the Moon [the Evening Star] stood clear of 
 the Jungle, he felt that his Night was upon 
 him, and he went to that cave to meet the Hair- 
 less One. Then it happened as Tha promised, 
 for the Hairless One fell down before him and lay 
 along the ground, and the First of the Tigers 
 struck him and broke his back, for he thought 
 that there was but one such Thing in the 
 Jungle, and that he had killed Fear. Then, nos- 
 ing" above the kill, he heard Tha coming down 
 from the woods of the North, and presently the 
 voice of the First of the Elephants, which is the 
 voice that we hear now — " 
 
 The thunder was rolling up and down the dry, 
 
24 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 scarred hills, but it brought no rain — only heat- 
 lightning that flickered along the ridges — and 
 Hathi went on: "That was the voice he heard, 
 and it said: 'Is this thy mercy?' The First 
 of the Tigers licked his lips and said : ' What 
 matter ? I have killed Fear.' And Tha said : 
 ' O blind and foolish ! Thou hast untied the feet 
 of Death, and he will follow thy trail till thou 
 diest. Thou hast taught Man to kill ! ' 
 
 " The First of the Tigers, standing stiffly to 
 his kill, said : ' He is as the buck was. There is 
 no Fear. Now I will judge the Jungle Peoples 
 once more." 
 
 " And Tha said : ' Never again shall the Jungle 
 Peoples come to thee. They shall never cross thy 
 trail, nor sleep near thee, nor follow after thee, nor 
 browse by thy lair. Only Fear shall follow thee, 
 and with a blow that thou canst not see he shall 
 bid thee wait his pleasure. He shall make the 
 ground to open under thy feet, and the creeper 
 to twist about thy neck, and the tree-trunks to 
 grow together about thee higfher than thou canst 
 leap, and at the last he shall take thy hide to 
 wrap his cubs when they are cold. Thou hast 
 shown him no mercy, and none will he show thee.' 
 
 "The First of the Tigers was very bold, for 
 his Night was still on him, and he said : ' The 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 25 
 
 Promise of Tha is the Promise of Tha. He will 
 not take away my Night ? ' And Tha said : ' The 
 one Night is thine, as I have said, but there is a 
 price to pay. Thou hast taught Man to kill, and 
 he is no slow learner.' 
 
 "The First of the Tigers said: 'He is here 
 under my foot, and his back is broken. Let the 
 Jungle know I have killed Fear.' 
 
 "Then Tha laughed, and said: 'Thou hast 
 killed one of many, but thou thyself shalt tell the 
 Jungle — for thy Night is ended.' 
 
 " So the day came ; and from the mouth of the 
 cave went out another Hairless One, and he saw 
 the kill in the path, and the First of the Tigers 
 above it, and he took a pointed stick — " 
 
 " They throw a thing that cuts now," said Ikki, 
 rustling down the bank ; for Ikki was considered 
 uncommonly good eating by the Gonds — they 
 called him Ho-Igoo — and he knew something of 
 the wicked little Gondee axe that whirls across a 
 clearing like a dragon-fly. 
 
 " It was a pointed stick, such as they put in 
 the foot of a pit-trap," said Hathi, " and throwing 
 it, he struck the First of the Tigers deep in the 
 flank. Thus it happened as Tha said, for the 
 First of the Tigers ran howling up and down the 
 Jungle till he tore out the stick, and all the Jungle 
 
26 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 knew that the Hairless One could strike from far 
 off, and they feared more than before. So it came 
 about that the First of the Tigers taught the Hair- 
 less One to kill — and ye know what harm that 
 has since done to all our peoples — through the 
 noose, and the pitfall, and the hidden trap, and 
 the flying stick, and the stinging fly that comes 
 out of white smoke [Hathi meant the rifle], and 
 the Red Flower that drives us into the open. 
 Yet for one night in the year the Hairless One 
 fears the Tiger, as Tha promised, and never has 
 the Tiger given him cause to be less afraid. 
 Where he finds him, there he kills him, remem- 
 bering how the First of the Timers was made 
 ashamed. For the rest, Fear walks up and down 
 the Jungle by day and by night." 
 
 "A hi/ Aoo/" said the deer, thinking of what 
 it all meant to them. » 
 
 "And only when there is one great Fear over 
 all, as there is now, can we of the Jungle lay 
 aside our little fears, and meet together in one 
 place as we do now." 
 
 " For one night only does Man fear the Tiger ?" 
 said Mowgli. 
 
 " For one night only," said Hathi. 
 
 "But I — but we — but all the Jungle knows 
 that Shere Khan kills Man twice and thrice in a 
 moon." 
 
HOW FEAR CAME 27 
 
 " Even so. Then he springs from behind and 
 turns his head aside as he strikes, for he is full 
 of fear. If Man looked at him he would run. But 
 on his one Night he goes openly down to the vil- 
 lage. He walks between the houses and thrusts 
 his head into the doorway, and the men fall on 
 their faces and there he does his kill. One kill 
 in that Night." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mowgli to himself, rolling over in 
 the water. "Now I see why it was Shere Khan 
 bade me look at him ! He got no good of it, 
 for he could not hold his eyes steady, and — 
 and I certainly did not fall down at his feet. 
 But then I am not a man, being of the Free 
 People." 
 
 " Umm ! " said Bagheera deep in his furry 
 throat. "Does the Tiger know his Night?" 
 
 " Never till the Jackal of the Moon stands clear 
 of the evening mist. Sometimes it falls in the 
 dry summer and sometimes in the wet rains — 
 this one Night of the Tiger. But for the First of 
 the Tigers, this would never have been, nor would 
 any of us have known fear." 
 
 The deer grunted sorrowfully, and Bagheera's 
 lips curled in a wicked smile. " Do men know 
 this — tale ? " said he. 
 
 " None know it except the tigers, and we, the 
 
28 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 elephants — the children of Tha. Now ye by the 
 pools have heard it, and I have spoken." 
 
 Hathi dipped his trunk into the water as a sign 
 that he did not wish to talk. 
 
 "But — but — but," said Mowgli, turning to 
 Baloo, " why did not the First of the Tigers con- 
 tinue to eat crass and leaves and trees? He did 
 but break the buck's neck. He did not eat. What 
 led him to the hot meat ? " 
 
 " The trees and the creepers marked him, Lit- 
 tle Brother, and made him the striped thing that 
 we see. Never again would he eat their fruit ; 
 but from that day he revenged himself upon the 
 deer, and the others, the Eaters of Grass," said 
 Baloo. 
 
 "Then thou knowest the tale. Heh ? Why 
 have I never heard?" 
 
 " Because the Jungle is full of such tales. If I 
 made a beginning there would never be an end 
 to them. Let go my ear, Little Brother." 
 
THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE 
 
 J UST to give you an idea of the im- 
 mense variety of the Jungle Law, I 
 have translated into verse (Baloo 
 always recited them in a sort of 
 sing-song) a few of the laws that 
 apply to the wolves. There are, of 
 course, hundreds and hundreds 
 more, but these will do for speci- 
 mens of the simpler rulings. 
 
 Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true 
 as the sky ; 
 
 And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the 
 Wolf that shall break it must die. 
 
 As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law run- 
 neth forzvard and back — 
 
 For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength 
 
 of the Wolf is the Pack. 
 
 29 
 
30 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip ; drink deeply, but 
 
 never too deep ; 
 And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not 
 
 the day is for sleep. 
 
 The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy 
 
 whiskers are grown, 
 Remember the Wolf is a hunter — go forth and get food 
 
 of thine own. 
 
 Keep peace with the Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, 
 
 the Panther, the Bear; 
 And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the 
 
 Boar in his lair. 
 
 When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither 
 
 will go from the trail, 
 Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair 
 
 words shall prevail. 
 
 When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight 
 
 him alone and afar, 
 Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be 
 
 diminished by war. 
 
 The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has 
 
 made him his home, 
 Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the 
 
 Council may come. 
 
 The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has 
 digged it too plain, 
 
THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE 31 
 
 The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall 
 change it again. 
 
 If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the 
 
 woods with your bay, 
 Lest ye frighten the deer from the crops, and the 
 
 brothers go empty away. 
 
 Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your 
 
 cubs as they need, and ye can ; 
 But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never 
 
 kill Man. 
 
 If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in 
 
 thy pride ; 
 Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him 
 
 the head and the hide. 
 
 The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must 
 
 eat where it lies ; 
 And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or 
 
 he dies. 
 
 The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may 
 
 do what he will, 
 But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat 
 
 of that Kill. 
 
 Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of 
 
 his Pack he may claim 
 Full-gorge when the killer has eaten ; and none may 
 
 refuse him the same. 
 
32 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her 
 
 year she may claim 
 One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may 
 
 deny her the same. 
 
 Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by 
 himself for his own : 
 
 i. 
 
 He is freed of all calls to the Pack ; he is judged by the 
 Council alone. 
 
 Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe 
 
 and his paw, 
 In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of the Head 
 
 Wolf is Law. 
 
 Now these are the Lazvs of the Jungle, and many and 
 
 mighty are they ; 
 But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch 
 
 and the hump is — Obey ! 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 
 
The night we felt the earth would move 
 We stole and plucked him by the hand, 
 
 Because we loved him with the love 
 That knows but cannot understand. 
 
 And when the roaring hillside broke, 
 
 And all our world fell down in rain, 
 We saved him, we the Little Folk ; 
 
 But lo ! he does not come again ! 
 
 Mourn now, we saved him for the sake 
 
 Of such poor love as wild ones may. 
 Mourn ye ! Our brother will not wake, 
 
 And his own kind drive us away ! 
 
 Dirge of the Langurs. 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 
 
 HERE was once a man in 
 India who was Prime Min- 
 ister of one of the semi-in- 
 dependent native States in 
 the northwestern part of the 
 country. He was a Brah- 
 min, so high-caste that caste 
 ceased to have any particu- 
 lar meaning for him ; and 
 his father had been an im- 
 portant official in the gay-colored tag-rag and 
 bobtail of an old-fashioned Hindu Court. But 
 as Purun Dass grew up he felt that the old order 
 of things was changing, and that if any one 
 wished to get on in the world he must stand 
 
36 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 well with the English, and imitate all that the 
 English believed to be good. At the same time 
 a native official must keep his own master's 
 favor. This was a difficult game, but the quiet, 
 close-mouthed young Brahmin, helped by a 
 good English education at a Bombay Univer- 
 sity", played it coolly, and rose, step by step, to 
 be Prime Minister of the kingdom. That is to 
 say, he held more real power than his master, 
 the Maharajah. 
 
 When the old king — who was suspicious of 
 the English, their railways and telegraphs — died, 
 Purun Dass stood high with his young successor, 
 who had been tutored by an Englishman ; and 
 between them, though he always took care that 
 his master should have the credit, they established 
 schools for little girls, made roads, and started 
 State dispensaries and shows of agricultural im- 
 plements, and published a yearly blue-book on 
 the " Moral and Material Progress of the State," 
 and the Foreign Office and the Government of 
 India were delighted. Very few native States 
 take up English progress altogether, for they 
 will not believe, as Purun Dass showed he did, 
 that what was good for the Englishman must 
 be twice as good f or j- ne Asiatic. The Prime 
 Minister became the honored friend of Viceroys 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 37 
 
 and Governors, and Lieutenant-Governors, and 
 medical missionaries, and common missionaries, 
 and hard-riding English officers who came to 
 shoot in the State preserves, as well as of whole 
 hosts of tourists who traveled up and down India 
 in the cold weather, showing how things ought 
 to be managed. In his spare time he would en- 
 dow scholarships for the study of medicine and 
 manufactures on strictly English lines, and write 
 letters to the " Pioneer," the greatest Indian daily 
 paper, explaining his master's aims and objects. 
 
 At last he went to England on a visit, and had 
 to pay enormous sums to the priests when he 
 came back ; for even so high-caste a Brahmin as 
 Purun Dass lost caste by crossing the black sea. 
 In London he met and talked with every one 
 worth knowing — men whose names go all over 
 the world — and saw a great deal more than he 
 said. He was given honorary degrees by learned 
 universities, and he made speeches and talked of 
 Hindu social reform to English ladies in evening 
 dress, till all London cried, "This is the most 
 fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since 
 cloths were first laid." 
 
 When he returned to India there was a blaze 
 of glory, for the Viceroy himself made a special 
 visit to confer upon the Maharajah the Grand 
 
38 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Cross of the Star of India — all diamonds and 
 ribbons and enamel; and at the same ceremony, 
 while the cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made 
 a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian 
 Empire ; so that his name stood Sir Purun Dass, 
 K. C. I. E. 
 
 That evening, at dinner in the big Viceregal 
 tent, he stood up with the badge and the collar 
 of the Order on his breast, and replying to the 
 toast of his master's health, made a speech few 
 Englishmen could have bettered. 
 
 Next month, when the city had returned to its 
 sunbaked quiet, he did a thing no Englishman 
 would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the 
 world's affairs went, he died. The jeweled order 
 of his knighthood went back to the Indian Gov- 
 eminent, and a new Prime Minister was appointed 
 to the charge of affairs, and a great game of Gen- 
 eral Post began in all the subordinate appoint- 
 ments. The priests knew what had happened 
 and the people guessed ; but India is the one 
 place in the world where a man can do as he 
 pleases and nobody asks why ; and the fact that 
 Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., had resigned 
 position, palace, and power, and taken up the 
 begging-bowl and ocher-colored dress of a Sun- 
 nyasi or holy man, was considered nothing extra- 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 39 
 
 ordinary. He had been, as die Old Law recom- 
 mends, twenty years a youth, twenty years a 
 fighter, — though he had never carried a weapon 
 in his life, — and twenty years head of a house- 
 hold. He had used his wealth and his power for 
 what he knew both to be worth ; he had taken 
 honor when it came his way ; he had seen men 
 and cities far and near, and men and cities had 
 stood up and honored him. Now he would let 
 these things go, as a man drops the cloak he no 
 longer needs. 
 
 Behind him, as he walked through the city 
 gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch 
 under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished 
 brown coco-de-merm his hand, barefoot, alone, with 
 eyes cast on the ground — behind him they were 
 firinor salutes from the bastions in honor of his 
 happy successor. Purun Dass nodded. All that 
 life was ended; and he bore it no more ill-will or 
 eood-will than a man bears to a colorless dream 
 of the night. He was a Sunnyasi — a houseless 
 wandering mendicant, depending on his neigh- 
 bors for his daily bread ; and so long as there is a 
 morsel to divide in India neither priest nor beggar 
 starves. He had never in his life tasted meat, 
 and very seldom eaten even fish. A five-pound 
 note would have covered his personal expenses 
 
40 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 for food through any one of the many years in 
 which he had been absolute master of millions 
 of money. Even when he was being lionized 
 in London he had held before him his dream 
 of peace and quiet — the long, white, dusty Indian 
 road, printed all over with bare feet, the incessant, 
 slow-moving traffic, and the sharp-smelling wood 
 smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twi- 
 light, where the wayfarers sit at their evening 
 meal. 
 
 When the time came to make that dream true 
 the Prime Minister took the proper steps, and in 
 three days you might more easily have found a 
 bubble in the trough of the long Atlantic seas than 
 Purun Dass among the roving, gathering, sepa- 
 rating millions of India. 
 
 At night his antelope skin was spread where 
 the darkness overtook him — sometimes in a Sun- 
 nyasi monastery by the roadside ; sometimes by 
 a mud pillar shrine of Kala Pir, where the Jogis, 
 who are another misty division of holy men, would 
 receive him as they do those who know what castes 
 and divisions are worth ; sometimes on the out- 
 skirts of a little Hindu village, where the children 
 would steal up with the food their parents had 
 prepared ; and sometimes on the pitch of the bare 
 grazing-grounds, where the flame of his stick fire 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 41 
 
 waked the drowsy camels. It was all one to Pu- 
 run Dass — or Purun Bhagat, as he called him- 
 self now. Earth, people, and food were all one. 
 But unconsciously his feet drew him away north- 
 ward and eastward ; from the south to Rohtak ; 
 from Rohtak to Kurnool ; from Kurnool to ruined 
 Samanah, and then up-stream along the dried bed 
 of the Gugger river that fills only when the rain 
 falls in the hills, till one day he saw the far line 
 of the great Himalayas. 
 
 Then Purun Bhagat smiled, for he remem- 
 bered that his mother was of Rajput Brahmin birth, 
 from Kulu way — a Hill-woman, always home- 
 sick for the snows — and that the least touch of 
 Hill blood draws a man at the end back to where 
 he belongs. 
 
 " Yonder," said Purun Bhagat, breasting the 
 lower slopes of the Sewaliks, where the cacti stand 
 up like seven-branched candlesticks — "yonder I 
 shall sit down and get knowledge " ; and the cool 
 wind of the Himalayas whistled about his ears as 
 he trod the road that led to Simla. 
 
 The last time he had come that way it had 
 been in state, with a clattering cavalry escort, to 
 visit the gentlest and most affable of Viceroys ; 
 and the two had talked for an hour together 
 about mutual friends in London, and what the In- 
 
42 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 dian common folk 
 really thought of 
 things. This time 
 Purun Bhagat paid 
 no calls, but leaned 
 on the rail of the 
 Mall, watching that 
 glorious view of the 
 Plains spread out 
 forty miles below, till 
 a native Mohamme- 
 dan policeman told 
 him he was obstruct- 
 ing traffic ; and Pu- 
 run Bhagat salaamed 
 reverently to the Law, 
 because he knew the 
 value of it, and was 
 seeking for a Law of 
 his own. Then he 
 moved on, and slept 
 that night in an empty 
 hut at Chota Simla, 
 which looks like the very last end of the earth, 
 but it was only the beginning of his journey. 
 
 He followed the Himalaya-Thibet road, the 
 little ten-foot track that is blasted out of solid 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 43 
 
 rock, or strutted out on timbers over gulfs a 
 thousand feet deep ; that dips into warm, wet, 
 shut-in valleys, and climbs out across bare, grassy 
 hill-shoulders where the sun strikes like a burn- 
 ing-glass ; or turns through dripping, dark for- 
 ests where the tree-ferns dress the trunks from 
 head to heel, and the pheasant calls to his mate. 
 And he met Thibetan herdsmen with their dogs 
 and flocks of sheep, each sheep with a little bag 
 of borax on his back, and wandering wood-cut- 
 ters, and cloaked and blanketed Lamas from 
 Thibet, coming into India on pilgrimage, and en- 
 voys of little solitary Hill-states, posting furiously 
 on ring-streaked and piebald ponies, or the caval- 
 cade of a Rajah paying a visit ; or else for a long, 
 clear day he would see nothing more than a black 
 bear grunting and rooting below in the valley. 
 When he first started, the roar of the world he 
 had left still rang in his ears, as the roar of a 
 tunnel rings long after the train has passed 
 through ; but when he had put the M utteeanee 
 Pass behind him that was all done, and Purun 
 Bhagat was alone with himself, walking, wonder- 
 ing, and thinking, his eyes on the ground, and his 
 thoughts with the clouds. 
 
 One evening he crossed the highest pass he 
 had met till then — it had been a two days' climb 
 
44 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 — and came out on a line of snow-peaks that 
 banded all the horizon — mountains from fifteen to 
 twenty thousand feet high, looking almost near 
 enough to hit with a stone, though they were 
 fifty or sixty miles away. The pass was crowned 
 with dense, dark forest — deodar, walnut, wild 
 cherry, wild olive, and wild pear, but mostly deo- 
 dar, which is the Himalayan cedar; and under 
 the shadow of the deodars stood a deserted shrine 
 to Kali — who is Durga, who is Sitala, who is 
 sometimes worshiped against the smallpox. 
 
 Purun Dass swept the stone floor clean, smiled 
 at the grinning statue, made himself a little mud 
 fireplace at the back of the shrine, spread his an- 
 telope skin on a bed of fresh pine-needles, tucked 
 his bairagi — his brass-handled crutch — under 
 his armpit, and sat down to rest. 
 
 Immediately below him the hillside fell away, 
 clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, where 
 a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs 
 of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. All round 
 it the tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of 
 patchwork on the knees of the mountain, and 
 cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the 
 smooth stone circles of the threshing-floors. Look- 
 ing across the valley, the eye was deceived by the 
 size of things, and could not at first realize that 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 45 
 
 what seemed to be low scrub, on the opposite 
 mountain-flank, was in truth a forest of hundred- 
 foot pines. Purun Bhagat saw an eagle swoop 
 across the gigantic hollow, but the great bird 
 dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. A 
 few bands of scattered clouds strung up and down 
 the valley, catching on a shoulder of the hills, or 
 rising up and dying out when they were level with 
 the head of the pass. And " Here shall I find 
 peace," said Purun Bhagat. 
 
 Now, a Hill-man makes nothing of a few hun- 
 dred feet up or down, and as soon as the villagers 
 saw the smoke in the deserted shrine, the village 
 priest climbed up the terraced hillside to welcome 
 the stranger. 
 
 When he met Purun Bhagat' s eyes — the eyes 
 of a man used to control thousands — he bowed 
 to the earth, took the begging-bowl without a 
 word, and returned to the village, saying, " We 
 have at last a holy man. Never have I seen such 
 a man. He is of the Plains — but pale-colored 
 — a Brahmin of the Brahmins." Then all the 
 housewives of the village said, "Think you he 
 will stay with us ? " and each did her best to cook 
 the most savory meal for the Bhagat. Hill-food 
 is very simple, but with buckwheat and Indian 
 corn, and rice and red pepper, and little fish out 
 
46 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 of the stream in the valley, and honey from the 
 flue-like hives built in the stone walls, and dried 
 apricots, and turmeric, and wild ginger, and ban- 
 nocks of flour, a devout woman can make good 
 things, and it was a full bowl that the priest car- 
 ried to the Bhagat. Was he going to stay ? 
 asked the priest. Would he need a chela — a 
 disciple — to beg for him ? Had he a blanket 
 against the cold weather ? Was the food eood ? 
 
 Purun Bhagat ate, and thanked the giver. It 
 was in his mind to stay. That was sufficient, 
 said the priest. Let the begging-bowl be placed 
 outside the shrine, in the hollow made by those 
 two twisted roots, and daily should the Bhagat 
 be fed ; for the village felt honored that such a 
 man — he looked timidly into the Bhagat's face 
 — should tarry among them. 
 
 That day saw the end of Purun Bhagat's wan- 
 derings. He had come to the place appointed 
 for him — the silence and the space. After this, 
 time stopped, and he, sitting at the mouth of the 
 shrine, could not tell whether he were alive or 
 dead ; a man with control of his limbs, or a part 
 of the hills, and the clouds, and the shifting rain 
 and sunlight. He would repeat a Name softly to 
 himself a hundred hundred times, till, at each re- 
 petition, he seemed to move more and more out 
 of his body, sweeping up to the doors of some 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 47 
 
 tremendous discovery ; but, just as the door was 
 opening, his body would drag him back, and, with 
 grief, he felt he was locked up again in the flesh 
 and bones of Purun Bhagat. 
 
 Every morning the filled begging-bowl was 
 laid silently in the crutch of the roots outside the 
 shrine. Sometimes the priest brought it ; some- 
 times a Ladakhi trader, lodging in the village, 
 and anxious to get merit, trudged up the path ; 
 but, more often, it was the woman who had cooked 
 the meal overnight; and she would murmur, 
 hardly above her breath: "Speak for me before 
 the gods, Bhagat. Speak for such a one, the 
 wife of so-and-so ! " Now and then some bold 
 child would be allowed the honor, and Purun 
 Bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as 
 fast as his little legs could carry him, but the Bha- 
 gat never came down to the village. It was laid 
 out like a map at his feet. He could see the even- 
 ing gatherings, held on the circle of the threshing- 
 floors because that was the only level ground ; 
 could see the wonderful unnamed green of the 
 young rice, the indigo blues of the Indian corn, 
 the dock-like patches of buckwheat, and, in its 
 season, the red bloom of the amaranth, whose 
 tiny seeds, being neither grain nor pulse, make a 
 food that can be lawfully eaten by Hindus in time 
 of fasts. 
 
THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 
 When the year turned, the roofs of the huts 
 were all little squares of purest gold, for it 
 
 was on the roofs that 
 they laid out their cobs 
 of the corn to dry. Hiv- 
 ing and harvest, rice- 
 sowing and husking, 
 passed before his eyes, 
 all embroidered down 
 there on the many- 
 sided plots of fields, and 
 he thought of them all, 
 and wondered what 
 they all led to at the 
 long last. 
 
 Even in populated 
 
 India a man cannot 
 
 a day sit still before 
 
 things run 
 
 over him 
 
 as though 
 
 he were a 
 
 rock ; and 
 
 in that 
 
 wilderness 
 
 very soon 
 
 the wild 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 49 
 
 things, who knew Kali's Shrine well, came back 
 to look at the intruder. The langurs, the big 
 gray- whiskered monkeys of the Himalayas, were, 
 naturally, the first, for they are alive with cu- 
 riosity ; and when they had upset the begging- 
 bowl, and rolled it round the floor, and tried 
 their teeth on the brass-handled crutch, and 
 made faces at the antelope skin, they decided 
 that the human being who sat so still was harm- 
 less. At evening, they would leap down from the 
 pines, and beg with their hands for things to eat, 
 and then swing off in graceful curves. They 
 liked the warmth of the fire, too, and huddled 
 round it till Purun Bhagat had to push them 
 aside to throw on more fuel; and in the morn- 
 ing, as often as not, he would find a furry ape 
 sharing his blanket. All day long, one or other 
 of the tribe would sit by his side, staring out at 
 the snows, crooning and looking unspeakably 
 wise and sorrowful. 
 
 After the monkeys came the barasingh, that 
 big deer which is like our red deer, but stronger. 
 He wished to rub off the velvet of his horns 
 against the cold stones of Kali's statue, and 
 stamped his feet when he saw the man at the 
 shrine. But Purun Bhagat never moved, and, 
 little by little, the royal stag edged up and nuz- 
 
50 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 zled his shoulder. Purun Bhagat slid one cool 
 hand along the hot antlers, and the touch soothed 
 the fretted beast, who bowed his head, and Purun 
 Bhagat very softly rubbed and raveled off the 
 velvet. Afterward, the barasingh brought his 
 doe and fawn — gentle things that mumbled on 
 the holy man's blanket — or would come alone at 
 night, his eyes green in the fire-flicker, to take 
 his share of fresh walnuts. At last, the musk- 
 deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the 
 deerlets, came, too, her big rabbity ears erect ; 
 even brindled, silent mushick-nabha must needs 
 find out what the light in the shrine meant, and 
 drop her moose-like nose into Purun Bhagat's 
 lap, coming and going with the shadows of the 
 fire. Purun Bhagat called them all "my bro- 
 thers," and his low call of " Bhai / Bhai! " would 
 draw them from the forest at noon if they were 
 within earshot. The Himalayan black bear, 
 moody and suspicious — Sona, who has the V- 
 shaped white mark under his chin — passed that 
 way more than once ; and since the Bhagat showed 
 no fear, Sona showed no anger, but watched him, 
 and came closer, and begged a share of the ca- 
 resses, and a dole of bread or wild berries. Often, 
 in the still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb 
 to the very crest of the pass to watch the red 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 51 
 
 day walking along the peaks of the snows, he 
 would find Sona shuffling and grunting at his 
 heels, thrusting a curious fore-paw under fallen 
 trunks, and bringing it away with a whoof of im- 
 patience ; or his early steps would wake Sona 
 where he lay curled up, and the great brute, ris- 
 ing erect, would think to fight, till he heard the 
 Bhagat's voice and knew his best friend. 
 
 Nearly all hermits and holy men who live apart 
 from the big cities have the reputation of being 
 able to work miracles with the wild things, but 
 all the miracle lies in keeping still, in never mak- 
 ing a hasty movement, and, for a long time, at 
 least, in never looking directly at a visitor. The 
 villagers saw the outline of the barasingh stalk- 
 ing like a shadow through the dark forest behind 
 the shrine; saw the minaul, the Himalayan phea- 
 sant, blazing in her best colors before Kali's sta- 
 tue ; and the langurs on their haunches, inside, 
 playing with the walnut shells. Some of the chil- 
 dren, too, had heard Sona singing to himself, bear- 
 fashion, behind the fallen rocks, and the Bhagat's 
 reputation as miracle-worker stood firm. 
 
 Yet nothing was further from his mind than 
 miracles. He believed that all things were one 
 big Miracle, and when a man knows that much 
 he knows something to go upon. He knew for a 
 
52 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 certainty that there was nothing" great and noth- 
 ing little in this world ; and day and night he 
 strove to think out his way into the heart of 
 things, back to the place whence his soul had 
 come. 
 
 So thinking, his untrimmed hair fell down about 
 his shoulders, the stone slab at the side of the an- 
 telope skin was dented into a little hole by the 
 foot of his brass-handled crutch, and the place be- 
 tween the tree-trunks, where the be^o-incf-bowl 
 rested day after day, sunk and wore into a hollow 
 almost as smooth as the brown shell itself; and 
 each beast knew his exact place at the fire. The 
 fields changed their colors with the seasons ; the 
 threshing-floors filled and emptied, and filled 
 again and again ; and again and again, when 
 winter came, the langurs frisked among the 
 branches feathered with light snow, till the mother- 
 monkeys brought their sad-eyed little babies up 
 from the warmer valleys with the spring. There 
 were few changes in the village. The priest was 
 older, and many of the little children who used to 
 come with the begging-dish sent their own chil- 
 dren now ; and when you asked of the villagers 
 how long their holy man had lived in Kali's Shrine 
 at the head of the pass, they answered, " Always." 
 
 Then came such summer rains as had not been 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 53 
 
 known in the Hills for many seasons. Through 
 three good months the valley was wrapped in 
 cloud and soaking mist — steady, unrelenting 
 downfall, breaking off into thunder-shower after 
 thunder-shower. Kali's Shrine stood above the 
 clouds, for the most part, and there was a whole 
 month in which the Bhagat never saw his village. 
 It was packed away under a white floor of cloud 
 that swayed and shifted and rolled on itself and 
 bulged upward, but never broke from its piers — 
 the streaming flanks of the valley. 
 
 All that time he heard nothing- but the sound 
 of a million little waters, overhead from the 
 trees, and underfoot along the ground, soaking 
 through the pine-needles, dripping from the 
 tongues of draggled fern, and spouting in newly 
 torn muddy channels down the slopes. Then the 
 sun came out, and drew forth the good incense of 
 the deodars and the rhododendrons, and that far-off, 
 clean smell which the Hill people call "the smell 
 of the snows." The hot sunshine lasted for a week, 
 and then the rains gathered together for their 
 last downpour, and the water fell in sheets that 
 flayed off the skin of the ground and leaped back 
 in mud. Purun Bhagat heaped his fire high that 
 night, for he was sure his brothers would need 
 warmth ; but never a beast came to the shrine, 
 
54 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 though he called and called till he dropped asleep, 
 wondering what had happened in the woods. 
 
 It was in the black heart of the night, the rain 
 drumming like a thousand drums, that he was 
 roused by a plucking at his blanket, and, 
 stretching out, felt the little hand of a langur. 
 "It is better here than in the trees," he said 
 sleepily, loosening a fold of blanket; "take it 
 and be warm." The monkey caught his hand 
 and pulled hard. " Is it food, then ? " said Purun 
 Bhagat. " Wait awhile, and I will prepare some." 
 As he kneeled to throw fuel on the fire the lan- 
 gur ran to the door of the shrine, crooned, and 
 ran back again, plucking at the man's knee. 
 
 " What is it ? What is thy trouble, Brother ? " 
 said Purun Bhagat, for the langur s eyes were 
 full of things that he could not tell. " Unless 
 one of thy caste be in a trap — and none set traps 
 here — I will not go into that weather. Look, 
 Brother, even the barasingh comes for shelter ! " 
 
 The deer's antlers clashed as he strode into the 
 shrine, clashed against the grinning statue of 
 Kali. He lowered them in Purun Bhasfat's direc- 
 tion and stamped uneasily, hissing through his 
 half-shut nostrils. 
 
 " Hai ! Hai ! Hai ! " said the Bhagat, snapping 
 his fingers. " Is this payment for a night's lodg- 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 55 
 
 ing ? " But the deer pushed him toward the 
 door, and as he did so Purun Bhagat heard the 
 sound of something opening with a sigh, and saw 
 two slabs of the floor draw away from each other, 
 while the sticky earth below smacked its lips. 
 
 " Now I see," said Purun Bhagat. " No blame 
 to my brothers that they did not sit by the fire 
 to-night. The mountain is falling. And yet- 
 why should I go?" His eye fell on the empty 
 begging-bowl, and his face changed. " They 
 have given me good food daily since — since I 
 came, and, if I am not swift, to-morrow there 
 will not be one mouth in the valley. Indeed, I 
 must go and warn them below. Back there, 
 Brother ! Let me get to the fire." 
 
 The barasingh backed unwillingly as Purun 
 Bhagat drove a pine torch deep into the flame, 
 twirling it till it was well lit. "Ah! ye came 
 to warn me," he said, rising. " Better than that 
 we shall do; better than that. Out, now, and lend 
 me thy neck, Brother, for I have but two feet." 
 
 He clutched the bristling withers of the bara- 
 singh with his right hand, held the torch away with 
 his left, and stepped out of the shrine into the 
 desperate night. There was no breath of wind, 
 but the rain nearly drowned the flare as the 
 great deer hurried down the slope, sliding on his 
 
56 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 haunches. As soon as they were clear of the 
 forest more of the Bhagat's brothers joined them. 
 He heard, though he could not see, the langurs 
 pressing about him, and behind them the uhh ! 
 uhh ! of Sona. The rain matted his long white 
 hair into ropes ; the water splashed beneath his 
 bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his frail 
 old body, but he stepped down steadily, leaning 
 against the barasingh. He was no longer a 
 holy man, but Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., Prime 
 Minister of no small State, a man accustomed to 
 command, going out to save life. Down the 
 steep, plashy path they poured all together, the 
 Bhagat and his brothers, down and down till 
 the deer's feet clicked and stumbled on the wall of 
 a threshing-floor, and he snorted because he smelt 
 Man. Now they were at the head of the one 
 crooked village street, and the Bhagat beat with his 
 crutch on the barred windows of the blacksmith's 
 house as his torch blazed up in the shelter of the 
 eaves. "Up and out !" cried Purun Bhagat; and he 
 did not know his own voice, for it was years since 
 he had spoken aloud to a man. "The hill falls! 
 The hill is falling! Up and out, oh, you within !" 
 " It is our Bhagat," said the blacksmith's wife. 
 " He stands among his beasts. Gather the little 
 ones and give the call." 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 57 
 
 It ran from house to house, while the beasts, 
 cramped in the narrow way, surged and huddled 
 round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently. 
 
 The people hurried into the street — they were 
 no more than seventy souls all told — and in the 
 glare of the torches they saw their Bhagat hold- 
 ing back the terrified barasingh, while the mon- 
 keys plucked piteously at his skirts, and Sona sat 
 on his haunches and roared. 
 
 " Across the valley and up the next hill ! " 
 shouted Purun Bhagat. " Leave none behind ! 
 We follow ! " 
 
 Then the people ran as only Hill folk can run, 
 for they knew that in a landslip you must climb 
 for the highest ground across the valley. They 
 fled, splashing through the little river at the bot- 
 tom, and panted up the terraced fields on the far 
 side, while the Bhagat and his brethren followed. 
 Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, 
 calling to each other by name — the roll-call of 
 the village — and at their heels toiled the big 
 barasingh, weighted by the failing strength of 
 Purun Bhagat. At last the deer stopped in the 
 shadow of a deep pine-wood, five hundred feet up 
 the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him 
 of the coming slide, told him he would be safe 
 here. 
 
58 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Purun Bhagat dropped fainting - by his side, for 
 the chill of the rain and that fierce climb were kill- 
 ing him ; but first he called to the scattered 
 torches ahead, " Stay and count your numbers " ; 
 then, whispering to the deer as he saw the lights 
 gather in a cluster: "Stay with me, Brother. 
 Stay — till — I — go!" 
 
 There was a sigh in the air that grew to a 
 mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a 
 roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the hill- 
 side on which the villagers stood was hit in the 
 darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note 
 as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the 
 organ drowned everything for perhaps five min- 
 utes, while the very roots of the pines quivered to 
 it. It died away, and the sound of the rain falling 
 on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the 
 muffled drum of water on soft earth. That told 
 its own tale. 
 
 Never a villager — not even the priest — was 
 bold enough to speak to the Bhagat who had 
 saved their lives. They crouched under the 
 pines and waited till the day. When it came 
 they looked across the valley and saw that what 
 had been forest, and terraced field, and track- 
 threaded grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan- 
 shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down 
 
THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 59 
 
 on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of 
 their refuge, damming back the little river, which 
 had begun to spread into a brick-colored lake. 
 Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the 
 shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was not 
 trace. For one mile in width and two thousand 
 feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come 
 away bodily, planed clean from head to heel. 
 
 And the villagers, one by one, crept through the 
 wood to pray before their Bhagat. They saw 
 the barasingh standing over him, who fled when 
 they came near, and they heard the la,7ignrs wail- 
 ing in the branches, and Sona moaning up the 
 hill ; but their Bhagat was dead, sitting cross- 
 legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under 
 his armpit, and his face turned to the northeast. 
 
 The priest said : " Behold a miracle after a 
 miracle, for in this very attitude must all Sun- 
 nyasis be buried ! Therefore where he now is 
 we will build the temple to our holy man." 
 
 They built the temple before a year was ended 
 — a little stone-and-earth shrine — and they called 
 the hill the Bhagat's Hill, and they worship there 
 with lights and flowers and offerings to this day. 
 But they do not know that the saint of their 
 worship is the late Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., 
 D. C. L., Ph. D., etc., once Prime Minister of the 
 
6o 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 progressive and enlightened State of Mohini- 
 wala, and honorary or corresponding member of 
 more learned and scientific societies than will ever 
 do any good in this world or the next. 
 
A SONG OF KABIR 
 
 H, light was the world that he weighed 
 in his hands ! 
 Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and 
 his lands ! 
 He has gone from the gaddee and 
 
 put on the shroud, 
 And departed in guise of bairagi 
 avowed ! 
 
 Now the white road to' Delhi is 
 mat for his feet, 
 The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat ; 
 His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd — 
 He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed ! 
 
 He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear 
 (There was One ; there is One, and but One, saith 
 
 Kabir) ; 
 The Red Mist of Doing has thinned to a cloud — 
 He has taken the Path for bairagi avowed ! 
 
 To learn and discern of his brother the clod, 
 Of his brother the brute, and his brother the God. 
 He has gone from the council and put on the shroud 
 (" Can ye hear ? " saith Kabir), a bairagi avowed ! 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 
 
Veil them, cover them, wall them round — 
 
 Blossom, and creeper, and weed — 
 Let us forget the sight and the sound, 
 
 The smell and the touch of the breed ! 
 
 Fat black ash by the altar-stone, 
 
 Here is the white-foot rain, 
 And the does bring forth in the fields unsown, 
 
 And none shall affright them again ; 
 And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown, 
 
 And none shall inhabit again ! 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 
 
 OU will remember, if you 
 have read the tales in the 
 first Jungle Book, that, after 
 Mowgli had pinned Shere 
 Khan's hide to the Coun- 
 cil Rock, he told as many 
 as were left of the Seeonee 
 Pack that henceforward he 
 would hunt in the Jungle 
 alone ; and the four children of Mother and 
 Father Wolf said that they would hunt with 
 him. But it is not easy to change one's life all in 
 a minute — particularly in the Jungle. The first 
 thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had 
 slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep 
 
 65 
 
66 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 for a day and a night. Then he told Mother 
 Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could un- 
 derstand of his adventures among men ; and when 
 he made the morning sun flicker up and down the 
 blade of his skinning-knife, — the same he had 
 skinned Shere Khan with, — they said he had 
 learned something. Then Akela and Gray Bro- 
 ther had to explain their share of the great buf- 
 falo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the 
 hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched 
 himself all over with pure delight at the way in 
 which Mowgli had managed his war. 
 
 It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed 
 of going to sleep, and from time to time, during 
 the talk, Mother Wolf would throw up her head, 
 and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind 
 brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the 
 Council Rock. 
 
 " But for Akela and Gray Brother here," Mow- 
 gli said, at the end, " I could have done nothing. 
 Oh, mother, mother ! if thou hadst seen the black 
 herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through 
 the gates when the Man-Pack flung stones at 
 me ! 
 
 " I am glad I did not see that last," said Mo- 
 ther Wolf, stiffly. " It is not my custom to suffer 
 my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals. / 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 67 
 
 would have taken a price from the Man- Pack; 
 but I would have spared the woman who gave 
 thee the milk. Yes, I would have spared her 
 alone." 
 
 "Peace, peace, Raksha ! " said Father Wolf, 
 lazily. "Our Frog has come back again — so 
 wise that his own father must lick his feet ; and 
 what is a cut, more or less, on the head ? Leave 
 Men alone." Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: 
 " Leave Men alone." 
 
 Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf's side, smiled 
 contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he 
 never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again. 
 
 "But what," said Akela, cocking one ear — " but 
 what if men do not leave thee alone, Little Bro- 
 ther?" 
 
 "Webey^W," said Gray Brother, looking round 
 at the company, and snapping his jaws on the 
 last word. 
 
 "We also might attend to that hunting," said 
 Bagheera, with a little switch-switch of his tail, 
 looking at Baloo. " But why think of men now, 
 Akela?" 
 
 " For this reason," the Lone Wolf answered: 
 "when that yellow thief's hide was hung up on 
 the rock, I went back along our trail to the vil- 
 lage, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and 
 
68 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one 
 should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail 
 so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the 
 Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung 
 up above me. Said Mang, ' The village of the 
 Man- Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, 
 hums like a hornet's nest.' " 
 
 " It was a big stone that I threw," chuckled 
 Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throw- 
 ing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's nest, and racing 
 off to the nearest pool before the hornets caught 
 him. 
 
 " I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said 
 the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the vil- 
 lage, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now 
 /know, for I have good cause," — Akela looked 
 down at the old dry scars on his flank and side, — 
 " that men do not carry guns for pleasure. Pres- 
 ently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows 
 our trail — if, indeed, he be not already on it." 
 
 " But why should he ? Men have cast me out. 
 What more do they need ? " said Mowgli, angrily. 
 
 "Thou art a man, Little Brother," Akela re- 
 turned. " It is not for us, the Free Hunters, to 
 tell thee what thy brethren do, or why." 
 
 He had just time to snatch up his paw as the 
 skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 69 
 
 Mowgli struck quicker than an average human 
 eye could follow, but Akela was a wolf; and even 
 a dog, who is very far removed from the wild 
 wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep 
 by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring 
 away unharmed before that wheel comes on. 
 
 " Another time," Mowgli said quietly, return- 
 ing the knife to its sheath, " speak of the Man- 
 Pack and of Mowgli in two breaths — not one." 
 
 " Phff! That is a sharp tooth," said Akela, 
 snuffing at the blade's cut in the earth, " but liv- 
 ing with the Man- Pack has spoiled thine eye, Little 
 Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou 
 wast striking." 
 
 Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head 
 as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through 
 every curve in his body. Gray Brother followed 
 his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to 
 get the wind that was blowing from the right, 
 while Akela bounded fifty yards up wind, and, 
 half crouchino-, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on 
 enviously. He could smell things as very few 
 human beings could, but he had never reached 
 the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle 
 nose ; and his three months in the smoky village 
 had set him back sadly. However, he dampened 
 his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect 
 
70 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 to catch the upper scent, which, though it is the 
 faintest, is the truest. 
 
 " Man ! " Akela growled, dropping on his 
 haunches. 
 
 " Buldeo ! " said Mowgli, sitting down. " He 
 follows our trail, and yonder is the sunlight on his 
 gun. Look ! " 
 
 It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a 
 fraction of a second, on the brass clamps of the 
 old Tower musket, but nothing in the Jungle 
 winks with just that flash, except when the clouds 
 race over the sky. Then a piece of mica, or a 
 little pool, or even a highly polished leaf will flash 
 like a heliograph. But that day was cloudless 
 and still. 
 
 " I knew men would follow," said Akela, trium- 
 phantly. " Not for nothing have I led the Pack." 
 
 The four cubs said nothing, but ran down hill 
 on their bellies, melting into the thorn and under- 
 brush as a mole melts into a lawn. 
 
 "Where go ye, and without word?" Mowgli 
 called. 
 
 " H'sh ! We roll his skull here before mid- 
 day ! " Gray Brother answered. 
 
 "Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat 
 Man ! " Mowgli shrieked. 
 
 "Who was a wolf but now ? Who drove the 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 71 
 
 knife at me for thinking he might be Man ? " 
 said Akela, as the four wolves turned back sul- 
 lenly and dropped to heel. 
 
 " Am I to o-ive a reason for all I choose to do ?" 
 said Mowgli, furiously. 
 
 "That is Man! There speaks Man!" Ba- 
 gheera muttered under his whiskers. " Even so 
 did men talk round the King's cages at Oodey- 
 pore. We of the Jungle know that Man is wisest 
 of all. If we trusted our ears we should know 
 that of all things he is most foolish." Raising 
 his voice, he added, " The Man-cub is right in 
 this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one, unless 
 we know what the others will do, is bad hunt- 
 ing. Come, let us see what this Man means 
 toward us." 
 
 " We will not come," Gray Brother growled. 
 " Hunt alone, Little Brother. We know our own 
 minds. That skull would have been ready to 
 bring by now." 
 
 Mowgli had been looking from one to the other 
 of his friends, his chest heaving and his eyes full 
 of tears. He strode forward to the wolves, and, 
 dropping on one knee, said : " Do I not know my 
 mind ? Look at me ! " 
 
 They looked uneasily, and when their eyes 
 wandered, he called them back again and again, 
 
72 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and 
 they trembled in every limb, while Mowgli stared 
 and stared. 
 
 " Now," said he, "of us five, which is leader? " 
 
 "Thou art leader, Little Brother," said Gray 
 Brother, and he licked Mowgli' s foot. 
 
 "Follow, then," said Mowgli, and the four fol- 
 lowed at his heels with their tails between their 
 legs. 
 
 " This comes of living with the Man-Pack," said 
 Bagheera, slipping down after them. " There is 
 more in the Jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo." 
 
 The old bear said nothing, but he thought 
 many things. 
 
 Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jun- 
 gle, at right angles to Buldeo's path, till, parting 
 the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his musket 
 on his shoulder, running up the trail of overnight 
 at a dog-trot. 
 
 You will remember that Mowgli had left the 
 village with the heavy weight of Shere Khan's 
 raw hide on his shoulders, while Akela and Gray 
 Brother trotted behind, so that the triple trail was 
 very clearly marked. Presently Buldeo came to 
 where Akela, as you know, had gone back and 
 mixed it all up. Then he sat down, and coughed 
 and grunted, and made little casts round and about 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 73 
 
 into the Jungle to pick it up again, and all the 
 time he could have thrown a stone over those who 
 were watching him. No one can be so silent as 
 a wolf when he does not care to be heard ; and 
 Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved 
 very clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. 
 They ringed the old man as a school of porpoises 
 ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed 
 him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech 
 began below the lowest end of the scale that un- 
 trained human beings can hear. [The other end 
 is bounded by the high squeak of Mang, the Bat, 
 which very many people cannot catch at all. 
 From that note all the bird and bat and insect 
 talk takes on.] 
 
 " This is betterthan any kill, "said Gray Brother, 
 as Buldeo stooped and peered and puffed. " He 
 looks like a lost pig in the Jungles by the river. 
 What does he say ? " Buldeo was muttering 
 savagely. 
 
 Mowgli translated. " He says that packs of 
 wolves must have danced round me. He says 
 that he never saw such a trail in his life. He 
 says he is tired." 
 
 " He will be rested before he picks it up again," 
 said Bagheera coolly, as he slipped round a tree- 
 trunk, in the game of blindman's-buff that they 
 
74 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 were playing. " Now, what does the lean thing 
 do ? " 
 
 " Eat or blow smoke out of his mouth. Men 
 always play with their mouths," said Mowgli ; 
 and the silent trailers saw the old man fill and 
 light and puff at a water-pipe, and they took good 
 note of the smell of the tobacco, so as to be sure 
 of Buldeo in the darkest night, if necessary. 
 
 Then a little knot of charcoal-burners came 
 down the path, and naturally halted to speak to 
 Buldeo, whose fame as a hunter reached for at 
 least twenty miles round. They all sat down and 
 smoked, and Bagheera and the others came up and 
 watched while Buldeo began to tell the story of 
 Mowgli, the Devil-child, from one end to another, 
 with additions and inventions. How he himself had 
 really killed Shere Khan ; and how Mowgli had 
 turned himself into a wolf, and fought with him 
 all the afternoon, and changed into a boy again 
 and bewitched Buldeo's rifle, so that the bullet 
 turned the corner, when he pointed it at Mowgli, 
 and killed one of Buldeo's own buffaloes ; and 
 how the village, knowing him to be the bravest 
 hunter in Seeonee, had sent him out to kill this 
 Devil-child. But meantime the village had got 
 hold of Messua and her husband, who were un- 
 doubtedly the father and mother of this Devil- 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 75 
 
 child, and had barricaded them in their own hut, 
 and presently would torture them to make them 
 confess they were witch and wizard, and then they 
 would be burned to death. 
 
 "When?" said the charcoal-burners, because 
 they would very much like to be present at the 
 ceremony. 
 
 Buldeo said that nothing would be done till he 
 returned, because the village wished him to kill 
 the Jungle Boy first. After that they would dis- 
 pose of Messua and her husband, and divide their 
 lands and buffaloes among the village. Messua's 
 husband had some remarkably fine buffaloes, too. 
 It was an excellent thing to destroy wizards, Bul- 
 deo thought ; and people who entertained Wolf- 
 children out of the Jungle were clearly the worst 
 kind of witches. 
 
 But, said the charcoal-burners, what would hap- 
 pen if the English heard of it ? The English, they 
 had heard, were a perfectly mad people, who 
 would not let honest farmers kill witches in peace. 
 
 Why, said Buldeo, the head-man of the village 
 would report that Messua and her husband had 
 died of snake-bite. That was all arranged, and 
 the only thing now was to kill the Wolf-child. 
 They did not happen to have seen anything of 
 such a creature? 
 
76 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 The charcoal-burners looked round cautiously, 
 and thanked their stars they had not ; but they 
 had no doubt that so brave a man as Buldeo 
 would find him if any one could. The sun was 
 getting rather low, and they had an idea that they 
 would push on to Buldeo's village and see that 
 wicked witch. Buldeo said that, though it was 
 his duty to kill the Devil-child, he could not think 
 of letting a party of unarmed men go through the 
 Jungle, which might produce the Wolf-demon at 
 any minute, without his escort. He, therefore, 
 would accompany them, and if the sorcerer's child 
 appeared — well, he would show them how the 
 best hunter in Seeonee dealt with such things. 
 The Brahmin, he said, had given him a charm 
 against the creature that made everything per- 
 fectly safe. 
 
 " What says he ? What says he ? What says 
 he ? " the wolves repeated every few minutes ; 
 and Mowgli translated until he came to the witch 
 part of the story, which was a little beyond him, 
 and then he said that the man and woman who 
 had been so kind to him were trapped. 
 
 " Does Man trap Man ? " said Bagheera. 
 
 " So he says. I cannot understand the talk. 
 They are all mad together. What have Messua 
 and her man to do with me that they should be 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 77 
 
 put in a trap ; and what is all this talk about the 
 Red Flower? I must look to this. Whatever 
 they would do to Messua they will not do till 
 Buldeo returns. And so — " Mowgli thought 
 hard, with his fingers playing round the haft of 
 the skinnin£-knife, while Buldeo and the char- 
 coal-burners went off very valiantly in single 
 file. 
 
 " I am going hot-foot back to the Man-Pack," 
 Mowgli said at last. 
 
 " And those ? " said Gray Brother, looking hun- 
 grily after the brown backs of the charcoal- 
 burners. 
 
 " Sing them home," said Mowgli with a grin ; 
 " I do not wish them to be at the village gates till 
 it is dark. Can ye hold them ? " 
 
 Gray Brother bared his white teeth in contempt. 
 " We can head them round and round in circles 
 like tethered goats — if I know Man." 
 
 " That I do not need. Sing to them a little, 
 lest they be lonely on the road, and, Gray Bro- 
 ther, the song need not be of the sweetest. Go 
 with them, Bagheera, and help make that song. 
 When the night is shut down, meet me by the 
 village — Gray Brother knows the place." 
 
 " It is no light hunting to work for a Man-cub. 
 When shall I sleep ? " said Bagheera, yawning, 
 
78 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 though his eyes showed that he was delighted 
 with the amusement. " Me to sing to naked 
 men ! But let us try." 
 
 He lowered his head so that the sound would 
 travel, and cried a long, long, " Good hunting" — 
 a midnight call in the afternoon, which was quite 
 awful enough to begin with. Mowgli heard it 
 rumble, and rise, and fall, and die off in a creepy 
 sort of whine behind him, and laughed to himself 
 as he ran through the Jungle. He could see the 
 charcoal-burners huddled in a knot ; old Buldeo's 
 gun-barrel waving, like a banana-leaf, to every 
 point of the compass at once. Then Gray Bro- 
 ther gave the Ya-la-hi / Yalaha ! call for the 
 buck-driving, when the Pack drives the nilghai, 
 the big blue cow, before them, and it seemed to 
 come from the very ends of the earth, nearer, and 
 nearer, and nearer, till it ended in a shriek snapped 
 off short. The other three answered, till even 
 Mowgli could have vowed that the full Pack was 
 in full cry, and then they all broke into the mag- 
 nificent Morning-song in the Jungle, with every 
 turn, and flourish, and grace-note, that a deep- 
 mouthed wolf of the Pack knows. This is a rough 
 rendering of the song, but you must imagine what 
 it sounds like when it breaks the afternoon hush 
 of the Jungle : 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 79 
 
 One moment past our bodies cast 
 
 No shadow on the plain ; 
 Now clear and black they stride our track, 
 
 And we run home again. 
 In morning hush, each rock and bush 
 
 Stands hard, and high, and raw : 
 Then give the Call : " Good rest to all 
 
 That keep the Jangle Law I " 
 
 Now horn and pelt our peoples melt 
 
 In covert to abide ; 
 Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill 
 
 Our Jungle Barons glide. 
 Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain, 
 
 That draw the new-yoked plow; 
 Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red 
 
 Above the lit talao. 
 
 Ho ! Get to lair ! The sun 's aflare 
 
 Behind the breathing grass : 
 And creaking through the young bamboo 
 
 The warning whispers pass. 
 By day made strange, the woods we range 
 
 With blinking eyes we scan ; 
 While down the skies the wild duck cries : 
 
 " The Day— the Day to Man! " 
 
 The dew is dried that drenched our hide, 
 
 Or washed about our way ; 
 And where we drank, the puddled bank 
 
 Is crisping into clay. 
 
So THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 The traitor Dark gives up each mark 
 Of stretched or hooded claw ; 
 
 Then hear the Call : " Good rest to all 
 That keep the Mingle Law ! " 
 
 But no translation can give the effect of it, or 
 the yelping scorn the Four threw into every word 
 of it, as they heard the trees crash when the men 
 hastily climbed up into the branches, and Buldeo 
 began repeating incantations and charms. Then 
 they lay down and slept, for, like all who live by 
 their own exertions, they were of a methodical 
 cast of mind ; and no one can work well without 
 sleep. 
 
 Meantime, Mowgli was putting the miles be- 
 hind him, nine to the hour, swinging on, delighted 
 to find himself so fit after all his cramped months 
 among men. The one idea in his head was to 
 get Messua and her husband out of the trap, 
 whatever it was ; for he had a natural mistrust of 
 traps. Later on, he promised himself, he would 
 pay his debts to the village at large. 
 
 It was at twilight when he saw the well-re- 
 membered grazing-grounds, and the dhak-tree 
 where Gray Brother had waited for him on the 
 morning that he killed Shere Khan. Angry as 
 he was at the whole breed and community of Man, 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 81 
 
 something jumped up in his throat and made him 
 catch his breath when he looked at the village 
 roofs. He noticed that every one had come in 
 from the fields unusually early, and that, instead 
 of getting to their evening cooking, they gathered 
 in a crowd under the village tree, and chattered, 
 and shouted. 
 
 " Men must always be making traps for men, 
 or they are not content," said Mowgli. " Last 
 night it was Mowgli — but that night seems many 
 Rains ago. To-night it is Messua and her man. 
 To-morrow, and for very many nights after, it 
 will be Mowgli's turn again." 
 
 He crept along outside the wall till he came to 
 Messua's hut, and looked through the window 
 into the room. There lay Messua, gagged, and 
 bound hand and foot, breathing hard, and groan- 
 ing : her husband was tied to the gaily painted 
 bedstead. The door of the hut that opened into 
 the street was shut fast, and three or four people 
 were sitting with their backs to it. 
 
 Mowgfli knew the manners and customs of the 
 villagers very fairly. He argued that so long as 
 they could eat, and talk, and smoke, they would 
 not do anything else ; but as soon as they had 
 fed they would begin to be dangerous. Buldeo 
 would be coming in before long, and if his escort 
 
82 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 had done its duty, Buldeo would have a very 
 interesting tale to tell. So he went in through 
 the window, and, stooping over the man and the 
 woman, cut their thongs, pulling out the gags, 
 and looked round the hut for some milk. 
 
 Messua was half wild with pain and fear (she 
 had been beaten and stoned all the morning), and 
 Mowgli put his hand over her mouth just in time 
 to stop a scream. Her husband was only be- 
 wildered and angry, and sat picking dust and 
 things out of his torn beard. 
 
 "I knew — I knew he would come," Messua 
 sobbed at last. " Now do I know that he is my 
 son ! " and she hugged Mowgli to her heart. Up 
 to that time Mowgli had been perfectly steady, 
 but now he began to tremble all over, and that 
 surprised him immensely. 
 
 "Why are these thongs? Why have they tied 
 thee ? " he asked, after a pause. 
 
 "To be put to the death for making a son 
 of thee — what else ? " said the man, sullenly. 
 "Look! I bleed." 
 
 Messua said nothing, but it was at her wounds 
 that Mowgli looked, and they heard him grit his 
 teeth when he saw the blood. 
 
 "Whose work is this?" said he. "There is a 
 price to pay." 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 83 
 
 "The work of all the village. I was too rich. 
 I had too many cattle. Therefore she and I are 
 witches, because we gave thee shelter." 
 
 " I do not understand. Let Messua tell the 
 tale." 
 
 " I gave thee milk, Nathoo ; dost thou remem- 
 ber? " Messua said timidly. " Because thou wast 
 my son, whom the tiger took, and because I 
 loved thee very dearly. They said that I was thy 
 mother, the mother of a devil, and therefore 
 worthy of death." 
 
 " And what is a devil ? " said Mowgdi. " Death 
 I have seen." 
 
 The man looked up gloomily, but Messua 
 laughed. " See ! " she said to her husband, " I 
 knew — I said that he was no sorcerer. He is 
 my son — my son ! " 
 
 " Son or sorcerer, what good will that do us ? " 
 the man answered. "We be as dead already." 
 
 "Yonder is the road to the Jungle" — Mowgli 
 pointed through the window. " Your hands and 
 feet are free. Go now." 
 
 "We do not know the Jungle, my son, as — as 
 thou knowest," Messua began. " I do not think 
 that I could walk far." 
 
 " And the men and women would be upon our 
 backs and drag us here again," said the husband. 
 
84 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " H'm ! " said Mowgli, and he tickled the palm 
 of his hand with the tip of his skinning-knife ; " I 
 have no wish to do harm to any one of this vil- 
 lage — yet. But I do not think they will stay 
 thee. In a little while they will have much else 
 to think upon. Ah ! " he lifted his head and lis- 
 tened to shouting and trampling outside. "So 
 they have let Buldeo come home at last ? " 
 
 " He was sent out this morning to kill thee," 
 Messua cried. " Didst thou meet him ? " 
 
 "Yes — we — I met him. He has a tale to 
 tell ; and while he is telling it there is time to do 
 much. But first I will learn what they mean. 
 Think where ye would go, and tell me when I 
 come back." 
 
 He bounded through the window and ran 
 alone a^ain outside the wall of the village till he 
 came within ear-shot of the crowd round the 
 peepul-tree. Buldeo was lying on the ground, 
 coughing and groaning, and every one was ask- 
 ing him questions. His hair had fallen about his 
 shoulders ; his hands and legs were skinned from 
 climbing up trees, and he could hardly speak, 
 but he felt the importance of his position keenly. 
 From time to time he said something about devils 
 and singing devils, and magic enchantment, just 
 to give the crowd a taste of what was coming. 
 Then he called for water. 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 85 
 
 " Bah ! " said Mowgli. " Chatter — chatter ! 
 Talk, talk ! Men are blood-brothers of the Ban- 
 dar-log. Now he must wash his mouth with 
 water ; now he must blow smoke ; and when all 
 that is done he has still his story to tell. They 
 are very wise people — men. They will leave no 
 one to guard Messua till their ears are stuffed 
 with Buldeo's tales. And — I grow as lazy as 
 they ! " 
 
 He shook himself and glided back to the hut. 
 Just as he was at the window he felt a touch on 
 his foot. 
 
 " Mother," said he, for he knew that tongue 
 well, " what dost thou here ? " 
 
 " I heard my children singing through the 
 woods, and I followed the one I loved best. Lit- 
 tle Frog, I have a desire to see that woman 
 who gave thee milk," said Mother Wolf, all wet 
 with the dew. 
 
 " They have bound and mean to kill her. I 
 have cut those ties, and she goes with her man 
 through the Jungle." 
 
 " I also will follow. I am old, but not yet 
 toothless." Mother Wolf reared herself up on 
 end, and looked through the window into the 
 dark of the hut. 
 
 In a minute she dropped noiselessly, and all 
 
86 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 she said was: "I gave thee thy first milk; but 
 Bagheera speaks truth: Man goes to Man at 
 the last." 
 
 " Maybe," said Mowgli, with a very unpleas- 
 ant look on his face; "but to-night I am very 
 far from that trail. Wait here, but do not let 
 her see." 
 
 "Thou wast never afraid of me, Little Frog," 
 said Mother Wolf, backing into the high grass, 
 and blotting herself out, as she knew how. 
 
 "And now," said Mowgli, cheerfully, as he 
 swung into the hut again, " they are all sitting 
 round Buldeo, who is saying that which did not 
 happen. When his talk is finished, they say 
 they will assuredly come here with the Red — 
 with fire and burn you both. And then?" 
 
 " I have spoken to my man," said Messua. 
 " Kanhiwara is thirty miles from here, but at 
 Kanhiwara we may find the English — " 
 
 " And what Pack are they ? " said Mowgli. 
 
 "I do not know. They be white, and it is 
 said that they govern all the land, and do not suf- 
 fer people to burn or beat each other without 
 witnesses. If we can get thither to-night, we live. 
 Otherwise we die." 
 
 " Live, then. No man passes the gates to-night. 
 But what does he do ? " Messua's husband was 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 87 
 
 on his hands and knees digging up the earth in 
 one corner of the hut. 
 
 "It is his little money," said Messua. "We 
 can take nothing else." 
 
 " Ah, yes. The stuff that passes from hand to 
 hand and never grows warmer. Do they need it 
 outside this place also ? " said Mowgli. 
 
 The man stared angrily. "He is a fool, and 
 no devil," he muttered. "With the money I can 
 buy a horse. We are too bruised to walk far, 
 and the village will follow us in an hour." 
 
 " I say they will 7iot follow till I choose ; but the 
 horse is well thought of, for Messua is tired." 
 Her husband stood up and knotted the last of the 
 rupees into his waist-cloth. Mowgli helped Mes- 
 sua through the window, and the cool night air 
 revived her, but the Jungle in the starlight looked 
 very dark and terrible. 
 
 "Ye know the trail to Kanhiwara?" Mowgli 
 whispered. 
 
 They nodded. 
 
 " Good. Remember, now, not to be afraid. 
 And there is no need to go quickly. Only — 
 only there maybe some small singing in the Jun- 
 gle behind you and before." 
 
 " Think you we would have risked a night in 
 the Jungle through anything less than the fear of 
 
88 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 burning ? It is better to be killed by beasts than 
 by men," said Messua's husband; but Messua 
 looked at Mowgli and smiled. 
 
 "I say," Mowgli went on, just as though he 
 were Baloo repeating an old Jungle Law for the 
 hundredth time to a foolish cub — " I say that not 
 a tooth in the Jungle is bared against you ; not a 
 foot in the Jungle is lifted against you. Neither 
 man nor beast shall stay you till ye come within 
 eye-shot of Kanhiwara. There will be a watch 
 about you." He turned quickly to Messua, say- 
 ing, " He does not believe, but thou wilt believe ? " 
 
 "Ay, surely, my son. Man, ghost, or wolf of 
 the Jungle, I believe." 
 
 "He will be afraid when he hears my people 
 singing. Thou wilt know and understand. Go 
 now, and slowly, for there is no need of any haste. 
 The gates are shut." 
 
 Messua flung herself sobbing at Mowgli's feet, 
 but he lifted her very quickly with a shiver. Then 
 she hung about his neck and called him every 
 name of blessing she could think of, but her hus- 
 band looked enviously across his fields, and said : 
 "I/we reach Kanhiwara, and I get the ear of the 
 English, I will bring such a lawsuit against the 
 Brahmin and old Buldeo and the others as shall 
 eat the village to the bone. They shall pay me 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 89 
 
 twice over for my crops untilled and my buffaloes 
 unfed. I will have a great justice." 
 
 Mowgli laughed. " I do not know what justice 
 is, but — come next Rains and see what is left." 
 
 They went off toward the Jungle, and Mother 
 Wolf leaped from her place of hiding. 
 
 " Follow ! " said Mowgli ; " and look to it that 
 all the Jungle knows these two are safe. Give 
 tongue a little. I would call Bagheera." 
 
 The long, low howl rose and fell, and Mowgli 
 saw Messua's husband flinch and turn, half minded 
 to run back to the hut. 
 
 " Go on," Mowgli called cheerfully. " I said 
 there might be singing, The call will follow up 
 to Kanhiwara. It is Favor of the Jungle." 
 
 Messua urged her husband forward, and the 
 darkness of the Jungle shut down on them and 
 Mother Wolf as Bagheera rose up almost under 
 Mowgli's feet, trembling with delight of the night 
 that drives the Jungle People wild. 
 
 "I am ashamed of thy brethren," he said, pur- 
 ring. 
 
 " What ? Did they not sing sweetly to Buldeo?" 
 said Mowgli. 
 
 "Too well ! Too well ! They made even me 
 forget my pride, and, by the Broken Lock that 
 freed me, I went singing through the Jungle as 
 
90 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 though I were out wooing in the spring ! Didst 
 thou not hear us ? " 
 
 " I had other game afoot. Ask Buldeo if he 
 liked the song. But where are the Four ? I do 
 not wish one of the Man- Pack to leave the grates 
 to-night." 
 
 " What need of the Four, then?" said Bagheera, 
 shifting from foot to foot, his eyes ablaze, and 
 purring louder than ever. " I can hold them, 
 Little Brother. Is it killing at last? The sing- 
 ing and the sight of the men climbing up the 
 trees have 'made me very ready. What is Man 
 that we should care for him — the naked brown 
 digger, the hairless and toothless, the eater of 
 earth ? I have followed him all day — at noon — 
 in the white sunlight. I herded him as the 
 wolves herd buck. I am Bao-heera ! Bao;heera ! 
 Bagheera ! As I dance with my shadow, so 
 danced I with those men. Look ! " The great 
 panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf 
 whirling overhead, struck left and right into the 
 empty air, that sung under the strokes, landed 
 noiselessly, and leaped again and again, while the 
 half purr, half growl gathered head as steam 
 rumbles in a boiler. "I am Bagheera — in the 
 Jungle — in the night, and all my strength is in 
 me. Who shall stay my stroke ? Man-cub, with 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 91 
 
 one blow of my paw I could beat thy head flat 
 as a dead frog in the summer ! " 
 
 "Strike, then!" said Mowgli, in the dialect of 
 the village, not the talk of the Jungle, and the 
 human words brought Bagheera to a full stop, 
 flung back on haunches that quivered under him, 
 his head just at the level of Mowgli's. Once 
 more Mowgli stared, as he had stared at the 
 rebellious cubs, full into the beryl-green eyes till 
 the red glare behind their green went out like 
 the light of a lighthouse shut off twenty miles 
 across the sea ; till the eyes dropped, and the big 
 head with them — dropped lower and lower, and 
 the red rasp of a tongue grated on Mowgli's 
 instep. 
 
 " Brother — Brother — Brother ! " the boy whis- 
 pered, stroking steadily and lightly from the 
 neck along the heaving back: " Be still, be still ! 
 It is the fault of the night, and no fault of thine." 
 
 " It was the smells of the night," said Bagheera 
 penitently. " This air cries aloud to me. But 
 how dost thou know ? " 
 
 Of course the air round an Indian village is 
 full of all kinds of smells, and to any creature 
 who does nearly all his thinking through his 
 nose, smells are as maddening as music and drugs 
 are to human beings. Mowgli gentled the pan- 
 
92 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 ther for a few minutes longer, and he lay down 
 like a cat before a fire, his paws tucked under his 
 breast, and his eyes half shut. 
 
 " Thou art of the Jungle and not of the Jungle," 
 he said at last. "And I am only a black pan- 
 ther. But I love thee, Little Brother." 
 
 "They are very long at their talk under the 
 tree," Mowgli said, without noticing the last 
 sentence. " Buldeo must have told many tales. 
 They should come soon to drag the woman and 
 her man out of the trap and put them into the 
 Red Flower. They will find that trap sprung. 
 Ho! ho!" 
 
 " Nay, listen," said Bagheera. " The fever is 
 out of my blood now. Let them find me there ! 
 Few would leave their houses after meeting me. 
 It is not the first time I have been in a cage ; and 
 I do not think they will tie me with cords." 
 
 "Be wise, then," said Mowgli, laughing; for 
 he was beginning to feel as reckless as the pan- 
 ther, who had glided into the hut. 
 
 "Pah!" Bagheera grunted. "This place is 
 rank with Man, but here is just such a bed as 
 they gave me to lie upon in the King's cages at 
 Oodeypore. Now I lie down." Mowgli heard 
 the strings of the cot crack under the great brute's 
 weight. "By the Broken Lock that freed me, 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 93 
 
 they will think they have caught big game ! 
 Come and sit beside me, Little Brother ; we will 
 give them ' good hunting ' together ! " 
 
 " No ; I have another thought in my stomach. 
 The Man-Pack shall not know what share I have 
 in the sport. Make thine own hunt. I do not 
 wish to see them." 
 
 "Be it so," said Bagheera. "Ah, now they 
 come ! " 
 
 The conference under the peepul-tree had been 
 growing noisier and noisier, at the far end of the 
 village. It broke in wild yells, and a rush up the 
 street of men and women, waving clubs and bam- 
 boos and sickles and knives. Buldeo and the 
 Brahmin were at the head of it, but the mob was 
 close at their heels, and they cried, " The witch 
 and the wizard! Let us see if hot coins will make 
 them confess ! Burn the hut over their heads ! 
 We will teach them to shelter wolf-devils ! Nay, 
 beat them first ! Torches ! More torches ! Bul- 
 deo, heat the gun-barrels ! " 
 
 Here was some little difficulty with the catch of 
 the door. It had been very firmly fastened, but 
 the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light of the 
 torches streamed into the room where, stretched 
 at full length on the bed, his paws crossed and 
 lightly hung down over one end, black as the Pit, 
 
94 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera. There 
 was one half-minute of desperate silence, as the 
 front ranks of the crowd clawed and tore their 
 way back from the threshold, and in that minute 
 Bagheera raised his head and yawned — elabo- 
 rately, carefully, and ostentatiously — as he would 
 yawn when he wished to insult an equal. The 
 fringed lips drew back and up ; the red tongue 
 curled ; the lower jaw dropped and dropped till 
 you could see half-way down the hot gullet ; and 
 the gigantic dog-teeth stood clear to the pit of 
 the gums till they rang together, upper and un- 
 der, with the snick of steel-faced wards shooting 
 home round the edges of a safe. Next instant 
 the street was empty; Bagheera had leaped back 
 through the window, and stood at Mowgli's side, 
 while a yelling, screaming torrent scrambled and 
 tumbled one over another in their panic haste to 
 get to their own huts. 
 
 "They will not stir till day comes," said Ba- 
 gheera quietly. " And now ? " 
 
 The silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to 
 have overtaken the village, but, as they listened, 
 they could hear the sound of heavy grain-boxes 
 being - dragged over earthen floors and set down 
 against doors. Bagheera was quite right ; the 
 village would not stir till daylight. Mowgli sat 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 95 
 
 still, and thought, and his face grew darker and 
 darker. 
 
 " What have I done ? " said Bagheera, at last, 
 coming to his feet, fawning. 
 
 " Nothing but great good. Watch them now 
 till the day. I sleep." Mowgli ran off into the Jun- 
 gle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, 
 and slept and slept the day round, and the night 
 back again. 
 
 When he waked, Bagheera was at his side, and 
 there was a newly-killed buck at his feet. Ba- 
 gheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to 
 work with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and 
 turned over with his chin in his hands. 
 
 " The man and the woman are come safe within 
 eye-shot of Kanhiwara," Bagheera said. "Thy 
 lair mother sent the word back by Chil, the Kite. 
 They found a horse before midnight of the night 
 they were freed, and went very quickly. Is not 
 that well ? " 
 
 " That is well," said Mowgli. 
 
 " And thy Man-Pack in the village did not stir 
 till the sun was high this morning. Then they 
 ate their food and ran back quickly to their 
 houses." 
 
 " Did they, by chance, see thee? " 
 
 " It may have been. I was rolling in the dust 
 
96 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 before the gate at dawn, and I may have made 
 also some small song to myself. Now, Little 
 Brother, there is nothing more to do. Come 
 hunting with me and Baloo. He has new hives 
 that he wishes to show, and we all desire thee 
 back again as of old. Take off that look which 
 makes even me afraid ! The man and woman 
 will not be put into the Red Flower, and all goes 
 well in the Jungle. Is it not true ? Let us forget 
 the Man-Pack." 
 
 "They shall be forgotten in a little while. 
 Where does Hathi feed to-niorht?" 
 
 " Where he chooses. Who can answer for the 
 Silent One? But why? What is there Hathi 
 can do which we cannot ? " 
 
 " Bid him and his three sons come here to me." 
 
 " But, indeed, and truly, Little Brother, it is 
 not — it is not seemly to say ' Come,' and ' Go,' to 
 Hathi. Remember, he is the Master of the Jun- 
 gle, and before the Man- Pack changed the look 
 on thy face, he taught thee the Master- words of 
 the Jungle." 
 
 "That is all one. I have a Master- word for 
 him now. Bid him come to Mowgli, the Frog, 
 and if he does not hear at first, bid him come be- 
 cause of the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore." 
 
 "The Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore," Ba- 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 97 
 
 gheera repeated two or three times to make sure. 
 " I go. Hathi can but be angry at the worst, and 
 I would give a moon's hunting to hear a Mas- 
 ter-word that compels the Silent One." 
 
 He went away, leaving Mowgli stabbing fu- 
 riously with his skinning-knife into the earth. 
 Mowsfli had never seen human blood in his life 
 before till he had seen, and — what meant much 
 more to him — smelled Messua's blood on the 
 thongs that bound her. And Messua had been 
 kind to him, and, so far as he knew anything about 
 love, he loved Messua as completely as he hated 
 the rest of mankind. But deeply as he loathed 
 them, their talk, their cruelty, and their cowardice, 
 not for anything the Jungle had to offer could he 
 bring himself to take a human life, and have that 
 terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. 
 His plan was simpler but much more thorough ; 
 and he laughed to himself when he thought that 
 it was one of old Buldeo's tales told under the pee- 
 pul-tree in the evening that had put the idea into 
 his head. 
 
 " It was a Master- word," Bagheera whispered 
 in his ear. " They were feeding by the river, and 
 they obeyed as though they were bullocks. Look, 
 where they come now ! " 
 
 Hathi and his three sons had arrived in their 
 
98 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 usual way, without a sound. The mud of the 
 river was still fresh on their flanks, and Hathi 
 was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a 
 young plantain-tree that he had gouged up with 
 his tusks. But every line in his vast body showed 
 to Bagheera, who could see things when he came 
 across them, that it was not the Master of the 
 Jungle speaking to a Man-cub, but one who was 
 afraid coming before one who was not. His three 
 sons rolled side by side, behind their father. 
 
 Mowgli hardly lifted his head as Hathi gave 
 him " Good hunting." He kept him swinging and 
 rocking, and shifting from one foot to another, for 
 a long time before he spoke, and when he opened 
 his mouth it was to Bagheera, not to the ele- 
 phants. 
 
 " I will tell a tale that was told to me by the 
 hunter ye hunted to-day," said Mowgli. " It 
 concerns an elephant, old and wise, who fell into 
 a trap, and the sharpened stake in the pit scarred 
 him from a little above his heel to the crest of his 
 shoulder, leaving a white mark." Mowgli threw 
 out his hand, and as Hathi wheeled the moonlight 
 showed a long white scar on his slaty side, as 
 though he had been struck with a red-hot whip. 
 " Men came to take him from the trap," Mowgli 
 continued, "but he broke his ropes, for he was 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 99 
 
 strong, and went away till his wound was healed. 
 Then came he, angry, by night to the fields of 
 those hunters. And I remember now that he 
 had three sons. These things happened many, 
 many Rains ago, and very far away — among 
 the fields of Bhurtpore. What came to those 
 fields at the next reaping, Hathi?" 
 
 "They were reaped by me and by my three 
 sons," said Hathi. 
 
 " And to the plowing that follows the reap- 
 ing ? " said Mowgli. 
 
 "There was no plowing," said Hathi. 
 
 " And to the men that live by the green crops 
 on the ground ? " said Mowgli. 
 
 "They went away." 
 
 "And to the huts in which the men slept?" 
 said Mowgli. 
 
 "We tore the roofs to pieces, and the Jungle 
 swallowed up the walls," said Hathi. 
 
 " And what more ? " said Mowgli. 
 
 " As much good ground as I can walk over in 
 two nights from the east to the west, and from 
 the north to the south as much as I can walk over 
 in three nights, the Jungle took. We let in the 
 Jungle upon five villages ; and in those villages, 
 and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the 
 soft crop-grounds, there is not one man to-day 
 
ioo THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 who takes his food from the ground. That was 
 the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, which I and 
 my three sons did; and now I ask, Man-cub, how 
 the news of it came to thee? " said Hathi. 
 
 " A man told me, and now I see even Buldeo 
 can speak truth. It was well done, Hathi with 
 the white mark ; but the second time it shall be 
 done better, for the reason that there is a man to 
 direct. Thou knowest the village of the Man- 
 Pack that cast me out ? They are idle, senseless, 
 and cruel; they play with their mouths, and they 
 do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport. 
 When they are full-fed they would throw their 
 own breed into the Red Flower. This I have 
 seen. It is not well that they should live here 
 any more. I hate them ! " 
 
 " Kill, then," said the youngest of Hathi's three 
 sons, picking up a tuft of grass, dusting it against 
 his fore legs, and throwing it away, while his 
 little red eyes glanced furtively from side to 
 side. 
 
 " What good are white bones to me ? " Mowgli 
 answered angrily. "Am I the cub of a wolf to 
 play in the sun with a raw head ? I have killed 
 Shere Khan, and his hide rots on the Council 
 Rock; but — but I do not know whither Shere 
 Khan is gone, and my stomach is still empty. 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 101 
 
 Now I will take that which I can see and touch. 
 Let in the Jungle upon that village, Hathi ! " 
 
 Bagheera shivered, and cowered down. He 
 could understand, if the worst came to the worst, 
 a quick rush down the village street, and a 
 right and left blow into a crowd, or a crafty 
 killing of men as they plowed in the twilight, 
 but this scheme for deliberately blotting out 
 an entire village from the eyes of man and 
 beast frightened him. Now he saw why Movv- 
 gli had sent for Hathi. No one but the long- 
 lived elephant could plan and carry through 
 such a war. 
 
 " Let them run as the men ran from the fields 
 of Bhurtpore, till we have the rain-water for the 
 only plow, and the noise of the rain on the thick 
 leaves for the pattering of their spindles — till 
 Bagheera and I lair in the house of the Brahmin, 
 and the buck drink at the tank behind the tem- 
 ple ! Let in the Jungle, Hathi ! " 
 
 "But I — but we have no quarrel with them, 
 and it needs the red rage of great pain ere we 
 tear down the places where men sleep," said 
 Hathi, doubtfully. 
 
 " Are ye the only eaters of grass in the Jungle ? 
 Drive in your peoples. Let the deer and the pig 
 and the nilghai look to it. Ye need never show 
 
102 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 a hand's-breadth of hide till the fields are naked. 
 Let in the Jungle, Hathi ! " 
 
 " There will be no killing? My tusks were red 
 at the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, and I would 
 not wake that smell again." 
 
 " Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie 
 on the clean earth. Let them go and find a fresh 
 lair. They cannot stay here. I have seen and 
 smelled the blood of the woman that orave me food 
 — the woman whom they would have killed but 
 for me. Only the smell of the new grass on their 
 door- steps can take away that smell. It burns in 
 my mouth. Let in the Jungle, Hathi ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " said Hathi. " So did the scar of the 
 stake burn on my hide till we watched the villages 
 die under in the spring growth. Now I see. 
 Thy war shall be our war. We will let in the 
 Jungle ! " 
 
 Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath — 
 he was shaking all over with rage and hate — be- 
 fore the place where the elephants had stood was 
 empty, and Bagheera was looking at him with 
 terror. 
 
 " By the Broken Lock that freed me ! " said the 
 Black Panther at last. " Art thou the naked thingf 
 I spoke for in the Pack when all was young? 
 Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes, 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 103 
 
 speak for me — speak for Baloo — speak for us 
 all ! We are cubs before thee ! Snapped twigs 
 under foot ! Fawns that have lost their doe ! " 
 
 The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset 
 Mowgli altogether, and he laughed and caught 
 his breath, and sobbed and laughed again, till he 
 had to jump into a pool to make himself stop. 
 Then he swam round and round, ducking in and 
 out of the bars of the moonlight like the frog, his 
 namesake. 
 
 By this time Hathi and his three sons had 
 turned, each to one point of the compass, and 
 were striding silently down the valleys a mile 
 away. They went on and on for two days' march 
 — that is to say, a long sixty miles — through the 
 Jungle ; and every step they took, and every wave 
 of their trunks, was known and noted and talked 
 over by Mang and Chil and the Monkey People 
 and all the birds. Then they began to feed, and 
 fed quietly for a week or so. Hathi and his sons 
 are like Kaa, the Rock Python. They never hurry 
 till they have to. 
 
 At the end of that time — and none knew who 
 had started it — a rumor went through the Jungle 
 that there was better food and water to be found 
 in such and such a valley. The pig — who, of 
 course, will go to the ends of the earth for a full 
 
104 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 meal — moved first by companies, scuffling over 
 the rocks, and the deer followed, with the small wild 
 foxes that live on the dead and dying of the herds ; 
 and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved parallel 
 with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps 
 came after the nilghai. The least little thing - 
 would have turned the scattered, straggling droves 
 that grazed and sauntered and drank and grazed 
 again ; but whenever there was an alarm some 
 one would rise up and soothe them. At one time 
 it would be Sahi the Porcupine, full of news of 
 good feed just a little further on ; at another Mang 
 would cry cheerily and flap down a glade to show 
 it was all empty; or Baloo, his mouth full of 
 roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line 
 and half frighten, half romp it clumsily back to 
 the proper road. Very many creatures broke back 
 or ran away or lost interest, but very many were 
 left to go forward. At the end of another ten 
 days or so the situation was this. The deer and 
 the pig and the nilghai were milling round and 
 round in a circle of eight or ten miles radius, while 
 the Eaters of Flesh skirmished round its edge. 
 And the center of that circle was the village, and 
 round the village the crops were ripening, and in 
 the crops sat men on what they call machans — 
 platforms like pigeon-perches, made of sticks at 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 105 
 
 the top of four poles — to scare away birds and 
 other stealers. Then the deer were coaxed no 
 more. The Eaters of Flesh were close behind 
 them, and forced them forward and inward. 
 
 It was a dark night when Hathi and his three 
 sons slipped down from the Jungle, and broke 
 off the poles of the machans with their trunks ; 
 they fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom 
 falls, and the men that tumbled from them heard 
 the deep gurgling of the elephants in their 
 ears. Then the vanguard of the bewildered 
 armies of the deer broke down and flooded into 
 the village grazing-grounds and the plowed 
 fields ; and the sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig 
 came with them, and what the deer left the pig 
 spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of wolves 
 would shake the herds, and they would rush to 
 and fro desperately, treading down the young 
 barley, and cutting flat the banks of the irrigating 
 channels. Before the dawn broke the pressure 
 on the outside of the circle gave way at one point. 
 The Eaters of Flesh had fallen back and left an 
 open path to the south, and drove upon drove of 
 buck fled along it. Others, who were bolder, lay 
 up in the thickets to finish their meal next night. 
 
 But the work was practically done. When the 
 villagers looked in the morning they saw their 
 
106 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 crops were lost. And that meant death if they 
 did not get away, for they lived year in and year 
 out as near to starvation as the Jungle was near 
 to them. When the buffaloes were sent to graze 
 the hungry brutes found that the deer had cleared 
 the grazing-grounds, and so wandered into the 
 Jungle and drifted off with their wild mates; and 
 when twilight fell the three or four ponies that 
 belonged to the village lay in their stables with 
 their heads beaten in. Only Bagheera could 
 have given those strokes, and only Bagheera 
 would have thought of insolently dragging the 
 last carcass to the open street. 
 
 The villagers had no heart to make fires in the 
 fields that night, so Hathi and his three sons went 
 gleaning among what was left ; and where Hathi 
 gleans there is no need to follow. The men de- 
 cided to live on their stored seed-corn until the 
 rains had fallen, and then to take work as ser- 
 vants till they could catch up with the lost year ; 
 but as the grain-dealer was thinking of his well- 
 filled crates of corn, and the prices he would levy 
 at the sale of it, Hathi's sharp tusks were picking 
 out the corner of his mud house, and smashing 
 open the big wicker-chest, leeped with cow-dung, 
 where the precious stuff lay. 
 
 When that last loss was discovered, it was the 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 107 
 
 Brahmin's turn to speak. He had prayed to his 
 own Gods without answer. It might be, he said, 
 that, unconsciously, the village had offended some 
 one of the Gods of the Jungle, for, beyond doubt, 
 the Jungle was against them. So they sent for 
 the head man of the nearest tribe of wandering 
 Gonds — little, wise, and very black hunters, living 
 in the deep Jungle, whose fathers came of the old- 
 est race in India — the aboriginal owners of the 
 land. They made the Gond welcome with what 
 they had, and he stood on one leg, his bow in his 
 hand, and two or three poisoned arrows stuck 
 through his top-knot, looking half afraid and half 
 contemptuously at the anxious villagers and their 
 ruined fields. They wished to know whether his 
 Gods — the Old Gods — were angry with them, 
 and what sacrifices should be offered. The Gond 
 said nothing, but picked up a trail of the Karela, 
 the vine that bears the bitter wild gourd, and 
 laced it to and fro across the temple door in the 
 face of the staring red Hindu image. Then he 
 pushed with his hand in the open air along the 
 road to Kanhiwara, and went back to his Jungle, 
 and watched the Jungle people drifting through 
 it. He knew that when the Jungle moves only 
 white men can hope to turn it aside. 
 
 There was no need to ask his meaning. The 
 
108 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 wild gourd would grow where they had wor- 
 shiped their God, and the sooner they saved 
 themselves the better. 
 
 But it is hard to tear a village from its moor- 
 ings. They stayed on as long as any summer 
 food was left to them, and they tried to gather 
 nuts in the Jungle, but shadows with glaring eyes 
 watched them, and rolled before them even at 
 midday ; and when they ran back afraid to their 
 walls, on the tree trunks they had passed not 
 five minutes before the bark would be stripped 
 and chiseled with the stroke of some great taloned 
 paw. The more they kept to their village, the 
 bolder grew the wild things that gamboled and 
 bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Wain- 
 gunga. They had no time to patch and plaster 
 the rear walls of the empty byres that backed on 
 to the Jungle ; the wild pig trampled them down, 
 and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and 
 threw their elbows over the new-won ground, and 
 the coarse grass bristled behind the vines like the 
 lances of a goblin army following a retreat. The 
 unmarried men ran away first, and carried the 
 news far and near that the village was doomed. 
 Who could fight, they said, against the Jungle, 
 or the Gods of the Jungle, when the very village 
 cobra had left his hole in the platform under the 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 109 
 
 peepul-tree ? So their little commerce with the 
 outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across 
 the open grew fewer and fainter. At last the 
 nightly trumpetings of Hathi and his three sons 
 ceased to trouble them ; for they had no more to 
 be robbed of. The crop on the ground and the 
 seed in the ground had been taken. The out- 
 lying fields were already losing their shape, and 
 it was time to throw themselves on the charity 
 of the English at Kanhiwara. 
 
 Native fashion, they delayed their departure 
 from one day to another till the first Rains caught 
 them and the unmended roofs let in a flood, and 
 the grazing-ground stood ankle deep, and all 
 life came on with a rush after the heat of the 
 summer. Then they waded out, men, women, 
 and children, through the blinding hot rain of the 
 morning, but turned naturally for one farewell 
 look at their homes. 
 
 They heard, as the last burdened family filed 
 through the gate, a crash of falling beams and 
 thatch behind the walls. They saw a shiny, 
 snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering 
 sodden thatch. It disappeared, and there was 
 another crash, followed by a squeal. Hathi had 
 been plucking off the roofs of the huts as you 
 pluck water-lilies, and a rebounding beam had 
 
no THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 pricked him. He needed only this to unchain 
 his full strength, for of all things in the Jungle 
 the wild elephant enraged is the most wantonly 
 destructive. He kicked backward at a mud wall 
 that crumbled at the stroke, and, crumbling, 
 melted to yellow mud under the torrent of rain. 
 Then he wheeled and squealed, and tore through 
 the narrow streets, leaning against the huts right 
 and left, shivering the crazy doors, and crumpling 
 up the eaves ; while his three sons raged behind 
 as they had raged at the Sack of the Fields of 
 Bhurtpore. 
 
 "The Jungle will swallow these shells," said a 
 quiet voice in the wreckage. " It is the outer 
 wall that must lie down," and Mowgli, with the 
 rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, 
 leaped back from a wall that was settling like a 
 tired buffalo. 
 
 "All in good time," panted Hathi. " Oh, but 
 my tusks were red at Bhurtpore ! To the outer 
 wall, children ! With the head ! Together ! 
 Now ! " 
 
 The four pushed side by side ; the outer wall 
 bulged, split, and fell, and the villagers, dumb 
 with horror, saw the savage, clay-streaked heads 
 of the wreckers in the ragged gap. Then they 
 fled, houseless and foodless, down the valley, as 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE in 
 
 their village, shredded and tossed and trampled, 
 melted behind them. 
 
 A month later the place was a dimpled mound, 
 covered with soft, green young stuff; and by the 
 end of the Rains there was the roaring Jungle 
 in full blast on the spot that had been under plow 
 not six months before. 
 
MOWGLI'S SONG AGAINST PEOPLE 
 
 WILL let loose against you the fleet-footed 
 vines — 
 I will call in the Jungle to stamp out your 
 lines ! 
 The roofs shall fade before it, 
 The house-beams shall fall, 
 And the Karela, the bitter Karela, 
 Shall cover it all ! 
 
 In the gates of these your councils my 
 
 people shall sing, 
 In the doors of these your garners the 
 Bat-folk shall cling ; 
 And the snake shall be your watchman, 
 
 By a hearthstone unswept ; 
 For the Karela, the bitter Karela, 
 Shall fruit where ye slept ! 
 
 Ye shall not see my strikers ; ye shall hear them and 
 
 guess ; 
 By night, before the moon-rise, I will send for my cess, 
 And the wolf shall be your herdsman 
 
 By a landmark removed, 
 For the Karela, the bitter Karela, 
 Shall seed where ye loved ! 
 
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 113 
 
 I will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host; 
 Ye shall glean behind my reapers for the bread that is 
 lost ; 
 And the deer shall be your oxen 
 
 By a headland unfilled, 
 For the Karela, the bitter Karcla, 
 Shall leaf where ye build ! 
 
 I have untied against you the club-footed vines, 
 I have sent in the Jungle to swamp out your lines 1 
 The trees — the trees are on you ! 
 
 The house-beams shall fall, 
 ' And the Karela, the bitter Karela, 
 Shall cover you all ! 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 
 
When ye say to Tabaqui, "My Brother!" when ye call the 
 
 Hyena to meat, 
 Ye may cry the Full Truce with Jacala — the Belly that runs on 
 
 four feet. 
 
 — Jungle Law. 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 
 
 |ESPECT the aged!" 
 
 It was a thick voice — a 
 muddy voice that would have 
 made you shudder — a voice 
 like something soft breaking 
 in two. There was a quaver 
 in it, a croak and a whine. 
 " Respect the aged ! O 
 Companions of the River — respect the aged ! " 
 
 Nothing could be seen on the broad reach of 
 the river except a little fleet of square-sailed, 
 wooden-pinned barges, loaded with building- 
 stone, that had just come under the railway 
 bridge, and were driving down-stream. They put 
 their clumsy helms over to avoid the sand-bar 
 
n8 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 made by the scour of the bridge-piers, and as they 
 passed, three abreast, the horrible voice began 
 again : 
 
 " O Brahmins of the River — respect the aged 
 and infirm ! " 
 
 A boatman turned where he sat on the gun- 
 wale, lifted up his hand, said something that was 
 not a blessing, and the boats creaked on through 
 the twilight. The broad Indian river, that looked 
 more like a chain of little lakes than a stream, 
 was as smooth as glass, reflecting the sandy-red 
 sky in mid-channel, but splashed with patches of 
 yellow and dusky purple near and under the low 
 banks. Little creeks ran into the river in the wet 
 season, but now their dry mouths hung clear above 
 water-line. On the left shore, and almost under 
 the railway bridge, stood a mud-and-brick and 
 thatch-and-stick village, whose main street, full 
 of cattle going back to their byres, ran straight 
 to the river, and ended in a sort of rude brick 
 pier-head, where people who wanted to wash could 
 wade in step by step. That was the Ghaut of 
 the village of Mugger- Ghaut. 
 
 Nieht was falling fast over the fields of lentils 
 and rice and cotton in the low-lying ground 
 yearly flooded by the river ; over the reeds that 
 fringed the elbow of the bend, and the tangled 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 119 
 
 low jungle of the grazing-grounds behind the 
 still reeds. The parrots and crows, who had 
 been chattering and shouting over their evening 
 drink, had flown inland to roost, crossing the out- 
 going battalions of the flying-foxes ; and cloud 
 upon cloud of water-birds came whistling and 
 "honking" to the cover of the reed-beds. There 
 were geese, barrel-headed and black-backed, teal, 
 widgeon, mallard, and sheldrake, with curlews, 
 and here and there a flamingo. 
 
 A lumbering Adjutant-crane brought up the 
 rear, flying as though each slow stroke would be 
 his last. 
 
 " Respect the aged ! Brahmins of the River — 
 respect the aged ! " 
 
 The Adjutant half turned his head, sheered a 
 little in the direction of the voice, and landed 
 stiffly on the sand-bar below the bridge. Then 
 you saw what a ruffianly brute he really was. 
 His back view was immensely respectable, for he 
 stood nearly six feet high, and looked rather like 
 a very proper bald-headed parson. In front it 
 was different, for his Ally Sloper-like head and 
 neck had not a feather to them, and there was a 
 horrible raw-skin pouch on his neck under his 
 chin — a hold-all for the things his pickaxe beak 
 might steal. His legs were long and thin and 
 
120 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 skinny, but he moved them delicately, and looked 
 at them with pride as he preened down his ashy- 
 gray tail-feathers, glanced over the smooth of his 
 shoulder, and stiffened into " Stand at attention." 
 
 A mangy little Jackal, who had been yapping 
 hungrily on a low bluff, cocked up his ears and 
 tail, and scuttered across the shallows to join the 
 Adjutant. 
 
 He was the lowest of his caste — not that the 
 best of jackals are good for much, but this one 
 was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a 
 criminal — a cleaner-up of village rubbish-heaps, 
 desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly 
 hungry, and full of cunning that never did him 
 any good. 
 
 " Ugh ! " he said, shaking himself dolefully as 
 he landed. " May the red mange destroy the 
 dogs of this village ! I have three bites for each 
 flea upon me, and all because I looked — only 
 looked, mark you — at an old shoe in a cow-byre. 
 Can I eat mud?" He scratched himself under 
 his left ear. 
 
 " I heard," said the Adjutant, in a voice like a 
 blunt saw o-oin£ through a thick board — " I heard 
 there was a new-born puppy in that same shoe." 
 
 "To hear is one thing; to know is another," 
 said the Jackal, who had a very fair knowledge 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 121 
 
 of proverbs, picked up by listening to men round 
 the village fires of an evening. 
 
 " Quite true. So, to make sure, I took care of 
 that puppy while the dogs were busy elsewhere." 
 
 "They were very busy," said the Jackal. 
 "Well, I must not go to the village hunting for 
 scraps yet awhile. And so there truly was a 
 blind puppy in that shoe ? " 
 
 " It is here," said the Adjutant, squinting over 
 his beak at his full pouch. "A small thing, but 
 acceptable now that charity is dead in the world." 
 
 " Ahai ! The world is iron in these days," 
 wailed the Jackal. Then his restless eye caught 
 the least possible ripple on the water, and he 
 went on quickly : " Life is hard for us all, and I 
 doubt not that even our excellent master, the 
 Pride of the Ghaut and the Envy of the River — " 
 
 " A liar, a flatterer, and a Jackal were all 
 hatched out of the same egg," said the Adjutant 
 to nobody in particular ; for he was rather a fine 
 sort of a liar on his own account when he took 
 the trouble. 
 
 " Yes, the Envy of the River," the Jackal re- 
 peated, raising his voice. " Even he, I doubt 
 not, finds that since the bridge has been built 
 good food is more scarce. But on the other hand, 
 though I would by no means say this to his 
 
122 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 noble face, he is so wise and so virtuous — as I, 
 alas ! am not — " 
 
 "When the Jackal owns he is gray, how black 
 must the Jackal be ! " muttered the Adjutant. He 
 could not see what was coming. 
 
 " That his food never fails, and in conse- 
 quence — " 
 
 There was a soft grating sound, as though a 
 boat had just touched in shoal water. The Jackal 
 spun round quickly and faced (it is always best 
 to face) the creature he had been talking about. 
 It was a twenty-four-foot crocodile, cased in what 
 looked like treble-riveted boiler-plate, studded 
 and keeled and crested ; the yellow points of his 
 upper teeth just overhanging his beautifully 
 fluted lower jaw. It was the blunt-nosed Mugger 
 of Mugger- Ghaut, older than any man in the 
 village, who had given his name to the village; 
 the demon of the ford before the railway bridge 
 came — murderer, man-eater, and local fetish in 
 one. He lay with his chin in the shallows, keep- 
 ing his place by an almost invisible rippling of 
 his tail, and well the Jackal knew that one stroke 
 of that same tail in the water could carry the 
 Mugger up the bank with the rush of a steam- 
 engine. 
 
 " Auspiciously met, Protector of the Poor ! " he 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 123 
 
 fawned, backing at every word. " A delectable 
 voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of 
 sweet conversation. My tailless presumption, 
 while waiting here, led me, indeed, to speak of 
 thee. It is my hope that nothing was overheard." 
 
 Now the Jackal had spoken just to be listened 
 to, for he knew flattery was the best way of get- 
 ting things to eat, and the Mugger knew that the 
 Jackal had spoken for this end, and the Jackal 
 knew that the Mugger knew, and the Mugger 
 knew that the Jackal knew that the Mugger 
 knew, and so they were all very contented to- 
 gether. 
 
 The old brute pushed and panted and grunted 
 up the bank, mumbling, " Respect the aged and 
 infirm ! " and all the time his little eyes burned 
 like coals under the heavy, horny eyelids on the 
 top of his triangular head, as he shoved his 
 bloated barrel-body along between his crutched 
 legs. Then he settled down, and, accustomed as 
 the Jackal was to his ways, he could not help 
 starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw how 
 exactly the Mugger imitated a log adrift on the 
 bar. He had even taken pains to lie at the 
 exact angle a naturally stranded log would make 
 with the water, having regard to the current of 
 the season at the time and place. All this was 
 
124 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 only a matter of habit, of course, because the 
 Mugger had come ashore for pleasure ; but a 
 crocodile is never quite full, and if the Jackal 
 had been deceived by the likeness he would not 
 have lived to philosophize over it. 
 
 " My child, I heard nothing," said the Mugger, 
 shutting one eye. "The water was in my ears, 
 and also I was faint with hunger. Since the rail- 
 way bridge was built my people at my village 
 have ceased to love me ; and that is breaking my 
 heart." 
 
 "Ah, shame!" said the Jackal. "So noble a 
 heart, too ! But men are all alike, to my mind." 
 
 " Nay, there are very great differences indeed," 
 the Mugger answered gently. " Some are as 
 lean as boat-poles. Others again are fat as 
 young ja — dogs. Never would I causelessly 
 revile men. They are of all fashions, but the 
 long years have shown me that, one with another, 
 they are very good. Men, women, and children — 
 I have no fault to find with them. And remem- 
 ber, child, he who rebukes the World is rebuked 
 by the World." 
 
 " Flattery is worse than an empty tin can in 
 the belly. But that which we have just heard is 
 wisdom," said the Adjutant, bringing down one 
 foot. 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 125 
 
 " Consider, though, their ingratitude to this ex- 
 cellent one," began the Jackal tenderly. 
 
 " Nay, nay, not ingratitude ! " the Mugger said. 
 "They do not think for others; that is all. But 
 I have noticed, lying at my station below the 
 ford, that the stairs of the new bridge are cruelly 
 hard to climb, both for old people and young 
 children. The old, indeed, are not so worthy 
 of consideration, but I am grieved — I am truly 
 grieved — - on account of the fat children. Still, I 
 think, in a little while, when the newness of the 
 bridge has worn away, we shall see my people's 
 bare brown legs bravely splashing through the 
 ford as before. Then the old Mugger will be 
 honored again." 
 
 " But surely I saw marigold wreaths floating 
 off the edge of the Ghaut only this noon," said 
 the Adjutant. 
 
 Marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all 
 India over. 
 
 " An error — an error. It was the wife of the 
 sweetmeat-seller. She loses her eyesight year 
 by year, and cannot tell a log from me — the 
 Mugger of the Ghaut. I saw the mistake when 
 she threw the garland, for I was lying at the very 
 foot of the Ghaut, and had she taken another 
 step I might have shown her some little differ- 
 
126 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 ence. Yet she meant well, and we must con- 
 sider the spirit of the offering." 
 
 " What orood are marigold wreaths when one 
 
 o o 
 
 is on the rubbish-heap ? " said the Jackal, hunting 
 for fleas, but keeping one wary eye on his Pro- 
 tector of the Poor. 
 
 " True, but they have not yet begun to make 
 the rubbish-heap that shall carry me. Five times 
 have I seen the river draw back from the village 
 and make new land at the foot of the street. Five 
 times have I seen the village rebuilt on the 
 banks, and I shall see it built yet five times 
 more. I am no faithless, fish-hunting Gavial, I, 
 at Kasi to-day and Prayag to-morrow, as the 
 saying is, but the true and constant watcher of 
 the ford. It is not for nothing, child, that the 
 village bears my name, and ' he who watches 
 long,' as the saying is, 'shall at last have his 
 reward.' " 
 
 "/have watched long — very long — nearly all 
 my life, and my reward has been bites and blows," 
 said the Jackal. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! ho ! " roared the Adjutant. 
 
 " In August was the Jackal born ; 
 The Rains fell in September ; 
 ' Now such a fearful flood as this,' 
 Says he, ' I can't remember ! ' " 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 127 
 
 There is one very unpleasant peculiarity about 
 the Adjutant. At uncertain times he suffers 
 from acute attacks of the fidgets or cramp in his 
 legs, and though he is more virtuous to behold 
 than any of the cranes, who are all immensely 
 respectable, he flies off into wild, cripple-stilt 
 war-dances, half opening his wings and bobbing 
 his bald head up and down ; while for reasons 
 best known to himself he is very careful to time 
 his worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. At 
 the last word of his song he came to attention 
 again, ten times adjutaunter than before. 
 
 The Jackal winced, though he was full three 
 seasons old, but you cannot resent an insult from 
 a person with a beak a yard long, and the power 
 of driving it like a javelin. The Adjutant was 
 a most notorious coward, but the Jackal was 
 worse. 
 
 "We must live before we can learn," said the 
 Mugger, " and there is this to say : Little jackals 
 are very common, child, but such a mugger as I am 
 is not common. For all that, I am not proud, since 
 pride is destruction ; but take notice, it is Fate, 
 and against his Fate no one who swims or walks 
 or runs should say anything at all. I am well 
 contented with Fate. With good luck, a keen 
 eye, and the custom of considering whether a 
 
128 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 creek or a backwater has an outlet to it ere you 
 ascend, much may be done." 
 
 " Once I heard that even the Protector of the 
 Poor made a mistake," said the Jackal viciously. 
 
 "True; but there my Fate helped me. It 
 was before I had come to my full growth — be- 
 fore the last famine but three (by the Right and 
 Left of Gunga, how full used the streams to be in 
 those days !). Yes, I was young and unthinking, 
 and when the flood came, who so pleased as I ? 
 A little made me very happy then. The village 
 was deep in flood, and I swam above the Ghaut 
 and went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and 
 they were deep in good mud. I remember also 
 a pair of bracelets (glass they were, and troubled 
 me not a little) that I found that evening. Yes, 
 glass bracelets ; and, if my memory serves me 
 well, a shoe. I should have shaken off both 
 shoes, but I was hungry. I learned better later. 
 Yes. And so I fed and rested me ; but when I 
 was ready to go to the river again the flood had 
 fallen, and I walked through the mud of the main 
 street. Who but I ? Came out all my people, 
 priests and women and children, and I looked 
 upon them with benevolence. The mud is not a 
 good place to fight in. Said a boatman, ' Get 
 axes and kill him, for he is the Mugger of the 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 129 
 
 ford.' ' Not so,' said the Brahmin. ' Look, he is 
 driving the flood before him ! He is the godling 
 of the village.' Then they threw many flowers 
 at me, and by happy thought one led a goat 
 across the road." 
 
 " How good — how very good is goat! " said 
 the Jackal. 
 
 "Hairy — too hairy, and when found in the 
 water more than likely to hide a cross-shaped 
 hook. But that goat I accepted, and went down 
 to the Ghaut in great honor. Later, my Fate 
 sent me the boatman who had desired to cut off 
 my tail with an axe. His boat grounded upon 
 an old shoal which you would not remember." 
 
 " We are not all jackals here," said the Adju- 
 tant. "Was it the shoal made where the stone- 
 boats sank in the year of the great drouth — a 
 lone shoal that lasted three floods ? " 
 
 " There were two," said the Mugger; " an up- 
 per and a lower shoal." 
 
 " Ay, I forgot. A channel divided them, and 
 later dried up again," said the Adjutant, who 
 prided himself on his memory. 
 
 " On the lower shoal my well-wisher's craft 
 grounded. He was sleeping in the bows, and, 
 half awake, leaped over to his waist — no, it was 
 no more than to his knees — to push off. His 
 
i 3 o THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 empty boat went on and touched again below the 
 next reach, as the river ran then. I followed, 
 because I knew men would come out to drag it 
 ashore." 
 
 " And did they do so ? " said the Jackal, a little 
 awe-stricken. This was hunting on a scale that 
 impressed him. 
 
 "There and lower down they did. I went no 
 further, but that gave me three in one day — well- 
 fed manjis (boatmen) all, and, except in the case 
 of the last (then I was careless), never a cry to 
 warn those on the bank." 
 
 "Ah, noble sport! But what cleverness and 
 great judgment it requires ! " said the Jackal. 
 
 " Not cleverness, child, but only thought. A 
 little thought in life is like salt upon rice, as the 
 boatmen say, and I have thought deeply always. 
 The Gavial, my cousin, the fish-eater, has told me 
 how hard it is for him to follow his fish, and how 
 one fish differs from the other, and how he must 
 know them all, both together and apart. I say 
 that is wisdom ; but, on the other hand, my cousin, 
 the Gavial, lives among his people. My people 
 do not swim in companies, with their mouths out 
 of the water, as Rewa does ; nor do they con- 
 stantly rise to the surface of the water, and turn 
 over on their sides, like Mohoo and little Chapta ; 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 131 
 
 nor do they gather in shoals after flood, like 
 Batchua and Chilwa." 
 
 "All are very good eating," said the Adjutant, 
 clattering his beak. 
 
 " So my cousin says, and makes a great to-do 
 over hunting them, but they do not climb the 
 banks to escape his sharp nose. My people are 
 otherwise. Their life is on the land, in the houses, 
 among the cattle. I must know what they do, 
 and what they are about to do ; and, adding the 
 tail to the trunk, as the saying is, I make up the 
 whole elephant. Is there a green branch and an 
 iron ring hanging over a doorway? The old 
 Mugger knows that a boy has been born in that 
 house, and must some day come down to the 
 Ghaut to play. Is a maiden to be married ? The 
 old Mugger knows, for he sees the men carry 
 gifts back and forth ; and she, too, comes down 
 to the Ghaut to bathe before her wedding, and — 
 he is there. Has the river changed its channel, 
 and made new land where there was only sand 
 before? The Mugger knows." 
 
 "Now, of what use is that knowledge?" said 
 the Jackal. " The river has shifted even in my 
 little life." Indian rivers are nearly always mov- 
 ing about in their beds, and will shift, sometimes, 
 as much as two or three miles in a season, drown- 
 
132 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 ing the fields on one bank, and spreading good 
 silt on the other. 
 
 " There is no knowledge so useful," said the 
 Mugger, "for new land means new quarrels. 
 The Mugger knows. Oho ! the Mugger knows. 
 As soon as the water has drained off, he creeps 
 up the little creeks that men think would not hide 
 a dog, and there he waits. Presently comes a 
 farmer saying he will plant cucumbers here, and 
 melons there, in the new land that the river has 
 given him. He feels the good mud with his bare 
 toes. Anon comes another, saying he will put 
 onions, and carrots, and sugar-cane in such and 
 such places. They meet as boats adrift meet, 
 and each rolls his eye at the other under the big 
 blue turban. The old Mugger sees and hears. 
 Each calls the other ' Brother,' and they go to 
 mark out the boundaries of the new land. The 
 Mugger hurries with them from point to point, 
 shuffling very low through the mud. Now they 
 begin to quarrel ! Now they say hot words ! 
 Now they pull turbans ! Now they lift up their 
 lathis (clubs), and, at last, one falls backward into 
 the mud, and the other runs away. When he 
 comes back the dispute is settled, as the iron- 
 bound bamboo of the loser witnesses. Yet they 
 are not grateful to the Mugger. No, they cry 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 133 
 
 ' Murder ! ' and their families fight with sticks, 
 twenty a side. My people are good people — 
 upland Jats — Malwais of the Bet. They do not 
 give blows for sport, and, when the fight is done, 
 the old Mugger waits far down the river, out of 
 sight of the village, behind the kikar-scvuh yon- 
 der. Then come they down, my broad-shouldered 
 Jats — eight or nine together under the stars, 
 bearing the dead man upon a bed. They are old 
 men with gray beards, and voices as deep as mine. 
 They light a little fire — ah ! how well I know 
 that fire ! — and they drink tobacco, and they nod 
 their heads together forward in a ring, or side- 
 ways toward the dead man upon the bank. They 
 say the English Law will come with a rope for 
 this matter, and that such a man's family will be 
 ashamed, because such a man must be hanged in 
 the great square of the Jail. Then say the friends 
 of the dead, ' Let him hang ! ' and the talk is all 
 to do over again — once, twice, twenty times in 
 the long night. Then says one, at last, ' The 
 fight was a fair fight. Let us take blood-money, 
 a little more than is offered by the slayer, and 
 we will say no more about it.' Then do they 
 haggle over the blood- money, for the dead was a 
 strong man, leaving many sons. Yet before am- 
 ratvela (sunrise) they put the fire to him a little, 
 
134 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 as the custom is, and the dead man comes to me, 
 and he says no more about it. Aha ! my children, 
 the Mugger knows — the Mugger knows — and 
 my Malwah Jats are a good people ! " 
 
 "They are too close — too narrow in the hand 
 for my crop," croaked the Adjutant. "They 
 waste not the polish on the cow's horn, as the 
 saying is ; and, again, who can glean after a 
 Malwai ? " 
 
 "Ah, I — glean — them" said the Mugger. 
 
 " Now, in Calcutta of the South, in the old 
 days," the Adjutant went on, " everything was 
 thrown into the streets, and we picked and chose. 
 Those were dainty seasons. But to-day they 
 keep their streets as clean as the outside of an 
 egg, and my people fly away- To be clean is 
 one thing ; to dust, sweep, and sprinkle seven 
 times a day wearies the very Gods themselves." 
 
 "There was a down-country jackal had it from 
 a brother, who told me, that in Calcutta of the 
 South all the jackals were as fat as otters in 
 the Rains," said the Jackal, his mouth watering at 
 the bare thought of it. 
 
 " Ah, but the white-faces are there — the Eng- 
 lish, and they bring dogs from somewhere down 
 the river, in boats — big fat dogs — to keep those 
 same jackals lean," said the Adjutant. 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 135 
 
 " They are, then, as hard-hearted as these peo- 
 ple ? I might have known. Neither earth, sky, 
 nor water shows charity to a jackal. I saw the 
 tents of a white-face last season, after the Rains, 
 and I also took a new yellow bridle to eat. The 
 white-faces do not dress their leather in the pro- 
 per way. It made me very sick." 
 
 "That was better than my case," said the Ad- 
 jutant. " When I was in my third season, a 
 young and a bold bird, I went down to the river 
 where the big boats come in. The boats of the 
 English are thrice as big as this village." 
 
 " He has been as far as Delhi, and says all the 
 people there walk on their heads," muttered the 
 Jackal. The Mugger opened his left eye, and 
 looked keenly at the Adjutant. 
 
 "It is true," the big bird insisted. "A liar 
 only lies when he hopes to be believed. No one 
 who had not seen those boats could believe this 
 truth." 
 
 " That is more reasonable," said the Mugger. 
 "And then?" 
 
 " From the insides of this boat they were taking 
 out great pieces of white stuff, which, in a little 
 while, turned to water. Much split off, and fell 
 about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put 
 into a house with thick walls. But a boatman, 
 
136 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 who laughed, took a piece no larger than a small 
 dog, and threw it to me. I — all my people — 
 swallow without reflection, and that piece I swal- 
 lowed as is our custom. Immediately I was af- 
 flicted with an excessive cold which, beginning in 
 my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, 
 and deprived me even of speech, while the boat- 
 men laughed at me. Never have I felt such cold. 
 I danced in my grief and amazement till I could 
 recover my breath, and then I danced and cried 
 out against the falseness of this world ; and the 
 boatmen derided me till they fell down. The 
 chief wonder of the matter, setting aside that 
 marvelous coldness, was that there was nothing 
 at all in my crop when I had finished my lament- 
 ings ! 
 
 The Adjutant had done his very best to de- 
 scribe his feelings after swallowing a seven-pound 
 lump of Wenham Lake ice, off an American ice- 
 ship, in the days before Calcutta made her ice by 
 machinery; but as he did not know what ice was, 
 and as the Mugger and the Jackal knew rather 
 less, the tale missed fire. 
 
 " Anything," said the Mugger, shutting his left 
 eye again — " anything is possible that comes out 
 of a boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut. My 
 village is not a small one." 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 137 
 
 There was a whistle overhead on the bridge, 
 and the Delhi Mail slid across, all the carriages 
 gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully 
 following along the river. It clanked away into 
 the dark again ; but the Mugger and the Jackal 
 were so well used to it that they never turned 
 their heads. 
 
 " Is that anything less wonderful than a boat 
 thrice the size of Mugger- Ghaut ? " said the bird, 
 looking up. 
 
 " I saw that built, child. Stone by stone I saw 
 the bridge-piers rise, and when the men fell off 
 (they were wondrous sure-footed for the most 
 part — but when they fell) I was ready. After 
 the first pier was made they never thought to look 
 down the stream for the body to burn. There, 
 again, I saved much trouble. There was nothing 
 strange in the building of the bridge," said the 
 Mugger. 
 
 " But that which goes across, pulling the roofed 
 carts! That is strange," the Adjutant repeated. 
 
 " It is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. 
 Some day it will not be able to keep its foothold 
 up yonder, and will fall as the men did. The old 
 Mugger will then be ready." 
 
 The Jackal looked at the Adjutant, and the 
 Adjutant looked at the Jackal. If there was~one 
 
138 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 thing they were more certain of than another, it 
 was that the engine was everything in the wide 
 world except a bullock. The Jackal had watched 
 it time and again from the aloe- hedges by the side 
 of the line, and the Adjutant had seen engines 
 since the first locomotive ran in India. But the 
 Mugger had only looked up at the thing from 
 below, where the brass dome seemed rather like 
 a bullock's hump. 
 
 " M — yes, a new kind of bullock," the Mugger 
 repeated ponderously, to make himself quite sure 
 in his own mind ; and " Certainly it is a bullock," 
 said the Jackal. 
 
 " And again it might be — " began the Mugger 
 pettishly. 
 
 "Certainly — most certainly," said the Jackal, 
 without waiting for the other to finish. 
 
 "What?" said the Mua-aer an aril v, for he 
 could feel that the others knew more than he 
 did. " What might it be ? I never finished my 
 words. You said it was a bullock." 
 
 " It is anything the Protector of the Poor 
 pleases. I am his servant — not the servant of 
 the thing that crosses the river." 
 
 " Whatever it is, it is white-face work," said 
 the Adjutant; "and for my own part, I would 
 not lie out upon a place so near to it as this bar." 
 
 "You do not know the Enalish as I do," said 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 139 
 
 the Mugger. " There was a white-face here when 
 the bridge was built, and he would take a boat in 
 the evenings and shuffle with his feet on the bot- 
 tom-boards, and whisper : ' Is he here ? Is he 
 there ? Bring me my gun.' I could hear him be- 
 fore I could see him — each sound that he made 
 — creaking and puffing and rattling his gun, up 
 and down the river. As surely as I had picked 
 up one of his workmen, and thus saved great ex- 
 pense in wood for the burning, so surely would 
 he come down to the Ghaut, and shout in a loud 
 voice that he would hunt me, and rid the river of 
 me — the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut ! Me ! Chil- 
 dren, I have swum under the bottom of his boat 
 for hour after hour, and heard him fire his gun at 
 logs ; and when I was well sure he was wearied, 
 I have risen by his side and snapped my jaws in 
 his face. When the bridge was finished he went 
 away. All the English hunt in that fashion, ex- 
 cept when they are hunted." 
 
 "Who hunts the white-faces?" yapped the 
 Jackal excitedly. 
 
 " No one now, but I have hunted them in my 
 time." 
 
 " I remember a little of that Hunting. I was 
 young then," said the Adjutant, clattering his beak 
 significantly. 
 
 " I was well established here. My village was 
 
140 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 being builded for the third time, as I remember, 
 when my cousin, the Gavial, brought me word of 
 rich waters above Benares. At first I would not 
 go, for my cousin, who is a fish-eater, does not 
 always know the good from the bad ; but I heard 
 my people talking in the evenings, and what they 
 said made me certain." 
 
 " And what did they say? " the Jackal asked. 
 
 " They said enough to make me, the Mugger 
 of Mugger- Ghaut, leave water and take to my 
 feet. I went by night, using the littlest streams 
 as they served me ; but it was the beginning of 
 the hot weather and all streams were low. I 
 crossed dusty roads ; I went through tall grass ; 
 I climbed hills in the moonlight. Even rocks did 
 I climb, children — consider this well. I crossed 
 the tail of Sirhind, the waterless, before I could 
 find the set of the little rivers that flow Gunga- 
 ward. I was a month's journey from my own 
 people and the river that I knew. That was very 
 marvelous ! " 
 
 "What food on the way?" said the Jackal, 
 who kept his soul in his little stomach, and was 
 not a bit impressed by the Mugger's land travels. 
 
 "That which I could find — cousin" said the 
 Mugger slowly, dragging each word. 
 
 Now you do not call a man a cousin in Indi;; 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 141 
 
 unless you think you can establish some kind of 
 blood-relationship, and as it is only in old fairy- 
 tales that the Mugger ever marries a jackal, the 
 Jackal knew for what reason he had been sud- 
 denly lifted into the Mugger's family circle. If 
 they had been alone he would not have cared, 
 but the Adjutant's eyes twinkled with mirth at 
 the ugly jest. 
 
 " Assuredly, Father, I might have known," said 
 the Jackal. A Mugger does not care to be called 
 a father of jackals, and the Mugger of Mugger- 
 Ghaut said as much — and a great deal more 
 which there is no use in repeating here. 
 
 "The Protector of the Poor has claimed kin- 
 ship. How can I remember the precise degree ? 
 Moreover, we eat the- same food. He has said 
 it," was the Jackal's reply. 
 
 That made matters rather worse, for what the 
 Jackal hinted at was that the Mugger must have 
 eaten his food on that land march fresh and 
 fresh every day, instead of keeping it by him till 
 it was in a fit and proper condition, as every 
 self-respecting mugger and most wild beasts do 
 when they can. Indeed, one of the worst terms 
 of contempt along the River-bed is " eater of 
 fresh meat." It is nearly as bad as calling a man 
 a cannibal. 
 
142 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 "That food was eaten thirty seasons ago," 
 said the Adjutant quietly. " If we talk for thirty 
 seasons more it will never come back. Tell us, 
 now, what happened when the good waters were 
 reached after thy most wonderful land journey. 
 If we listened to the howling of every jackal the 
 business of the town would stop, as the saying is." 
 
 The Mugger must have been grateful for the 
 interruption, because he went on, with a rush : 
 
 " By the Right and Left of Gunga ! when I 
 came there never did I see such waters ! " 
 
 " Were they better, then, than the big flood of 
 last season ? " said the Jackal. 
 
 " Better ! That flood was no more than comes 
 every five years — a handful of drowned strangers, 
 some chickens, and a dead bullock in muddy 
 water with cross-currents. But the season I 
 think of, the river was low, smooth, and even, 
 and, as the Gavial had warned me, the dead En^- 
 lish came down, touching each other. I got my 
 girth in that season — my girth and my depth. 
 From Agra, by Etawah and the broad waters by 
 Allahabad—" 
 
 " Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the 
 fort at Allahabad ! " said the Adjutant. " They 
 came in there like widgeon to the reeds, and 
 round and round they swung — thus ! " 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 143 
 
 He went off into his horrible dance again, 
 while the Jackal looked on enviously. He natu- 
 rally could not remember the terrible year of the 
 Mutiny they were talking about. The Mugger 
 continued : 
 
 "Yes, by Allahabad one lay still in the slack- 
 water and let twenty go by to pick one ; and, 
 above all, the English were not cumbered with 
 jewelry and nose-rings and anklets as my women 
 are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to 
 end with a rope for necklace, as the saying is. 
 All the muggers of all the rivers grew fat then, 
 but it was my Fate to be fatter than them all. 
 The news was that the English were being 
 hunted into the rivers, and by the Right and Left 
 of Gunga ! we believed it was true. So far as I 
 went south I believed it to be true ; and I went 
 down-stream beyond Monghyr and the tombs 
 that look over the river." 
 
 " I know that place," said the Adjutant. "Since 
 those days Monghyr is a lost city. Very few live 
 there now." 
 
 "Thereafter I worked up-stream very slowly 
 and lazily, and a little above Monghyr there came 
 down a boatful of white-faces — alive! They 
 were, as I remember, women, lying under a cloth 
 spread over sticks, and crying aloud. There was 
 
144 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 never a gun fired at us the watchers of the fords 
 in those days. All the guns were busy elsewhere. 
 We could hear them day and night inland, com- 
 ing and going as the wind shifted. I rose up 
 full before the boat, because I had never seen 
 white-faces alive, though I knew them well — 
 otherwise. A naked white child kneeled by the 
 side of the boat, and, stooping over, must needs 
 try to trail his hands in the river. It is a pretty 
 thine to see how a child loves running water. 
 I had fed that day, but there was yet a little 
 unfilled space within me. Still, it was for sport 
 and not for food that I rose at the child's hands. 
 They were so clear a mark that I did not even 
 look when I closed ; but they were so small that 
 though my jaws rang true — I am sure of that — 
 the child drew them up swiftly, unhurt. They 
 must have passed between tooth and tooth — 
 those small white hands. I should have caught 
 him crosswise at the elbows ; but, as I said, it 
 was only for sport and desire to see new things 
 that I rose at all. They cried out one after an- 
 other in the boat, and presently I rose again to 
 watch them. Their boat was too heavy to push 
 over. They were only women, but he who trusts 
 a woman will walk on duckweed in a pool, as the 
 saying is : and by the Right and Left of Gunga, 
 that is truth ! " 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 145 
 
 " Once a woman gave me some dried skin from 
 a fish," said the Jackal. " I had hoped to get her 
 baby, but horse-food is better than the kick of a 
 horse, as the saying is. What did thy woman 
 do?" 
 
 " She fired at me with a short gun of a kind I 
 have never seen before or since. Five times, one 
 after another" (the Mugger must have met with 
 an old-fashioned revolver) ; "and I stayed open- 
 mouthed and gaping, my head in the smoke. 
 Never did I see such a thing. Five times, as 
 swiftly as I wave my tail — thus ! " 
 
 The Jackal, who had been growing more and 
 more interested in the story, had just time to leap 
 back as the long tail swung by like a scythe. 
 
 " Not before the fifth shot," said the Mugger, 
 as though he had never dreamed of stunning one 
 of his listeners — "not before the fifth shot did I 
 sink, and I rose in time to hear a boatman telling 
 all those white women that I was most certainly 
 dead. One bullet had gone under a neckplate 
 of mine. I know not if it is there still, for the 
 reason I cannot turn my head. Look and see, 
 child. It will show that my tale is true." 
 
 " I ?" said the Jackal. "Shall an eater of old 
 shoes, a bone-cracker, presume to doubt the word 
 of the Envy of the River ? May my tail be bit- 
 
H6 the second jungle book 
 
 ten off by blind puppies if the shadow of such 
 a thought has crossed my humble mind. The 
 Protector of the Poor has condescended to inform 
 me, his slave, that once in his life he has been 
 wounded by a woman. That is sufficient, and I 
 will tell the tale to all my children, asking for no 
 prooi. 
 
 " Over-much civility is sometimes no better 
 than over-much discourtesy, for, as the saying is, 
 one can choke a guest with curds. I do not de- 
 sire that any children of thine should know that 
 the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut took his only 
 wound from a woman. They will have much 
 else to think of if they get their meat as miser- 
 ably as does their father." 
 
 " It is forgotten long ago ! It was never said ! 
 There never was a white woman ! There was no 
 boat! Nothing whatever happened at all." 
 
 The Jackal waved his brush to show how com- 
 pletely everything was wiped out of his memory, 
 and sat down with an air. 
 
 " Indeed, very many things happened," said the 
 Mugger, beaten in his second attempt that night 
 to get the better of his friend. (Neither bore 
 malice, however. Eat and be eaten was fair law 
 along the river, and the Jackal came in for his 
 share of plunder when the Mugger had finished 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 147 
 
 a meal.) " I left that boat and went up-stream, 
 and, when I had reached Arrah and the back- 
 waters behind it, there were no more dead Eng- 
 lish. The river was empty for a while. Then 
 came one or two dead, in red coats, not English, 
 but of one kind all — Hindus and Purbeeahs — 
 then five and six abreast, and at last, from Arrah 
 to the North beyond Agra, it was as though 
 whole villages had walked into the water. They 
 came out of little creeks one after another, as the 
 logs come down in the Rains. When the river 
 rose they rose also in companies from the shoals 
 they had rested upon ; and the falling flood 
 draofaed them with it across the fields and through 
 the jungle by the long hair. All night, too, 
 going North, I heard the guns, and by day the 
 shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise 
 which a heavy cart-wheel makes on sand under 
 water ; and every ripple brought more dead. At 
 last even I was afraid, for I said : ' If this thing 
 happen to men how shall the Mugger of Mugger- 
 Ghaut escape?' There were boats, too, that 
 came up behind me without sails, burning con- 
 tinually, as the cotton-boats sometimes burn, but 
 never sinking." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Adjutant. " Boats like those 
 come to Calcutta of the South. Thev are tall 
 
148 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 and black, they beat up the water behind them 
 with a tail, and they — " 
 
 "Are thrice as big as my village. My boats 
 were low and white ; they beat up the water on 
 either side of them, and were no larger than 
 the boats of one who speaks truth should be. 
 They made me very afraid, and I left water and 
 went back to this my river, hiding by day and 
 walking by night, when I could not find little 
 streams to help me. I came to my village again, 
 but I did not hope to see any of my people there. 
 Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, 
 and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as 
 their own cattle." 
 
 "Was there still good food in the river? " said 
 the Jackal. 
 
 " More than I had any desire for. Even I — 
 and I do not eat mud — even I was tired, and, as 
 I remember, a little frightened of this constant 
 coming down of the silent ones. I heard my 
 people say in my village that all the English 
 were dead ; but those that came, face -down, with 
 the current were not English, as my people saw. 
 Then my people said that it was best to say noth- 
 ing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. 
 After a long time the river cleared, and those 
 that came down it had been clearly drowned by 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 149 
 
 the floods, as I could well see ; and, though it 
 was not so easy then to get food, I was heartily 
 glad of it. A little killing here and there is no 
 bad thing — but even the Mugger is sometimes 
 satisfied, as the saying is." 
 
 " Marvelous ! Most truly marvelous ! " said 
 the Jackal. " I am become fat through merely 
 hearing - about so much g-ood eating. And after- 
 ward what, if it be permitted to ask, did the Pro- 
 tector of the Poor do ? " 
 
 " I said to myself — and by the Right and Left 
 of Gunga! I locked my jaws on that vow — I said 
 I would never go roving any more. So I lived 
 by the Ghaut, very close to my own people, and 
 I watched over them year after year ; and they 
 loved me so much that they threw marigold 
 wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. 
 Yes, and my Fate has been very kind to me, and 
 the river is good enough to respect my poor and 
 infirm presence ; only — " 
 
 " No one is all happy from his beak to his tail," 
 said the Adjutant sympathetically. " What does 
 the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut need more? " 
 
 " That little white child which I did not get," 
 said the Mugger, with a deep sigh. " He was 
 very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old 
 now, but before I die it is my desire to try one 
 
ISO THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 new thing. It is true they are a heavy-footed, 
 noisy, and foolish people, and the sport would be 
 small, but I remember the old days above Benares, 
 and, if the child lives, he will remember still. It 
 may be he goes up and down the bank of some 
 river, telling how he once passed his hands be- 
 tween the teeth of the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut, 
 and lived to make a tale of it. My Fate has been 
 very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my 
 dreams — the thought of the little white child in 
 the bows of that boat." He yawned, and closed 
 his jaws. "And now I will rest and think. Keep 
 silent, my children, and respect the aged." 
 
 He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the 
 sand-bar, while the Jackal drew back with the 
 Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on 
 the end nearest the railway bridge. 
 
 " That was a pleasant and profitable life," he 
 grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird who 
 towered above him. "And not once, mark you, 
 did he think fit to tell me where a morsel mio-ht 
 have been left along the banks. Yet I have told 
 Aim a hundred times of good things wallowing 
 down-stream. How true is the saying, ' All the 
 world forgets the Jackal and the Barber when the 
 news has been told ! ' Now he is going to sleep ! 
 A rrh ! " 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 151 
 
 " How can a Jackal hunt with a Mugger ? " 
 said the Adjutant coolly. " Big thief and 
 little thief; it is easy to say who gets the pick- 
 ings." 
 
 The Jackal turned, whining impatiently, and 
 was going to curl himself up under the tree-trunk, 
 when suddenly he cowered, and looked up through 
 the draggled branches at the bridge almost above 
 his head. 
 
 " What now ? " said the Adjutant, opening his 
 wings uneasily. 
 
 " Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to 
 them, but they are not looking for us — those two 
 men." 
 
 " Men, is it ? My office protects me. All In- 
 dia knows I am holy." The Adjutant, being a 
 first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he 
 pleases, and so this one never flinched. 
 
 " I am not worth a blow from anything greater 
 than an old shoe," said the Jackal, and listened 
 again. " Hark to that footfall ! " he went on. 
 " That was no country leather, but the shod foot 
 of a white-face. Listen again ! Iron hits iron 
 up there ! It is a gun ! Friend, those heavy- 
 footed, foolish English are coming to speak with 
 the Mugger." 
 
 " Warn him, then. He was called Protector 
 
152 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 of the Poor by some one not unlike a starving 
 Jackal but a little time ago." 
 
 " Let my cousin protect his own hide. He has 
 told me again and again there is nothing to fear 
 from the white-faces. They must be white-faces. 
 Not a villager of Muster- Ghaut would dare to 
 come after him. See, I said it was a gun ! Now, 
 with good luck, we shall feed before daylight. 
 He cannot hear well out of water, and — this time 
 it is not a woman! " 
 
 A shiny barrel glittered for a minute in the 
 moonlight on the girders. The Mugger was ly- 
 ing on the sand-bar as still as his own shadow, 
 his fore feet spread out a little, his head dropped 
 between them, snoring like a — mugger. 
 
 A voice on the bridge whispered : " It 's an odd 
 shot — straight down almost — but as safe as 
 houses. Better try behind the neck. Golly! what 
 a brute ! The villagers will be wild if he 's shot, 
 though. He 's thedeota (godling) of these parts." 
 
 "Don't care a rap," another voice answered; 
 " he took about fifteen of my best coolies while 
 the bridge was building, and it 's time he was put 
 a stop to. I 've been after him in a boat for weeks. 
 Stand by with the Martini as soon as I 've given 
 him both barrels of this." 
 
 " Mind the kick, then. A double four-bore 's 
 no joke." 
 
THE UNDERTAKERS 153 
 
 " That 's for him to decide. Here goes ! " 
 
 There was a roar like the sound of a small can- 
 non (the biggest sort of elephant-rifle is not very 
 different from some artillery), and a double streak 
 of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a Mar- 
 tini, whose long bullet makes nothing of a croco- 
 dile's plates. But the explosive bullets did the 
 work. One of them struck just behind the Mug- 
 ger's neck, a hand's breadth to the left of the back- 
 bone, while the other burst a little lower down, 
 at the beginning of the tail. In ninety-nine cases 
 out of a hundred a mortally wounded crocodile 
 can scramble to deep water and get away ; 
 but the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut was literally 
 broken into three pieces. He hardly moved his 
 head before the life went out of him, and he lay 
 as flat as the Jackal. 
 
 " Thunder and lightning ! Lightning and thun- 
 der ! " said that miserable little beast. "Has the 
 thing that pulls the covered carts over the bridge 
 tumbled at last ? " 
 
 " It is no more than a gun," said the Adjutant, 
 though his very tail-feathers quivered. " Nothing 
 more than a gun. He is certainly dead. Here 
 come the white-faces." 
 
 The two Englishmen had hurried down from 
 the bridge and across to the sand-bar, where they 
 
154 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 stood admiring the length of the Mugger. Then 
 a native with an axe cut off the big head, and 
 four men dragged it across the spit. 
 
 " The last time that I had my hand in a Mug- 
 ger's mouth," said one of the Englishmen, stoop- 
 ing down (he was the man who had built the 
 bridge), " it was when I was about five years old 
 — coming down the river by boat to Monghyr. I 
 was a Mutiny baby, as they call it. Poor mother 
 was in the boat, too, and she often told me how 
 she fired dad's old pistol at the beast's head." 
 
 " Well, you 've certainly had your revenge on 
 the chief of the clan — even if the gun has made 
 your nose bleed. Hi, you boatman ! Haul that 
 head up the bank, and we '11 boil it for the skull. 
 The skin 's too knocked about to keep. Come 
 along to bed now. This was worth sitting up all 
 night for, was n't it ? " 
 
 Curiously enough, the Jackal and the Adjutant 
 made the very same remark not three minutes 
 after the men had left. 
 
 psr- 
 
 Z — "I 
 
A RIPPLE SONG 
 
 NCE a ripple came to land 
 
 In the golden sunset burning — 
 Lapped against a maiden's hand, 
 By the ford returning. 
 
 Dainty foot and gentle breast — 
 Here, across, be glad and rest. 
 " Maiden, wait" the ripple saith; 
 " Wait awhile, for I am 
 Death/" 
 
 "Where my lover calls I go — 
 Shame it were to treat him coldly - 
 
 'T was a fish that circled so, 
 Turning over boldly." 
 
 Dainty foot and tender heart, 
 Wait the loaded ferry -cart. 
 " Wait, ah, wait I " the ripple saith ; 
 " Maiden, wait, for I am Death ! " 
 
156 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " When my lover calls I haste — 
 Dame Disdain was never wedded ! " 
 
 Ripple-ripple round her waist, 
 Clear the current eddied. 
 
 Foolish heart and faithful hand, 
 Little feet that touched no land. 
 Far away the ripple sped, 
 Ripple — ripple — running red / 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 
 
These are the Four that are never content, that have never been 
 
 filled since the Dews began — 
 Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the Kite, and the hands of the 
 
 Ape, and the Eyes of Man. 
 
 —Jungle Saying. 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 
 
 AA, the big Rock Python, 
 had changed his skin for 
 perhaps the two hundredth 
 time since his birth ; and 
 Mowgli, who never forgot 
 that he owed his life to 
 Kaa for a night's work at 
 Cold Lairs, which you may 
 perhaps remember, went to 
 congratulate him. Skin- 
 changing always makes a snake moody and de- 
 pressed till the new skin begins to shine and 
 look beautiful. Kaa never made fun of Mowgli 
 any more, but accepted him, as the other Jungle 
 People did, for the Master of the Jungle, and 
 brought him all the news that a python of his 
 
160 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 size would naturally hear. What Kaa did not 
 know about the Middle Jungle, as they call it, — 
 the life that runs close to the earth or under it, 
 the boulder, burrow, and the tree-bole life, — 
 might have been written upon the smallest of his 
 scales. 
 
 That afternoon Mowgli was sitting in the cir- 
 cle of Kaa's great coils, fingering the flaked and 
 broken old skin that lay all looped and twisted 
 among the rocks just as Kaa had left it. Kaa 
 had very courteously packed himself under Mow- 
 gli's broad, bare shoulders, so that the boy was 
 really resting in a living arm-chair. 
 
 " Even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect," 
 said Mowgli, under his breath, playing with the 
 old skin. "Strange to see the covering of one's 
 own head at one's own feet ! " 
 
 "Aye, but I lack feet," said Kaa; "and since 
 this is the custom of all my people, I do not find 
 it strange. Does thy skin never feel old and 
 harsh ? " 
 
 " Then go I and wash, Flathead; but, it is true, 
 in the great heats I have wished I could slouch 
 my skin without pain, and run skinless." 
 
 " I wash, and also I take off my skin. How 
 looks the new coat? " 
 
 Mowgli ran his hand down the diagonal check- 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 161 
 
 erings of the immense back. " The Turtle is hard- 
 er-backed, but not so gay." he said judgmatically. 
 " The Frog, my name-bearer, is more gay, but not 
 so hard. It is very beautiful to see — like the 
 mottling in the mouth of a lily." 
 
 " It needs water. A new skin never comes 
 to full color before the first bath. Let us go 
 bathe." 
 
 "I will carry thee," said Mowgli ; and he 
 stooped down, laughing, to lift the middle section 
 of Kaa's great body, just where the barrel was 
 thickest. A man might just as well have tried to 
 heave up a two-foot water-main ; and Kaa lay 
 still, puffing with quiet amusement. Then the 
 regular evening game began — the boy in the 
 flush of his great strength, and the Python 
 in his sumptuous new skin, standing up one 
 against the other for a wrestling-match — a trial 
 of eye and strength. Of course, Kaa could have 
 crushed a dozen Mowglis if he had let himself go ; 
 but he played carefully, and never loosed one 
 tenth of his power. Ever since Mowgli was strong 
 enough to endure a little rough handling, Kaa had 
 taught him this game, and it suppled his limbs as 
 nothing else could. Sometimes Mowgli would 
 stand lapped almost to his throat in Kaa's shift- 
 ing coils, striving to get one arm free and catch 
 
1 62 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 him by the throat. Then Kaa would give way 
 limply, and Mowgli, with both quick-moving feet, 
 would try to cramp the purchase of that huge tail 
 as it flung backward feeling for a rock or a stump. 
 They would rock to and fro, head to head, each 
 waiting for his chance, till the beautiful, statue- 
 like group melted in a whirl of black-and-yellow 
 coils and struggling legs and arms, to rise up 
 again and again. " Now ! now ! now ! " said 
 Kaa, making feints with his head that even Mow- 
 gli's quick hand could not turn aside. " Look ! I 
 touch thee here, Little Brother ! Here, and here ! 
 Are thy hands numb ? Here again ! " 
 
 The game always ended in one way — with a 
 straight, driving blow of the head that knocked 
 the boy over and over. Mowgli could never learn 
 the guard for that lightning lunge, and, as Kaa 
 said, there was not the least use in trying. 
 
 "Good hunting!" Kaa grunted at last ; and 
 Mowgli, as usual, was shot away half a dozen 
 yards, gasping and laughing. He rose with his 
 fingers full of grass, and followed Kaa to the 
 wise snake's pet bathing-place — a deep, pitchy- 
 black pool surrounded with rocks, and made inter- 
 esting by sunken tree-stumps. The boy slipped 
 in, Jungle-fashion, without a sound, and dived 
 across ; rose, too, without a sound, and turned on 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 163 
 
 his back, his arms behind his head, watching the 
 moon rising above the rocks, and breaking up 
 her reflection in the water with his toes. Kaa's 
 diamond-shaped head cut the pool like a razor, 
 and came out to rest on Mowefli's shoulder. 
 They lay still, soaking luxuriously in the cool 
 water. 
 
 " It is very good," said Mowgli at last, sleepily. 
 " Now, in the Man- Pack, at this hour, as I re- 
 member, they laid them down upon hard pieces 
 of wood in the inside of a mud-trap, and, having 
 carefully shut out all the clean winds, drew foul 
 cloth over their heavy heads, and made evil songs 
 through their noses. It is better in the Jungle." 
 
 A hurrying cobra slipped down over a rock 
 and drank, gave them "Good hunting!" and 
 went away. 
 
 " Sssh ! " said Kaa, as though he had suddenly 
 remembered something. " So the Jungle gives 
 thee all that thou hast ever desired, Little Bro- 
 ther ? " 
 
 " Not all," said Mowgli, laughing; "else there 
 would be a new and strong Shere Khan to kill 
 once a moon. Now, I could kill with my own 
 hands, asking no help of buffaloes. And also I 
 have wished the sun to shine in the middle of the 
 Rains, and the Rains to cover the sun in the deep 
 
164 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 of summer ; and also I have never gone empty 
 but I wished that I had killed a goat ; and also I 
 have never killed a goat but I wished it had been 
 buck ; nor buck but I wished it had been nilghai. 
 But thus do we feel, all of us." 
 
 " Thou hast no other desire ? " the big snake 
 demanded. 
 
 "What more can I wish? I have the Jungle, 
 and the favor of the Jungle ! Is there more any- 
 where between sunrise and sunset? " 
 
 " Now, the Cobra said — " Kaa began. 
 
 "What cobra? He that went away just now 
 said nothing. He was hunting." 
 
 " It was another." 
 
 " Hast thou many dealings with the Poison 
 People ? I give them their own path. They carry 
 death in the fore-tooth, and that is not good — 
 for they are so small. But what hood is this thou 
 hast spoken with ? " 
 
 Kaa rolled slowly in the water like a steamer 
 in a beam sea. " Three or four moons since," 
 said he, " I hunted in Cold Lairs, which place 
 thou hast not forgotten. And the thing I hunted 
 fled shrieking past the tanks and to that house 
 whose side I once broke for thy sake, and ran into 
 the ground." 
 
 " But the people of Cold Lairs do not live in 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 165 
 
 burrows." Mowgli knew that Kaa was talking 
 of the Monkey People. 
 
 "This thing was not living, but seeking to 
 live," Kaa replied, with a quiver of his tongue. 
 " He ran into a burrow that led very far. I fol- 
 lowed, and having killed, I slept. When I waked 
 I went forward." 
 
 " Under the earth ? " 
 
 '•' Even so, coming at last upon a White Hood 
 [a white cobra], who spoke of things beyond my 
 knowledge, and showed me many things I had 
 never before seen." 
 
 " New game ? Was it good hunting ? " Mow- 
 gli turned quickly on his side. 
 
 "It was no game, and would have broken all 
 my teeth ; but the White Hood said that a man — 
 he spoke as one that knew the breed — that a 
 man would give the breath under his ribs for 
 only the sight of those things." 
 
 "We will look," said Mowgli. "I now re- 
 member that I was once a man." 
 
 " Slowly — slowly. It was haste killed the 
 Yellow Snake that ate the sun. We two spoke 
 together under the earth, and I spoke of thee, 
 naming thee as a man. Said the White Hood 
 (and he is indeed as old as the Jungle) : ' It is long 
 since I have seen a man. Let him come, and he 
 
166 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 shall see all these things, for the least of which 
 very many men would die.' " 
 
 "That must be new game. And yet the 
 Poison People do not tell us when game is afoot. 
 They are an unfriendly folk." 
 
 "It is not game. It is — it is — I cannot say 
 what it is." 
 
 "We will go there. I have never seen a 
 White Hood, and I wish to see the other things. 
 Did he kill them ? " 
 
 "They are all dead things. He says he is the 
 keeper of them all." 
 
 "Ah! As a wolf stands above meat he has 
 taken to his own lair. Let us gfo." 
 
 Mowgli swam to bank, rolled on the grass 
 to dry himself, and the two set off for Cold Lairs, 
 the deserted city of which you may have heard. 
 Mowgli was not the least afraid of the Monkey 
 People in those days, but the Monkey People had 
 the liveliest horror of Mowgli. Their tribes, how- 
 ever, were raiding in the Jungle, and so Cold 
 Lairs stood empty and silent in the moonlight. 
 Kaa led up to the ruins of the queen's pavilion 
 that stood on the terrace, slipped over the rub- 
 bish, and dived down the half-choked staircase 
 that went underground from the center of the 
 pavilion. Mowgli gave the snake-call — "We 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 167 
 
 be of one blood, ye and I," — and followed on his 
 hands and knees. They crawled a long distance 
 down a sloping passage that turned and twisted 
 several times, and at last came to where the root 
 of some great tree, growing thirty feet over- 
 head, had forced out a solid stone in the wall. 
 They crept through the gap, and found them- 
 selves in a large vault, whose domed roof had 
 been also broken away by tree-roots so that a 
 few streaks of light dropped down into the 
 darkness. 
 
 "A safe lair," said Mowgli, rising to his firm 
 feet, "but over far to visit daily. And now what 
 do we see ? " 
 
 "Am I nothing?" said a voice in the middle 
 of the vault ; and Mowgli saw something white 
 move till, little by little, there stood up the hugest 
 cobra he had ever set eyes on — a creature nearly 
 eight feet long, and bleached by being in dark- 
 ness to an old ivory-white. Even the spectacle- 
 marks of his spread hood had faded to faint 
 yellow. His eyes were as red as rubies, and al- 
 together he was most wonderful. 
 
 " Good hunting ! " said Mowgli, who carried 
 his manners with his knife, and that never left 
 him. 
 
 "What of my city?" said the White Cobra, 
 
168 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 without answering the greeting. " What of the 
 great, the walled city — the city of a hundred ele- 
 phants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle 
 past counting — the city of the King of Twenty 
 Kings ? I grow deaf here, and it is long since I 
 heard their war-gongs." 
 
 " The Jungle is above our heads," said Mowgli. 
 " I know only Hathi and his sons among ele- 
 phants. Bagheera has slain all the horses in one 
 village, and — what is a King?" 
 
 " I told thee," said Kaa softly to the Cobra — 
 " I told thee, four moons ago, that thy city was 
 not." 
 
 " The city — the great city of the forest whose 
 gates are guarded by the King's towers — can 
 never pass. They builded it before my father's 
 father came from the egg, and it shall endure 
 when my son's sons are as white as I ! Salomdhi, 
 son of Chandrabija, son of Viyeja, son of Yega- 
 suri, made it in the days of Bappa Rawal. Whose 
 cattle are ye ? " 
 
 " It is a lost trail," said Mowsdi, turning to 
 Kaa. " I know not his talk." 
 
 " Nor I. He is very old. Father of Cobras, 
 there is only the Jungle here, as it has been since 
 the beginning." 
 
 " Then who is he" said the White Cobra, " sit- 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 169 
 
 ting down before me, unafraid, knowing not the 
 name of the King, talking our talk through a 
 man's lips ? Who is he with the knife and the 
 snake's tongue ? " 
 
 " Mowgli they call me," was the answer. "I 
 am of the Jungle. The Wolves are my people, 
 and Kaa here is my brother. Father of Cobras, 
 who art thou ? " 
 
 " I am the Warden of the Kind's Treasure. 
 Kurrun Raja builded the stone above me, in the 
 days when my skin was dark, that I might teach 
 death to those who came to steal. Then they let 
 down the treasure through the stone, and I heard 
 the song of the Brahmins my masters." 
 
 " Umm ! " said Mowgli to himself. " I have 
 dealt with one Brahmin already, in the Man- Pack, 
 and — I know what I know. Evil comes here in 
 a little." 
 
 " Five times since I came here has the stone 
 been lifted, but always to let down more, and 
 never to take away. There are no riches like 
 these riches — the treasures of a hundred kings. 
 But it is long and long since the stone was last_ 
 moved, and I think that my city has forgotten." 
 
 " There is no city. Look up. Yonder are roots 
 of the great trees tearing the stones apart. Trees 
 and men do not grow together," Kaa insisted. 
 
170 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " Twice and thrice have men found their way 
 here," the White Cobra answered savagely ; " but 
 they never spoke till I came upon them groping 
 in the dark, and then they cried only a little time. 
 But ye come with lies, Man and Snake both, and 
 would have me believe the city is not, and that 
 my wardship ends. Little do men change in the 
 years. But / change never ! Till the stone is 
 lifted, and the Brahmins come down singing the 
 songs that I know, and feed me with warm milk, 
 and take me to the light again, I — I — /, and no 
 other, am the Warden of the King's Treasure ! 
 The city is dead, ye say, and here are the roots 
 of the trees? Stoop down, then, and take what ye 
 will. Earth has no treasure like to these. Man 
 with the snake's tongue, if thou canst go alive by 
 the way that thou hast entered at, the lesser Kings 
 will be thy servants ! " 
 
 "Again the trail is lost," said Mowgli, coolly. 
 " Can any jackal have burrowed so deep and bit- 
 ten this great White Hood ? He is surely mad. 
 Father of Cobras, I see nothing here to take 
 away." 
 
 " By the Gods of the Sun and Moon, it is the 
 madness of death upon the boy ! " hissed the Co- 
 bra. " Before thine eyes close I will allow thee 
 this favor. Look thou, and see what man has 
 never seen before ! " 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 171 
 
 " They do not well in the Jungle who speak to 
 Mowgli of favors," said the boy, between his 
 teeth ; " but the dark changes all, as I know. I 
 will look, if that please thee." 
 
 He stared with puckered-up eyes round the 
 vault, and then lifted up from the floor a handful 
 of something that glittered. 
 
 "Oho!" said he, "this is like the stuff they 
 play with in the Man- Pack : only this is yellow 
 and the other was brown." 
 
 He let the gold pieces fall, and moved forward. 
 The floor of the vault was buried some five or six 
 feet deep in coined gold and silver that had burst 
 from the sacks it had been originally stored in, 
 and, in the long years, the metal had packed and 
 settled as sand packs at low tide. On it and in 
 it, and rising through it, as wrecks lift through 
 the sand, were jeweled elephant-howdahs of em- 
 bossed silver, studded with plates of hammered 
 gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises. 
 There were palanquins and litters for carrying 
 queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, 
 with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings ; 
 there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced 
 emeralds that quivered on the branches ; there 
 were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten 
 gods, silver with jeweled eyes ; there were coats 
 
172 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with 
 rotted and blackened seed-pearls ; there were hel- 
 mets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood 
 rubies ; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise- 
 shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed 
 with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; 
 there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, 
 daggers, and hunting-knives ; there were golden 
 sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars 
 of a shape that never see the light of day ; there 
 were jade cups and bracelets ; there were incense- 
 burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and 
 eye-powder, all in embossed gold ; there were 
 nose-rings, armlets, head-bands, finger-rings, and 
 girdles past any counting ; there were belts, seven 
 fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, 
 and wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from 
 which the wood had fallen away in powder, show- 
 ing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals, cat's- 
 eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and 
 o-arnets within. 
 
 The White Cobra was right. No mere money 
 would begin to pay the value of this treasure, the 
 sifted pickings of centuries of war, plunder, trade, 
 and taxation. The coins alone were priceless, 
 leaving out of count all the precious stones ; and 
 the dead weight of the gold and silver alone might 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 
 
 173 
 
 be two or three hundred tons. Every native ruler 
 in India to-day, however poor, has a hoard to 
 which he is always adding; and 
 though, once in a long while, 
 some enlightened prince may 
 send off forty or fifty bullock- 
 cart loads of silver to be ex- 
 changed for Government securi- 
 ties, the bulk of them keep their 
 treasure and the knowledge of it 
 very closely to themselves. 
 
 But Mowgli naturally did not 
 understand what these thing's 
 
 <z> 
 
 meant. The knives interested 
 him a little, but they did not 
 balance so well as his own, and 
 so he dropped them. At last he 
 found something really fascinat- 
 ing laid on the front of a how- 
 dah half buried in the coins. It 
 was a three-foot ankus, or ele- 
 phant-goad — something like a 
 small boat-hook. The top was 
 one round shining ruby, and 
 twelve inches of the handle 
 below it were studded with rough turquoises close 
 together, giving a most satisfactory grip. Below 
 
174 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 them was a rim of jade with a flower-pattern run- 
 ning round it — only the leaves were emeralds, 
 and the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, 
 green stone. The rest of the handle was a shaft 
 of,, pure ivory, while the point — the spike and 
 hook — was gold-inlaid steel with pictures of ele- 
 phant-catching ; and the pictures attracted Mow- 
 gli, who saw that they had something to do with 
 his friend Hathi the Silent. 
 
 The White Cobra had been following him 
 closely. 
 
 " Is this not worth dying to behold? " he said. 
 " Have I not done thee a great favor ? " 
 
 "I do not understand," said Mowgli. "The 
 things are hard and cold, and by no means good 
 to eat. But this " — he lifted the ankus — " I de- 
 sire to take away, that I may see it in the sun. 
 Thou sayest they are all thine ? Wilt thou give 
 it to me, and I will bring thee frogs to eat ? " 
 
 The White Cobra fairly shook with evil delight. 
 "Assuredly I will give it," he said. " All that is 
 here I will give thee — till thou goest away." 
 
 " But I go now. This place is dark and cold, 
 and I wish to take the thorn-pointed thing to the 
 Jungle." 
 
 " Look by thy foot ! What is that there ? " 
 
 Mowgli picked up something white and smooth. 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 175 
 
 "It is the bone of a man's head," he said quietly. 
 " And here are two more." 
 
 "They came to take the treasure away many 
 years ago. I spoke to them in the dark, and they 
 lay still." 
 
 " But what do I need of this that is called trea- 
 sure ? If thou wilt give me the ankus to take 
 away, it is good hunting. If not, it is good hunt- 
 ing none the less. I do not fight with the Poison 
 People, and I was also taught the Master-word 
 of thy tribe." 
 
 "There is but one Master-word here. It is 
 mine ! 
 
 Kaa flung himself forward with blazing eyes. 
 " Who bade me bring the Man ? " he hissed. 
 
 " I surely," the old Cobra lisped. " It is long 
 since I have seen Man, and this Man speaks our 
 tongue." 
 
 " But there was no talk of killing. How can I 
 go to the Jungle and say that I have led him to 
 his death ? " said Kaa. 
 
 " I talk not of killing till the time. And as 
 to thy going or not going, there is the hole in the 
 wall. Peace, now, thou fat monkey-killer ! I have 
 but to touch thy neck, and the Jungle will know 
 thee no longer. Never Man came here that 
 went away with the breath under his ribs. I 
 
176 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 am the Warden of the Treasure of the King's 
 City ! " 
 
 " But, thou white worm of the dark, I tell thee 
 there is neither king nor city ! The Jungle is all 
 about us ! " cried Kaa. 
 
 " There is still the Treasure. But this can be 
 done. Wait a while, Kaa of the Rocks, and see 
 the boy run. There is room for great sport here. 
 Life is good. Run to and fro a while, and make 
 sport, boy ! " 
 
 Mowgli put his hand on Kaa's head quietly. 
 
 "The white thimj has dealt with men of the 
 Man- Pack until now. He does not know me," 
 he whispered. "He has asked for this hunting. 
 Let him have it." Mowgli had been standing 
 with the ankus held point down. He flung it from 
 him quickly, and it dropped crossways just behind 
 the great snake's hood, pinning him to the floor. 
 In a flash, Kaa's weight was upon the writhing 
 body, paralyzing it from hood to tail. The red 
 eyes burned, and the six spare inches of the head 
 struck furiously right and left. 
 
 " Kill ! " said Kaa, as Mowgli's hand went to 
 his knife. 
 
 "No," he said, as he drew the blade; "I will 
 never kill again save for food. But look you, 
 Kaa ! " He caught the snake behind the hood, 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 177 
 
 forced the mouth open with the blade of the knife, 
 and showed the terrible poison-fangs of the up- 
 per jaw lying black and withered in the gum. 
 The White Cobra had outlived his poison, as a 
 snake will. 
 
 "Thuu " (" It is dried up "), x said Mowgli ; and 
 motioning Kaa away, he picked up the ankus, 
 setting the White Cobra free. 
 
 "The King's Treasure needs a new Warden," 
 he said gravely. "Thuu, thou hast not done well. 
 Run to and fro and make sport, Thuu ! " 
 
 " I am ashamed. Kill me ! " hissed the White 
 Cobra. 
 
 "There has been too much talk of killing. 
 We will go now. I take the thorn-pointed 
 thing, Thuu, because I have fought and worsted 
 thee." 
 
 " See, then, that the thing does not kill thee at 
 last. It is Death! Remember, it is Death! There 
 is enough in that thing to kill the men of all my 
 city. Not long wilt thou hold it, Jungle Man, nor 
 he who takes it from thee. They will kill, and 
 kill, and kill for its sake ! My strength is dried 
 up, but the ankus will do my work. It is Death ! 
 It is Death ! It is Death ! " 
 
 Mowgli crawled out through the hole into the 
 
 1 Literally, a rotted out tree- stump. 
 
178 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 passage again, and the last that he saw was the 
 White Cobra striking furiously with his harmless 
 fangs at the stolid golden faces of the gods that 
 lay on the floor, and hissing, " It is Death ! " 
 
 They were glad to get to the light of day once 
 more ; and when they were back in their own 
 Jungle and Mowgli made the ankus glitter in the 
 morning light, he was almost as pleased as though 
 he had found a bunch of new flowers to stick in 
 his hair. 
 
 "This is brighter than Bagheera's eyes," he 
 said delightedly, as he twirled the ruby. " I will 
 show it to him ; but what did the Thuu mean when 
 he talked of death ? " 
 
 " I cannot say. I am sorrowful to my tail's tail 
 that he felt not thy knife. There is always evil 
 at Cold Lairs — above ground or below. But 
 now I am hungry. Dost thou hunt with me this 
 dawn ? " said Kaa. 
 
 " No ; Bagheera must see this thing. Good 
 hunting ! " Mowgli danced off, flourishing the 
 great ankus, and stopping from time to time to 
 admire it, till he came to that part of the Jungle 
 Bagheera chiefly used, and found him drinking 
 after a heavy kill. Mowgli told him all his ad- 
 ventures from beginning to end, and Bagheera 
 sniffed at the ankus between whiles. When Mow- 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 179 
 
 gli came to the White Cobra's last words, the 
 Panther purred approvingly. 
 
 "Then the White Hood spoke the thing- which 
 is ? " Mowgli asked quickly. 
 
 " I was born in the King's cages at Oodey- 
 pore, and it is in my stomach that I know some 
 little of Man. Very many men would kill thrice in 
 a night for the sakeof that one big red stone alone." 
 
 " But the stone makes it heavy to the hand. 
 My little bright knife is better; and — see! the 
 red stone is not good to eat. Then why would 
 they kill?" 
 
 " Mowgli, go thou and sleep. Thou hast lived 
 among men, and — " 
 
 " I remember. Men kill because they are not 
 hunting ; — for idleness and pleasure. Wake 
 again, Bagheera. For what use was this thorn- 
 pointed thing made ? " 
 
 Bagheera half opened his eyes — he was very 
 sleepy — with a malicious twinkle. 
 
 " It was made by men to thrust into the head 
 of the sons of Hathi, so that the blood should pour 
 out. I have seen the like in the street of Oodey- 
 pore, before our cages. That thing has tasted 
 the blood of many such as Hathi." 
 
 "But why do they thrust into the heads of 
 elephants ? " 
 
180 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 "To teach them Man's Law. Having neither 
 claws nor teeth, men make these things — and 
 worse." 
 
 " Always more blood when I come near, even 
 to the things the Man- Pack have made," said 
 Mowgli, disgustedly. He was getting a little 
 tired of the weight of the ankus. "If I had 
 known this, I would not have taken it. First it 
 was Messua's blood on the thongs, and now it is 
 Hathi's. I will use it no more. Look ! " 
 
 The ankus flew sparkling, and buried itself 
 point down thirty yards away, between the trees. 
 " So my hands are clean of Death," said Mowgli, 
 rubbing his palms on the fresh, moist earth. 
 " The Thuu said Death would follow me. He is 
 old and white and mad." 
 
 " White or black, or death or life, / am going 
 to sleep, Little Brother. I cannot hunt all night 
 and howl all day, as do some folk." 
 
 Basdieera went off to a hunting-lair that he 
 knew, about two miles off. Mowgli made an easy 
 way for himself up a convenient tree, knotted 
 three or four creepers together, and in less time 
 than it takes to tell was swinging in a hammock 
 fifty feet above ground. Though he had no posi- 
 tive objection to strong daylight, Mowgli fol- 
 lowed the custom of his friends, and used it as 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 181 
 
 little as he could. When he waked among the 
 very loud-voiced peoples that live in the trees, 
 it was twilight once more, and he had been 
 dreaming of the beautiful pebbles he had thrown 
 away. 
 
 "At least I will look at the thing again," he 
 said, and slid down a creeper to the earth ; but 
 Bagheera was before him. Mowgli could hear 
 him snuffing- in the half lisfht. 
 
 "Where is the thorn-pointed thing?" cried 
 Mowgli. 
 
 "A man has taken it. Here is the trail." 
 
 " Now we shall see whether the Thuu spoke 
 truth. If the pointed thing is Death, that man 
 will die. Let us follow." 
 
 " Kill first," said Bagheera. " An empty stom- 
 ach makes a careless eye. Men go very slowly, 
 and the Jungle is wet enough to hold the lightest 
 mark." 
 
 They killed as soon as they could, but it was 
 nearly three hours before they finished their meat 
 and drink and buckled down to the trail. The 
 Jungle People know that nothing makes up for 
 being hurried over your meals. 
 
 "Think you the pointed thing will turn in the 
 man's hand and kill him ? " Mowgli asked. 
 " The Thuu said it was Death." 
 
182 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 "We shall see when we find," said Bagheera, 
 trotting- with his head low. "It is singfle-foot " 
 (he meant that there was only one man), " and 
 the weight of the thing has pressed his heel far 
 into the ground." 
 
 " Hai ! This is as clear as summer lightning," 
 Mowgli answered ; and they fell into the quick, 
 choppy trail-trot in and out through the checkers 
 of the moonlight, following the marks of those 
 two bare feet. 
 
 "Now he runs swiftly," said Mowgli. "The 
 toes are spread apart." They went on over some 
 wet ground. "Now why does he turn aside here?" 
 
 "Wait!" said Bagheera, and flung himself 
 forward with one superb bound as far as ever he 
 could. The first thing to do when a trail ceases 
 to explain itself is to cast forward without leaving 
 your own confusing foot-marks on the ground. 
 Bagheera turned as he landed, and faced Mowgli, 
 crying, " Here comes another trail to meet him. 
 It is a smaller foot, this second trail, and the toes 
 turn inward." 
 
 Then Mowgli ran up and looked. " It is the 
 foot of a Gond hunter," he said. " Look ! Here 
 he dragged his bow on the grass. That is why 
 the first trail turned aside so quickly. Big Foot 
 hid from Little Foot." 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 183 
 
 "That is true," said Bagheera. "Now, lest 
 by crossing each other's tracks we foul the signs, 
 let each take one trail. I am Big Foot, Little 
 Brother, and thou art Little Foot, the Gond." 
 
 Bagheera leaped back to the original trail, leav- 
 ing Mowgli stooping above the curious narrow 
 track of the wild little man of the woods. 
 
 " Now," said Bagheera, moving step by step 
 along the chain of footprints, " I, Big Foot, turn 
 aside here. Now I hide me behind a rock and 
 stand still, not daring to shift my feet. Cry thy 
 trail, Little Brother." 
 
 " Now, I, Little Foot, come to the rock," said 
 Mowgli, running up his trail. " Now, I sit down 
 under the rock, leaning upon my right hand, and 
 resting my bow between my toes. I wait long, 
 for the mark of my feet is deep here." 
 
 " I also," said Bagheera, hidden behind the 
 rock. " I wait, resting the end of the thorn- 
 pointed thing upon a stone. It slips, for here is 
 a scratch upon the stone. Cry thy trail, Little 
 Brother." 
 
 " One, two twigs and a big branch are broken 
 here," said Mowgli, in an undertone. " Now, how 
 shall I cry that ? Ah! It is plain now. I, Little 
 Foot, go away making noises and tramplings so 
 that Big Foot may hear me." He moved away 
 
184 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 from the rock pace by pace among the trees, his 
 voice rising in the distance as he approached a 
 little cascade. "I — go — far — away — to — 
 where — the — noise — of — falling — water — 
 covers — my — noise ; and — here — I — wait. 
 Cry thy trail, Bagheera, Big Foot ! " 
 
 The panther had been casting in every direc- 
 tion to see how Big Foot's trail led away from 
 behind the rock. Then he gave tongue : 
 
 " I come from behind the rock upon my knees, 
 dragging the thorn-pointed thing. Seeing no 
 one, I run. I, Big Foot, run swiftly. The trail 
 is clear. Let each follow his own. I run ! " 
 
 Bagheera swept on along the clearly marked 
 trail, and Mowgli followed the steps of the Gond. 
 For some time there was silence in the Jungle. 
 
 " Where art thou, Little Foot ? " cried Bagheera. 
 Mowgli's voice answered him not fifty yards to 
 the right. 
 
 " Um ! " said the panther, with a deep cough. 
 " The two run side by side, drawing nearer ! " 
 
 They raced on another half mile, always keep- 
 ing about the same distance, till Mowgli, whose 
 head was not so close to the ground as Bagheera's, 
 cried: " They have met. Good hunting — look! 
 Here stood Little Foot, with his knee on a rock 
 — and yonder is Big Foot indeed ! " 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 185 
 
 Not ten yards in front of them, stretched across 
 a pile of broken rocks, lay the body of a villager 
 of the district, a long, small -feathered Gond arrow 
 through his back and breast. 
 
 " Was the Thuu so old and so mad, Little Bro- 
 ther?" said Bagheera gently. "Here is one 
 death, at least." 
 
 " Follow on. But where is the drinker of ele- 
 phant's blood — the red-eyed thorn?" 
 
 "Little Foot has it — perhaps. It is single- 
 foot again now." 
 
 The single trail of a lig-ht man who had been 
 running quickly and bearing a burden on his left 
 shoulder, held on round a long, low spur of dried 
 grass, where each footfall seemed, to the sharp 
 eyes of the trackers, marked in hot iron. 
 
 Neither spoke till the trail ran up to the ashes 
 of a camp-fire hidden in a ravine. 
 
 " Again ! " said Bagheera, checking as though 
 he had been turned into stone. 
 
 The body of a little wizened Gond lay with its 
 feet in the ashes, and Bagheera looked inquiringly 
 at Mowgli. 
 
 " That was done with a bamboo," said the boy, 
 after one glance. " I have used such a thing 
 among the buffaloes when I served in the Man- 
 Pack. The Father of Cobras — I am sorrowful 
 
186 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 that I made a jest of him — knew the breed well, 
 as I might have known. Said I not that men kill 
 for idleness ? " 
 
 " Indeed, they killed for the sake of the red and 
 blue stones," Bagheera answered. " Remember, 
 I was in the King's cages at Oodeypore." 
 
 " One, two, three, four tracks," said Mowgli, 
 stooping over the ashes. "Four tracks of men 
 with shod feet. They do not go so quickly as 
 Gonds. Now, what evil had the little woodman 
 done to them ? See, they talked together, all five, 
 standing up, before they killed him. Bagheera, 
 let us go back. My stomach is heavy in me, and 
 yet it heaves up and down like an oriole's nest at 
 the end of a branch." 
 
 "It is not good hunting to leave game afoot. 
 Follow!" said the panther. " Those eight shod 
 feet have not gone far." 
 
 No more was said for fully an hour, as they 
 worked up the broad trail of the four men with 
 shod feet. 
 
 It was clear, hot daylight now, and Bagheera 
 said, " I smell smoke." 
 
 " Men are always more ready to eat than to 
 run," Mowgli answered, trotting in and out be- 
 tween the low scrub bushes of the new Jungle they 
 were exploring. Bagheera, a little to his left, 
 made an indescribable noise in his throat. 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 187 
 
 " Here is one that has done with feeding," said 
 he. A tumbled bundle of gay-colored clothes 
 lay under a bush, and round it was some spilt 
 flour. 
 
 " That was done by the bamboo again," said 
 Mowgli. " See ! that white dust is what men 
 eat. They have taken the kill from this one, — 
 he carried their food, — and given him for a kill to 
 Chil, the Kite." 
 
 " It is the third," said Bagheera. 
 
 " I will go with new, big frogs to the Father 
 of Cobras, and feed him fat," said Mowgli to him- 
 self. " The drinker of elephant's blood is Death 
 himself — but still I do not understand ! " 
 
 " Follow ! " said Bagheera. 
 
 They had not gone half a mile further when 
 they heard Ko, the Crow, singing the death-song 
 in the top of a tamarisk under whose shade three 
 men were lying. A half-dead fire smoked in the 
 center of the circle, under an iron plate which 
 held a blackened and burned cake of unleavened 
 bread. Close to the fire, and blazing in the sun- 
 shine, lay the ruby-and-turquoise ankus. 
 
 " The thing works quickly ; all ends here," 
 said Bagheera. " How did these die, Mowgli ? 
 There is no mark on any." 
 
 A Jungle-dweller gets to learn by experience 
 as much as many doctors know of poisonous 
 
188 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 plants and berries. Mowgli sniffed the smoke 
 that came up from the fire, broke off a morsel of 
 the blackened bread, tasted it, and spat it out 
 again. 
 
 "Apple of Death," he coughed. "The first 
 must have made it ready in the food for these, 
 who killed him, having first killed the Gond." 
 
 " Good hunting, indeed ! The kills follow 
 close," said Bagheera. 
 
 "Apple of Death" is what the Jungle call 
 thorn-apple or dhatura, the readiest poison in all 
 India. 
 
 " What now ? " said the panther. " Must thou 
 and I kill each other for yonder red-eyed slayer? " 
 
 "Can it speak?" said Mowgli, in a whisper. 
 "Did I do it a wrong when I threw it away? 
 Between us two it can do no wrong, for we do 
 not desire what men desire. If it be left here, it 
 will assuredly continue to kill men one after an- 
 other as fast as nuts fall in a high wind. I have 
 no love to men, but even I would not have them 
 die six in a niorht." 
 
 "What matter? They are only men. They 
 killed one another and were well pleased," said 
 Bagheera. " That first little woodman hunted 
 well." 
 
 " They are cubs none the less ; and a cub will 
 
THE KING'S ANKUS 189 
 
 drown himself to bite the moon's light on the 
 water. The fault was mine," said Mowgli, who 
 spoke as though he knew all about everything. 
 " I will never again bring into the Jungle strange 
 things — not though they be as beautiful as flow- 
 ers. This" — he handled the ankus gingerly — 
 " goes back to the Father of Cobras. But first 
 we must sleep, and we cannot sleep near these 
 sleepers. Also we must bury him, lest he run 
 away and kill another six. Dig me a hole under 
 that tree." 
 
 " But, Little Brother," said Bagheera, moving 
 off to the spot, " I tell thee it is no fault of the 
 blood-drinker. The trouble is with men." 
 
 " All one," said Mowgli. " Dig the hole deep. 
 When we wake I will take him up and carry him 
 back." 
 
 Two nights later, as the White Cobra sat 
 mourning in the darkness of the vault, ashamed, 
 and robbed, and alone, the turquoise ankus 
 whirled through the hole in the wall, and clashed 
 on the floor of golden coins. 
 
 " Father of Cobras," said Mowgli (he was care- 
 ful to keep the other side of the wall), "get thee 
 a young and ripe one of thine own people to help 
 
190 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 thee guard the King's Treasure so that no man 
 may come away alive any more." 
 
 " Ah-ha ! It returns, then. I said the thing 
 was Death. How comes it that thou art still 
 alive ? " the old Cobra mumbled, twining lovingly 
 round the ankus-haft. 
 
 " By the Bull that bought me, I do not know ! 
 That thing has killed six times in a night. Let 
 him go out no more." 
 
THE SONG OF THE LITTLE HUNTER 
 
 RE Mor the Peacock flutters, ere 
 the Monkey People cry, 
 Ere Chil the Kite swoops down 
 a furlong sheer, 
 Through the Jungle very softly 
 flits a shadow and a sigh — 
 He is Fear, O Little Hunter, 
 he is Fear ! 
 Very softly down the glade runs 
 a waiting, watching shade, 
 And the whisper spreads and widens far and near ; 
 And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even 
 now — 
 He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear ! 
 
 Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks 
 are ribbed with light, 
 When the downward-dipping trails are dank and 
 drear, 
 Comes a breathing hard behind thee — snuffle-snuffle 
 through the night — 
 It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear ! 
 On thy knees and draw the bow ; bid the shrilling 
 arrow go ; 
 In the empty, mocking thicket plunge the spear; 
 
192 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has 
 left thy cheek — 
 It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear! 
 
 When the heat-cloud sucks the tempest, when the sliv- 
 ered pine-trees fall, 
 When the blinding, blaring rain-squalls lash and veer; 
 Through the war-gongs of the thunder rings a voice 
 more loud than all — 
 It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear ! 
 Now the spates are banked and deep ; now the footless 
 boulders leap — 
 Now the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear — 
 But thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against 
 thy side 
 Hammers: Fear, O Little Hunter — this is Fear! 
 
QUIQUERN 
 
The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow — 
 They beg for coffee and sugar ; they go where the white men go. 
 The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight; 
 They sell their furs to the trading-post; they sell their souls to the 
 
 white. 
 The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's 
 
 crew; 
 Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few. 
 But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken — 
 Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last 
 
 of the Menl 
 
 —Translation, 
 
QUIQUERN 
 
 E has opened his eyes. 
 Look!" 
 
 "Put him in the skin 
 again. He will be a strong 
 dog. On the fourth month 
 we will name him." 
 
 " For whom ? " said Amo- 
 raq. 
 
 Kadlu's eye rolled round 
 the skin-lined snow-house 
 till it fell on fourteen-year- 
 old Kotuko sitting on the sleeping-bench, making 
 a button out of walrus ivory. " Name him for 
 me," said Kotuko, with a grin. " I shall need 
 him one day." 
 
 Kadlu grinned back till his eyes were almost 
 19s 
 
196 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 buried in the fat of his flat cheeks, and nodded to 
 Amoraq, while the puppy's fierce mother whined 
 to see her baby wriggling far out of reach in the 
 little sealskin pouch hung above the warmth of 
 the blubber-lamp. Kotuko went on with his 
 carving, and Kadlu threw a rolled bundle of lea- 
 ther dog-harnesses into a tiny little room that 
 opened from one side of the house, slipped off 
 his heavy deerskin hunting-suit, put it into a 
 whalebone-net that hung above another lamp, and 
 dropped down on the sleeping-bench to whittle 
 at a piece of frozen seal-meat till Amoraq, his 
 wife, should bring the regular dinner of boiled 
 meat and blood-soup. He had been out since 
 early dawn at the seal-holes, eight miles away, 
 and had come home with three big seal. Half- 
 way down the long, low snow passage or tunnel 
 that led to the inner door of the house you could 
 hear snappings and yelpings, as the dogs of his 
 sleigh-team, released from the day's work, scuffled 
 for warm places. 
 
 When the yelpings grew too loud Kotuko lazily 
 rolled off the sleeping-bench, and picked up a 
 whip with an eighteen-inch handle of springy 
 whalebone, and twenty-five feet of heavy, plaited 
 thong. He dived into the passage, where it 
 sounded as though all the dogs were eating him 
 
QU1QUERN 197 
 
 alive ; but that was no more than their regular 
 grace before meals. When he crawled out at the 
 far end half a dozen furry heads followed him 
 with their eyes as he went to a sort of gallows 
 of whale-jawbones, from which the dog's meat 
 was hung ; split off the frozen stuff in big lumps 
 with a broad-headed spear ; and stood, his whip 
 in one hand and the meat in the other. Each 
 beast was called by name, the weakest first, 
 and woe betide any dog that moved out of his 
 turn ; for the tapering lash would shoot out like 
 thonged lightning, and flick away an inch or so 
 of hair and hide. Each beast growled, snapped, 
 choked once over his portion, and hurried 
 back to the protection of the passage, while the 
 boy stood upon the snow under the blazing 
 Northern Lights and dealt out justice. The 
 last to be served was the big - black leader of 
 the team, who kept order when the dogs were 
 harnessed ; and to him Kotuko gave a double 
 allowance of meat as well as an extra crack of the 
 whip. 
 
 "Ah!" said Kotuko, coiling up the lash, "I 
 have a little one over the lamp that will make a 
 great many howlings. Sarpok / Get in ! " 
 
 He crawled back over the huddled dogs, dusted 
 the dry snow from his furs with the whalebone 
 
198 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 beater that Amoraq kept by the door, tapped 
 the skin-lined roof of the house to shake off any 
 icicles that might have fallen from the dome of 
 snow above, and curled up on the bench. The 
 dogs in the passage snored and whined in their 
 sleep, the boy-baby in Amoraq's deep fur hood 
 kicked and choked and gurgled, and the mother 
 of the newly named puppy lay at Kotuko's side, 
 her eyes fixed on the bundle of sealskin, warm 
 and safe above the broad yellow flame of the 
 lamp. 
 
 And all this happened far away to the north, 
 beyond Labrador, beyond Hudson's Strait, where 
 the great tides heave the ice about, north of Mel- 
 ville Peninsula — north even of the narrow Fury 
 and Hecla Straits — on the north shore of Baffin 
 Land, where Bylot's Island stands above the ice 
 of Lancaster Sound like a pudding-bowl wrong 
 side up. North of Lancaster Sound there is lit- 
 tle we know anything about, except North Devon 
 and Ellesmere Land ; but even there live a few 
 scattered people, next door, as it were, to the 
 very Pole. 
 
 Kadlu was an Inuit, — what you call an Es- 
 quimau, — and his tribe, some thirty persons all 
 told, belonged to the Tununirmiut — "the coun- 
 try lying at the back of something." In the 
 
QUIQUERN 199 
 
 maps that desolate coast is written Navy Board 
 Inlet, but the Inuit name is best, because the 
 country lies at the very back of everything in the 
 world. For nine months of the year there is only 
 ice, snow, and gale after gale, with a cold that 
 no one can realize who has never seen the ther- 
 mometer even at zero. For six months of those 
 nine it is dark ; and that is what makes it so hor- 
 rible. In the three months of the summer it 
 only freezes every other day and every night, 
 and then the snow begins to weep off on the 
 southerly slopes, and a few ground-willows put 
 out their woolly buds, a tiny stonecrop or so 
 makes believe to blossom, beaches of fine gravel 
 and rounded stones run down to the open sea, 
 and polished boulders and streaked rocks lift up 
 above the granulated snow. But all that is gone 
 in a few weeks, and the wild winter locks down 
 again on the land ; while at sea the ice tears 
 up and down the offing, jamming and ramming, 
 and splitting and hitting, and pounding and 
 grounding, till it all freezes together, ten feet 
 thick, from the land outward to deep water. 
 
 In the winter Kadlu would follow the seal to 
 the edge of this land-ice, and spear them as they 
 came up to breathe at their blow-holes. The 
 seal must have open water to live and catch 
 
200 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 fish in, and in the deep of winter the ice would 
 sometimes run eighty miles without a break from 
 the nearest shore. In the spring he and his peo- 
 ple retreated from the floes to the rocky main- 
 land, where they put up tents of skins, and 
 snared the sea-birds, or speared the young seal 
 basking on the beaches. Later, they would go 
 south into Baffin Land after the reindeer, and to 
 get their year's store of salmon from the hun- 
 dreds of streams and lakes of the interior; coming 
 back north in September or October for the 
 musk-ox hunting and the regular winter sealery. 
 This traveling was done with dog-sleighs, twenty 
 and thirty miles a day, or sometimes down the 
 coast in big skin "woman-boats," when the dogs 
 and the babies lay among the feet of the rowers, 
 and the women sang songs as they glided from 
 cape to cape over the glassy, cold waters. All 
 the luxuries that the Tununirmiut knew came 
 from the south — driftwood for sleigh-runners, 
 rod-iron for harpoon-tips, steel knives, tin kettles 
 that cooked food much better than the old soap- 
 stone affairs, flint and steel, and even matches, 
 as well as colored ribbons for the women's hair, 
 little cheap mirrors, and red cloth for the edging 
 of deerskin dress-jackets. Kadlu traded the rich, 
 creamy, twisted narwhal-horn and musk-ox teeth 
 
QUIOUERN 201 
 
 (these are just as valuable as pearls) to the 
 Southern Inuit, and they, in turn, traded with the 
 whalers and the missionary-posts of Exeter and 
 Cumberland Sounds ; and so the chain went on, 
 till a kettle picked up by a ship's cook in the 
 Bhendy Bazaar might end its days over a blubber- 
 lamp somewhere on the cool side of the Arctic 
 Circle. 
 
 Kadlu, being a good hunter, was rich in iron 
 harpoons, snow-knives, bird-darts, and all the 
 other things that make life easy up there in the 
 great cold ; and he was the head of this tribe, or, 
 as they say, "the man who knows all about it by 
 practice." This did not give him any authority, 
 except now and then he could advise his friends 
 to change their hunting-grounds ; but Kotuko 
 used it to domineer a little, in the lazy, fat Inuit 
 fashion, over the other boys, when they came out 
 at night to play ball in the moonlight, or to sing 
 the Child's Song to the Aurora Borealis. 
 
 But at fourteen an Inuit feels himself a man, 
 and Kotuko was tired of making snares for wild 
 fowl and kit-foxes, and most tired of all of help- 
 ing the women to chew seal - and deerskins (that 
 supples them as nothing else can) the long day 
 through, while the men were out hunting. He 
 wanted to go into the qiiaggi, the Singing- House, 
 
202 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 when the hunters gathered there for their mys- 
 teries, and the augekok, the sorcerer, frightened 
 them into the most delightful fits after the lamps 
 were put out, and you could hear the Spirit of 
 the Reindeer stamping on the roof; and when a 
 spear was thrust out into the open black night it 
 came back covered with hot blood. He wanted 
 to throw his big boots into the net with the tired 
 air of a head of a family, and to gamble with 
 the hunters when they dropped in of an evening 
 and played a sort of home-made roulette with 
 a tin pot and a nail. There were hundreds of 
 things that he wanted to do, but the grown men 
 laughed at him and said, "Wait till you have 
 been in the buckle, Kotuko. Hunting is not all 
 catching." 
 
 Now that his father had named a puppy for 
 him, things looked brighter. An Inuit does not 
 waste a good dog on his son till the boy knows 
 something of dog-driving ; and Kotuko was more 
 than sure that he knew more than everything. 
 
 If the puppy had not had an iron constitution 
 he would have died from over-stuffing and over- 
 handling. Kotuko made him a tiny harness with 
 a trace to it, and hauled him all over the house 
 floor, shouting: "Aua! Ja aua ! " (Go to the 
 right.) " Choiachoi ! J a choiachoi ! " (Go to the 
 
QUIQUERN 203 
 
 left.) "Ohaha!" (Stop.) The puppy did not 
 like it at all, but being fished for in this way- 
 was pure happiness beside being put to the 
 sleigh for the first time. He just sat down on the 
 snow, and played with the seal-hide trace that 
 ran from his harness to the pitu, the big thong 
 in the bows of the sleigh. Then the team 
 started, and the puppy found the heavy ten-foot 
 sleigh running up his back, and dragging him 
 along the snow, while Kotuko laughed till the 
 tears ran down his face. There followed days 
 and days of the cruel whip that hisses like 
 the wind over ice, and his companions all bit him 
 because he did not know his work, and the har- 
 ness chafed him, and he was not allowed to sleep 
 with Kotuko any more, but had to take the cold- 
 est place in the passage. It was a sad time for 
 the puppy. 
 
 The boy learned, too, as fast as the dog ; 
 though a dog-sleigh is a heartbreaking thing to 
 manage. Each beast is harnessed, the weakest 
 nearest to the driver, by his own separate trace, 
 which runs under his left fore -leg to the main 
 thong, where it is fastened by a sort of button 
 and loop which can be slipped by a turn of the 
 wrist, thus freeing one dog at a time. This is 
 very necessary, because young dogs often get the 
 
204 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 trace between their hind legs, where it cuts to 
 the bone. And they one and all will go visiting 
 their friends as they run, jumping in and out 
 among the traces. Then they fight, and the 
 result is more mixed than a wet fishing-line next 
 morning. A great deal of trouble can be avoided 
 by scientific use of the whip. Every Inuit boy 
 prides himself as being a master of the long lash ; 
 but it is easy to flick at a mark on the ground, 
 and difficult to lean forward and catch a shirking 
 dog just behind the shoulders when the sleigh is 
 going at full speed. If you call one dog's name 
 for "visiting," and accidentally lash another, the 
 two will fight it out at once, and stop all the 
 others. Again, if you travel with a companion 
 and begin to talk, or by yourself and sing, the 
 dogs will halt, turn round, and sit down to hear 
 what you have to say. Kotuko was run away 
 from once or twice through forgetting to block 
 the sleigh when he stopped ; and he broke many 
 lashings, and ruined a few thongs, before he 
 could be trusted with a full team of eight and the 
 light sleigh. Then he felt himself a person of 
 consequence, and on smooth, black ice, with a 
 bold heart and a quick elbow, he smoked along 
 over the levels as fast as a pack in full cry. He 
 would go ten miles to the seal-holes, and when 
 
QUIQUERN 205 
 
 he was on the hunting-grounds he would twitch 
 a trace loose from the pitu, and free the big black 
 leader, who was the cleverest dog in the team. 
 As soon as the dog had scented a breathing-hole 
 Kotuko would reverse the sleigh, driving a 
 couple of sawed-off antlers, that stuck up like 
 perambulator-handles from the back-rest, deep 
 into the snow, so that the team could not get 
 away. Then he would crawl forward inch by 
 inch, and wait till the seal came up to breathe. 
 Then he would stab down swiftly with his spear 
 and running-line, and presently would haul his 
 seal up to the lip of the ice, while the black leader 
 came up and helped to pull the carcass across 
 the ice to the sleigh. That was the time when 
 the harnessed dogs yelled and foamed with ex- 
 citement, and Kotuko laid the long lash like a 
 red-hot bar across all their faces, till the carcass 
 froze stiff. Going home was the heavy work. 
 The loaded sleigh had to be humored among the 
 rough ice, and the dogs sat down and looked 
 hungrily at the seal instead of pulling. At last 
 they would strike the well-worn sleigh -road to 
 the village, and toodle-kiyi along the ringing 
 ice, heads down and tails up, while Kotuko struck 
 up the "Angutivaun tai-na tau-na-ne taina" (The 
 Song of the Returning Hunter), and voices hailed 
 
206 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 him from house to house under all that dim, star- 
 litten sky. 
 
 When Kotuko the dogf came to his full growth 
 he enjoyed himself too. He fought his way up 
 the team steadily, fight after fight, till one fine 
 evening, over their food, he tackled the big, black 
 leader (Kotuko the boy saw fair play), and 
 made second dog of him, as they say. So he 
 was promoted to the long thong of the leading 
 dog, running five feet in advance of all the 
 others: it was his bounden duty to stop all fight- 
 ing, in harness or out of it, and he wore a collar 
 of copper wire, very thick and heavy. On special 
 occasions he was fed with cooked food inside 
 the house, and sometimes was allowed to sleep 
 on the bench with Kotuko. He was a good 
 seal-dog, and would keep a musk-ox at bay by 
 running round him and snapping at his heels. 
 He would even — and this for a sleigh-dog is 
 the last proof of bravery — he would even stand 
 up to the gaunt Arctic wolf, whom all dogs of the 
 North, as a rule, fear beyond anything that walks 
 the snow. He and his master — they did not 
 count the team of ordinary dogs as company — 
 hunted together, day after day and night after 
 night, fur-wrapped boy and savage, long- 
 haired, narrow-eyed, white-fanged, yellow brute. 
 
QUIQUERN 207 
 
 All an Inuit has to do is to get food and skins 
 for himself and his family. The women-folk 
 make the skins into clothing, and occasionally 
 help in trapping small game ; but the bulk of the 
 food — and they eat enormously — must be found 
 by the men. If the supply fails there is no one 
 up there to buy or beg or borrow from. The 
 people must die. 
 
 An Inuit does not think of these chances till 
 he is forced to. Kadlu, Kotuko, Amoraq, and 
 the boy-baby who kicked about in Amoraq's fur 
 hood and chewed pieces of blubber all day, were 
 as happy together as any family in the world. 
 They came of a very gentle race — an Inuit 
 seldom loses his temper, and almost never strikes 
 a child — who did not know exactly what telling 
 a real lie meant, still less how to steal. They 
 were content to spear their living out of the 
 heart of the bitter, hopeless cold ; to smile oily 
 smiles, and tell queer ghost and fairy tales of 
 evenings, and eat till they could eat no more, 
 and sing the endless woman's song, "Amna aya, 
 aya amna, ah ! ah ! " through the long, lamp- 
 lighted days as they mended their clothes and 
 their hunting-gear. 
 
 But one terrible winter everything betrayed 
 them. The Tununirmiut returned from the 
 
208 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 yearly salmon-fishing, and made their houses on 
 the early ice to the north of Bylot's Island, ready 
 to go after the seal as soon as the sea froze. 
 But it was an early and savage autumn. All 
 through September there were continuous gales 
 that broke up the smooth seal-ice when it was 
 only four or five feet thick, and forced it inland, 
 and piled a great barrier, some twenty miles 
 broad, of lumped and ragged and needly ice, over 
 which it was impossible to draw the dog-sleighs. 
 The edge of the floe off which the seal were used 
 to fish in winter lay, perhaps, twenty miles beyond 
 this barrier, and out of reach of the Tununirmiut. 
 Even so, they might have managed to scrape 
 through the winter on their stock of frozen 
 salmon and stored blubber, and what the traps 
 gave them, but in December one of their hunters 
 came across a tupik (a skin-tent) of three women 
 and a girl nearly dead, whose men had come 
 down from the far North and been crushed in 
 their little skin hunting-boats while they were out 
 after the long-horned narwhal. Kadlu, of course, 
 could only distribute the women among the huts 
 of the winter village, for no Inuit dare refuse 
 a meal to a stranger. He never knows when his 
 own turn may come to beg. Amoraq took the 
 girl, who was about fourteen, into her own house 
 
QUIQUERN 209 
 
 as a sort of servant. From the cut of her sharp- 
 pointed hood, and the long diamond pattern of 
 her white deerskin leggings, they supposed she 
 came from Ellesmere Land. She had never seen 
 tin cooking-pots or wooden-shod sleighs before; 
 but Kotuko the boy and Kotuko the dog were 
 rather fond of her. 
 
 Then all the foxes went south, and even the 
 wolverine, that growling, blunt-headed little thief 
 of the snow, did not take the trouble to follow 
 the line of empty traps that Kotuko set. The 
 tribe lost a couple of their best hunters, who 
 were badly crippled in a fight with a musk-ox, 
 and this threw more work on the others. Ko- 
 tuko went out, day after day, with a light hunt- 
 ing-sleigh and six or seven of the strongest dogs, 
 looking till his eyes ached for some patch of clear 
 ice where a seal might perhaps have scratched a 
 breathing-hole. Kotuko the dog ranged far and 
 wide, and in the dead stillness of the ice-fields 
 Kotuko the boy could hear his half-choked whine 
 of excitement, above a seal-hole three miles 
 away, as plainly as though he were at his elbow. 
 When the dog found a hole the boy would build 
 himself a little, low snow wall to keep off the 
 worst of the bitter wind, and there he would wait 
 ten, twelve, twenty hours for the seal to come up 
 
210 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 to breathe, his eyes glued to the tiny mark he 
 had made above the hole to guide the downward 
 thrust of his harpoon, a little sealskin mat under 
 his feet, and his legs tied together in the tu- 
 tareang (the buckle that the old hunters had 
 talked about). This helps to keep a man's legs 
 from twitching as he waits and waits and waits 
 for the quick-eared seal to rise. Though there 
 is no excitement in it, you can easily believe that 
 the sitting still in the buckle with the thermome- 
 ter perhaps forty degrees below zero is the hard- 
 est work an Inuit knows. When a seal was 
 caught Kotuko the dog would bound forward, 
 his trace trailing behind him, and help to pull 
 the body to the sleigh, where the tired and hun- 
 gry dogs lay sullenly under the lee of the broken 
 ice. 
 
 A seal did not go very far, for each mouth in 
 the little village had a right to be filled, and 
 neither bone, hide, nor sinew was wasted. The 
 dogs' meat was taken for human use, and Amoraq 
 fed the team with pieces of old summer skin- 
 tents raked out from under the sleeping-bench, 
 and they howled and howled again, and waked 
 to howl hungrily. One could tell by the soap- 
 stone lamps in the huts that famine was near. 
 In good seasons, when blubber was plentiful, the 
 
QUIQUERN 211 
 
 light in the boat-shaped lamps would be two 
 feet high — cheerful, oily, and yellow. Now it 
 was a bare six inches : Amoraq carefully pricked 
 down the moss wick when an unwatched flame 
 brightened for a moment, and the eyes of all the 
 family followed her hand. The horror of famine 
 up there in the great cold is not so much dying, 
 as dying in the dark. All the Inuit dread the 
 dark that presses on them without a break for 
 six months in each year ; and when the lamps 
 are low in the houses the minds of people begin 
 to be shaken and confused. 
 
 But worse was to come. 
 
 The underfed dogs snapped and growled in the 
 passages, glaring at the cold stars, and snuffing 
 into the bitter wind, night after night. When 
 they stopped howling the silence fell down again 
 as solid and as heavy as a snowdrift against 
 a door, and men could hear the beating of their 
 blood in the thin passages of the ear, and the 
 thumping of their own hearts, that sounded as 
 loud as the noise of sorcerers' drums beaten 
 across the snow. One night Kotuko the dog, 
 who had been unusually sullen in harness, leaped 
 up and pushed his head against Kotuko's knee. 
 Kotuko patted him, but the dog still pushed 
 blindly forward, fawning. Then Kadlu waked, 
 
212 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 and gripped the heavy wolf-like head, and stared 
 into the glassy eyes. The dog whimpered and 
 shivered between Kadlu's knees. The hair rose 
 about his neck, and he growled as though a 
 stranger were at the door ; then he barked joy- 
 ously, and rolled on the ground, and bit at Ko- 
 tuko's boot like a puppy. 
 
 "What is it?" said Kotuko ; for he was be- 
 ginning to be afraid. 
 
 "The sickness," Kadlu answered. "It is the 
 dog-sickness." Kotuko the dog lifted his nose, 
 and howled and howled again. 
 
 " I have not seen this before. What will he 
 do ? " said Kotuko. 
 
 Kadlu shrugged one shoulder a little, and 
 crossed the hut for his short stabbing-harpoon. 
 The big dog looked at him, howled again, and 
 slunk away down the passage, while the other 
 dogs drew aside right and left to give him ample 
 room. When he was out on the snow he barked 
 furiously, as though on the trail of a musk-ox, 
 and, barking and leaping and frisking, passed 
 out of sight. This was not hydrophobia, but 
 simple, plain madness. The cold and the hunger, 
 and, above all, the dark, had turned his head ; 
 and when the terrible dog-sickness once shows 
 itself in a team, it spreads like wildfire. Next 
 
QUIQUERN 213 
 
 hunting-day another dog sickened, and was killed 
 then and there by Kotuko as he bit and struggled 
 among the traces. Then the black second dog, 
 who had been the leader in the old days, sud- 
 denly gave tongue on an imaginary reindeer- 
 track, and when they slipped him from the pitu 
 he flew at the throat of an ice-cliff, and ran away 
 as his leader had done, his harness on his back. 
 After that no one would take the dogs out again. 
 They needed them for something else, and the 
 dogs knew it ; and though they were tied down 
 and fed by hand, their eyes were full of despair 
 and fear. To make things worse, the old women 
 began to tell ghost-tales, and to say that they had 
 met the spirits of the dead hunters lost that 
 autumn, who prophesied all sorts of horrible 
 things. 
 
 Kotuko grieved more for the loss of his dog 
 than anything else ; for, though an Inuit eats 
 enormously, he also knows how to starve. But 
 the hunger, the darkness, the cold, and the ex- 
 posure told on his strength, and he began to 
 hear voices inside his head, and to see people 
 who were not there, out of the tail of his eye. 
 One night — he had unbuckled himself after ten 
 hours' waiting above a "blind" seal-hole, and 
 was staggering back to the village faint and dizzy 
 
214 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 — he halted to lean his back against a boulder 
 which happened to be supported like a rocking- 
 stone on a single jutting point of ice. His weight 
 disturbed the balance of the thing, it rolled over 
 ponderously, and as Kotuko sprang aside to 
 avoid it, slid after him, squeaking and hissing on 
 the ice slope. 
 
 That was enough for Kotuko. He had been 
 brought up to believe that every rock and boulder 
 had its owner (its imia), who was generally a 
 one-eyed kind of a Woman -Thing called a tornaq, 
 and that when a tornaq meant to help a man she 
 rolled after him inside her stone house, and asked 
 him whether he would take her for a guardian 
 spirit. (In summer thaws the ice-propped rocks 
 and boulders roll and slip all over the face of the 
 land, so you can easily see how the idea of live 
 stones arose.) Kotuko heard the blood beating 
 in his ears as he had heard it all day, and he 
 thought that was the tornaq of the stone speak- 
 ing to him. Before he reached home he was 
 quite certain that he had held a long conversation 
 with her, and as all his people believed that this 
 was quite possible, no one contradicted him. 
 
 " She said to me, ' I jump down, I jump down 
 from my place on the snow,' " cried Kotuko, with 
 hollow eyes, leaning forward in the half-lighted 
 
QUIQUERN 215 
 
 hut. "She said, 'I will be a guide.' She says, 
 ' I will guide you to the good seal-holes.' To- 
 morrow I go out, and the tornaq will guide me." 
 
 Then the angekok, the village sorcerer, came in, 
 and Kotuko told him the tale a second time. It 
 lost nothing in the telling. 
 
 "Follow the tornait [the spirits of the stones], 
 and they will bring us food again," said the 
 angekok. 
 
 Now the girl from the North had been lying 
 near the lamp, eating very little and saying less 
 for days past ; but when Amoraq and Kadlu next 
 morning packed and lashed a little hand-sleigh 
 for Kotuko, and loaded it with his hunting-gear 
 and as much blubber and frozen seal-meat as 
 they could spare, she took the pulling-rope, and 
 stepped out boldly at the boy's side. 
 
 "Your house is my house," she said, as the 
 little bone-shod sleigh squeaked and bumped 
 behind them in the awful Arctic nicrht. 
 
 "My house is your house," said Kotuko; 
 "but / think that we shall both go to Sedna 
 together." 
 
 Now Sedna is the Mistress of the Under-world, 
 and the Inuit believe that every one who dies 
 must spend a year in her horrible country before 
 going to Quadliparmiut, the Happy Place, where 
 
216 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 it never freezes and the fat reindeer trot up when 
 you call. 
 
 Through the village people were shouting: 
 " The tornait have spoken to Kotuko. They will 
 show him open ice. He will bring us the seal 
 again!" Their voices were soon swallowed up by 
 the cold, empty dark, and Kotuko and the girl 
 shouldered close together as they strained on 
 the pulling-rope or humored the sleigh through 
 the broken ice in the direction of the Polar Sea. 
 Kotuko insisted that the tornaq of the stone had 
 told him to go north, and north they went under 
 Tuktuqdjung the Reindeer — those stars that we 
 call the Great Bear. 
 
 No European could have made five miles a day 
 over the ice-rubbish and the sharp-edged drifts; 
 but those two knew exactly the turn of the wrist 
 that coaxes a sleigh round a hummock, the jerk 
 that neatly lifts it out of an ice-crack, and the ex- 
 act strength that goes to the few quiet strokes of 
 the spear-head that make a path possible when 
 everything looks hopeless. 
 
 The girl said nothing, but bowed her head, and 
 the lone wolverine-fur fringe of her ermine hood 
 blew across her broad, dark face. The sky above 
 them was an intense velvety-black, changing to 
 bands of Indian red on the horizon, where the 
 
QUIQUERN 217 
 
 great stars burned like street lamps. From time 
 to time a greenish wave of the Northern Lights 
 would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, 
 flick like a flag, and disappear ; or a meteor 
 would crackle from darkness to darkness, trailing 
 a shower of sparks behind. Then they could see 
 the ridged and furrowed surface of the floe tipped 
 and laced with strange colors — red, copper, and 
 bluish; but in the ordinary starlight everything 
 turned to one frost-bitten gray. The floe, as 
 you will remember, had been battered and tor- 
 mented by the autumn gales till it was one frozen 
 earthquake. There were gullies and ravines, 
 and holes like gravel-pits, cut in ice; lumps and 
 scattered pieces frozen down to the original floor 
 of the floe ; blotches of old black ice that had 
 been thrust under the floe in some gale and 
 heaved up again ; roundish boulders of ice ; saw- 
 like edges of ice carved by the snow that flies 
 before the wind; and sunken pits where thirty or 
 forty acres lay below the level of the rest of the 
 field. From a little distance you might have 
 taken the lumps for seal or walrus, overturned 
 sleighs or men on a hunting expedition, or even 
 the great Ten-legged White Spirit-Bear himself; 
 but in spite of these fantastic shapes, all on the 
 very edge of starting into life, there was neither 
 
218 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 sound nor the least faint echo of sound. And 
 through this silence and through this waste, where 
 the sudden lights flapped and went out again, 
 the sleigh and the two that pulled it crawled 
 like things' in a nightmare — a nightmare of the 
 end of the world at the end of the world. 
 
 When they were tired Kotuko would make what 
 the hunters call a " half-house," a very small snow 
 hut, into which they would huddle with the travel- 
 ing-lamp, and try to thaw out the frozen seal- 
 meat. When they had slept the march began 
 again — thirty miles a day to get ten miles north- 
 ward. The girl was always very silent, but 
 Kotuko muttered to himself and broke out into 
 songs he had learned in the Singing- House — 
 summer songs, and reindeer and salmon songs 
 — all horribly out of place at that season. He 
 would declare that he heard the tomaq growling 
 to him, and would run wildly up a hummock, toss- 
 ing his arms and speaking in loud, threatening 
 tones. To tell the truth, Kotuko was very nearly 
 crazy for the time being ; but the girl was sure 
 that he was being guided by his guardian spirit, 
 and that everything would come right. She was 
 not surprised, therefore, when at the end of the 
 fourth march Kotuko, whose eyes were burning 
 like fire-balls in his head, told her that his tomaq 
 
QUIQUERN 219 
 
 was following - them across the snow in the shape 
 of a two-headed dog. The girl looked where 
 Kotuko pointed, and something seemed to slip 
 into a ravine. It was certainly not human, but 
 everybody knew that the tornait preferred to 
 appear in the shape of bear and seal, and such 
 like. 
 
 It might have been the Ten-legged White 
 Spirit- Bear himself, or it might have been any- 
 thing, for Kotuko and the girl were so starved 
 that their eyes were untrustworthy. They had 
 trapped nothing, and seen no trace of game since 
 they had left the village ; their food would not 
 hold out for another week, and there was a gale 
 coming. A Polar storm can blow for ten days 
 without a break, and all that while it is certain 
 death to be abroad. Kotuko laid up a snow- 
 house large enough to take in the hand-sleigh 
 (never be separated from your meat), and while 
 he was shaping the last irregular block of ice 
 that makes the key-stone of the roof, he saw 
 a Thing looking at him from a little cliff of ice 
 half a mile away. The air was hazy, and the 
 Thing seemed to be forty feet long and ten feet 
 high, with twenty feet of tail and a shape that 
 quivered all along the outlines. The girl saw 
 it too, but instead of crying aloud with terror, 
 
220 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 said quietly, "That is Ouiquern. What comes 
 after?" 
 
 " He will speak to me," said Kotuko; but the 
 snow-knife trembled in his hand as he spoke, be- 
 cause however much a man may believe that he 
 is a friend of strange and ugly spirits, he seldom 
 likes to be taken quite at his word. Ouiquern, 
 too, is the phantom of a gigantic toothless dog 
 without any hair, who is supposed to live in 
 the far North, and to wander about the country 
 just before things are going to happen. They 
 may be pleasant or unpleasant things, but not 
 even the sorcerers care to speak about Ouiquern. 
 He makes the dogs go mad. Like the Spirit- 
 Bear he has several extra pairs of legs, — six or 
 eight, — and this Thing jumping up and down in 
 the haze had more legs than any real dog needed. 
 Kotuko and the girl huddled into their hut 
 quickly. Of course if Ouiquern had wanted them, 
 he could have torn it to pieces above their heads, 
 but the sense of a foot-thick snow wall between 
 themselves and the wicked dark was great com- 
 fort. The gale broke with a shriek of wind like 
 the shriek of a train, and for three days and three 
 nights it held, never varying one point, and never 
 lulling even for a minute. They fed the stone 
 lamp between their knees, and nibbled at the half- 
 
QUIQUERN 221 
 
 warm seal-meat, and watched the black soot 
 gather on the roof for seventy -two long hours. 
 The girl counted up the food in the sleigh ; there 
 was not more than two days' supply, and Kotuko 
 looked over the iron heads and the deer-sinew 
 fastenings of his harpoon and his seal-lance and 
 his bird-dart. There was nothing else to do. 
 
 "We shall go to Sedna soon — very soon," 
 the girl whispered. "In three days we shall lie 
 down and go. Will your tornaq do nothing? 
 Sing her an angekok's song to make her come 
 here." 
 
 He began to sing in the high-pitched howl of 
 the magic songs, and the gale went down slowly. 
 In the middle of his song the girl started, laid her 
 mittened hand and then her head to the ice floor 
 of the hut. Kotuko followed her example, and 
 the two kneeled, staring into each other's eyes, 
 and listening with every nerve. He ripped a 
 thin sliver of whalebone from the rim of a bird- 
 snare that lay on the sleigh, and, after straighten- 
 ing, set it upright in a little hole in the ice, 
 firming it down with his mitten. It was almost 
 as delicately adjusted as a compass-needle, and 
 now instead of listening they watched. The thin 
 rod quivered a little — the least little jar in the 
 world ; then it vibrated steadily for a few seconds, 
 
222 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 came to rest, and vibrated again, this time nod- 
 ding to another point of the compass. 
 
 "Too soon !" said Kotuko. "Some big floe 
 has broken far away outside." 
 
 The girl pointed at the rod, and shook her head. 
 " It is the big breaking," she said. " Listen to the 
 ground-ice. It knocks." 
 
 When they kneeled this time they heard the 
 most curious muffled grunts and knockings, ap- 
 parently under their feet. Sometimes it sounded 
 as though a blind puppy were squeaking above 
 the lamp ; then as if a stone were being ground 
 on hard ice ; and again, like muffled blows on a 
 drum : but all dragged out and made small, as 
 though they traveled through a little horn a weary 
 distance away. 
 
 "We shall not go to Sedna lying down," said 
 Kotuko. " It is the breaking. The tornaq has 
 cheated us. We shall die." 
 
 All this may sound absurd enough, but the two 
 were face to face with a very real danger. The 
 three days' gale had driven the deep water of 
 Baffin's Bay southerly, and piled it on to the 
 edge of the far-reaching land-ice that stretches 
 from Bylot's Island to the west. Also, the strong 
 current which sets east out of Lancaster Sound car- 
 ried with it mile upon mile of what they call pack- 
 
QUIQUERN 223 
 
 ice — rough ice that has not frozen into fields ; 
 and this pack was bombarding the floe at the 
 same time that the swell and heave of the storm- 
 worked sea was weakening and undermining it. 
 What Kotuko and the girl had been listening to 
 were the faint echoes of that fight thirty or forty 
 miles away, and the little telltale rod quivered to 
 the shock of it. 
 
 Now, as the Inuit say, when the ice once 
 wakes after its long winter sleep, there is no 
 knowing what may happen, for solid floe-ice 
 changes shape almost as quickly as a cloud. The 
 gale was evidently a spring gale sent out of time, 
 and anything was possible. 
 
 Yet the two were happier in their minds than 
 before. If the floe broke up there would be no 
 more waiting and suffering. Spirits, goblins, 
 and witch-people were moving about on the 
 racking ice, and they might find themselves step- 
 ping into Sedna's country side by side with all 
 sorts of wild Things, the flush of excitement still 
 on them. When they left the hut after the gale, 
 the noise on the horizon was steadily growing, 
 and the tough ice moaned and buzzed all round 
 them. 
 
 "It is still waiting," said Kotuko. 
 
 On the top of a hummock sat or crouched the 
 
324 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 eight-legged Thing that they had seen three days 
 before — and it howled horribly. 
 
 " Let us follow," said the girl. " It may know 
 some way that does not lead to Sedna " ; but she 
 reeled from weakness as she took the pulling- 
 rope. The Thing moved off slowly and clumsily 
 across the ridges, heading always toward the 
 westward and the land, and they followed, while 
 the growling thunder at the edge of the floe 
 rolled nearer and nearer. The floe's lip was split 
 and cracked in every direction for three or four 
 miles inland, and great pans of ten-foot-thick 
 ice, from a few yards to twenty acres square, were 
 jolting and ducking and surging into one an- 
 other, and into the yet unbroken floe, as the 
 heavy swell took and shook and spouted between 
 them. This battering-ram ice was, so to speak, 
 the first army that the sea was flinging against 
 the floe. The incessant crash and jar of these 
 cakes almost drowned the ripping sound of sheets 
 of pack-ice driven bodily under the floe as 
 cards are hastily pushed under a table-cloth. 
 Where the water was shallow these sheets would 
 be piled one atop of the other till the bottom- 
 most touched mud fifty feet down, and the dis- 
 colored sea banked behind the muddy ice till the 
 increasing pressure drove all forward again. In 
 
QUIQUERN 225 
 
 addition" to the floe and the pack-ice, the gale 
 and the currents were bringing down true bergs, 
 sailing mountains of ice, snapped off from the 
 Greenland side of the water or the north shore 
 of Melville Bay. They pounded in solemnly, 
 the waves breaking white round them, and ad- 
 vanced on the floe like an old-time fleet under 
 full sail. A berg that seemed ready to carry 
 the world before it would ground helplessly in 
 deep water, reel over, and wallow in a lather of 
 foam and mud and flying frozen spray, while a 
 much smaller and lower one would rip and ride 
 into the flat floe, flinging tons of ice on either 
 side, and cutting a track half a mile long before it 
 was stopped. Some fell like swords, shearing 
 a raw-edged canal ; and others splintered into a 
 shower of blocks, weighing scores of tons apiece, 
 that whirled and skirled among the hummocks. 
 Others, again, rose up bodily out of the water 
 when they shoaled, twisted as though in pain, and 
 fell solidly on their sides, while the sea threshed 
 over their shoulders. This trampling and crowd- 
 ing and bending and buckling and arching of the 
 ice into every possible shape was going on as 
 far as the eye could reach all along the north line 
 of the floe. From where Kotuko and the girl 
 were the confusion looked no more than an un- 
 
226 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 easy, rippling, crawling movement under the hori- 
 zon ; but it came toward them each moment, and 
 they could hear, far away to landward, a heavy 
 booming, as it might have been the boom of ar- 
 tillery through a fog. That showed that the floe 
 was being jammed home against the iron cliffs 
 of Bylot's Island, the land to the southward be- 
 hind them. 
 
 "This has never been before," said Kotuko, 
 staring stupidly. "This is not the time. How 
 can the floe break now ? " 
 
 "Follow that!" the girl cried, pointing to the 
 Thing, half limping, half running distractedly be- 
 fore them. They followed, tugging at the hand- 
 sleigh, while nearer and nearer came the roaring 
 march of the ice. At last the fields round them 
 cracked and starred in every direction, and the 
 cracks opened and snapped like the teeth of 
 wolves. But where the Thing rested, on a mound 
 of old and scattered ice-blocks some fifty feet 
 high, there was no motion. Kotuko leaped for- 
 ward wildly, dragging the girl after him, and 
 crawled to the bottom of the mound. The talk- 
 ing of the ice grew louder and louder round 
 them, but the mound stayed fast, and, as the girl 
 looked at him, he threw his right elbow upward 
 and outward, making the Inuit sign for land in 
 
QUIQUERN 227 
 
 the shape of an island. And land it was that the 
 eight-legged, limping Thing had led them to — 
 some granite-tipped, sand-beached islet off the 
 coast, shod and sheathed and masked with ice so 
 that no man could have told it from the floe, but 
 at the bottom solid earth, and not shifting ice! 
 The smashing and rebound of the floes as they 
 grounded and splintered marked the borders of 
 it, and a friendly shoal ran out to the northward, 
 and turned aside the rush of the heaviest ice, ex- 
 actly as a ploughshare turns over loam. There 
 was danger, of course, that some heavily squeezed 
 ice-field might shoot up the beach, and plane off 
 the top of the islet bodily ; but that did not 
 trouble Kotuko and the girl when they made their 
 snow-house and began to eat, and heard the 
 ice hammer and skid along the beach. The 
 Thing had disappeared, and Kotuko was talking 
 excitedly about his power over spirits as he 
 crouched round the lamp. In the middle of his 
 wild sayings the girl began to laugh, and rock 
 herself backward and forward. 
 
 Behind her shoulder, crawling into the hut 
 crawl by crawl, there were two heads, one yel- 
 low and one black, that belonged to two of the 
 most sorrowful and ashamed dogs that ever you 
 saw. Kotuko the dog was one, and the black 
 
228 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 leader was the other. Both were now fat, well- 
 looking, and quite restored to their proper 
 minds, but coupled to each other in an extra- 
 ordinary fashion. When the black leader ran 
 off, you remember, his harness was still on him. 
 He must have met Kotuko the dog, and played 
 or fought with him, for his shoulder-loop had 
 caught in the plaited copper wire of Kotuko's 
 collar, and had drawn tight, so that neither could 
 get at the trace to gnaw it apart, but each was 
 fastened sidelong to his neighbor's neck. That, 
 with the freedom of hunting on their own ac- 
 count, must have helped to cure their madness. 
 They were very sober. 
 
 The girl pushed the two shamefaced creatures 
 toward Kotuko, and, sobbing with laughter, cried, 
 " That is Quiquern, who led us to safe ground. 
 Look at his eight legs and double head ! " 
 
 Kotuko cut them free, and they fell into his 
 arms, yellow and black together, trying to ex- 
 plain how they had got their senses back again. 
 Kotuko ran a hand down their ribs, which were 
 round and well clothed. " They have found 
 food," he said, with a grin. " I do not think we 
 shall go to Sedna so soon. My tornaq sent 
 these. The sickness has left them." 
 
 As soon as they had greeted Kotuko, these 
 
QUIQUERN 229 
 
 two, who had been forced to sleep and eat and 
 hunt together for the past few weeks, flew at 
 each other's throat, and there was a beautiful 
 battle in the snow-house. " Empty dogs do not 
 fight," Kotuko said. " They have found the seal. 
 Let us sleep. We shall find food." 
 
 When they waked there was open water on 
 the north beach of the island, and all the loos- 
 ened ice had been driven landward. The first 
 sound of the surf is one of the most delightful 
 that the Inuit can hear, for it means that spring 
 is on the road. Kotuko and the girl took hold 
 of hands and smiled, for the clear, full roar of 
 the surge among the ice reminded them of sal- 
 mon and reindeer time and the smell of blossom- 
 ing ground-willows. Even as they looked, the 
 sea began to skim over between the floating 
 cakes of ice, so intense was the cold ; but on 
 the horizon there was a vast red glare, and 
 that was the light of the sunken sun. It was 
 more like hearing him yawn in his sleep than 
 seeing him rise, and the glare only lasted for 
 a few minutes, but it marked the turn of the 
 year. Nothing, they felt, could alter that. 
 
 Kotuko found the dogs fighting over a fresh- 
 killed seal who was following the fish that a 
 gale always disturbs. He was the first of some 
 
230 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 twenty or thirty seal that landed on the island 
 in the course of the day, and till the sea froze 
 hard there were hundreds of keen black heads 
 rejoicing in the shallow free water and floating 
 about with the floating ice. 
 
 It was good to eat seal-liver again ; to fill the 
 lamps recklessly with blubber, and watch the 
 flame blaze three feet in the air ; but as soon as 
 the new sea-ice bore, Kotuko and the girl loaded 
 the hand-sleigh, and made the two dogs pull as 
 they had never pulled in their lives, for they feared 
 what might have happened in their village. The 
 weather was as pitiless as usual; but it is easier 
 to draw a sleigh loaded with good food than 
 to hunt starving. They left five-and-twenty seal 
 carcasses buried in the ice of the beach, all ready 
 for use, and hurried back to their people. The 
 dogs showed them the way as soon as Kotuko 
 told them what was expected, and though there 
 was no sign of a landmark, in two days they were 
 giving tongue outside Kadlu's house. Only three 
 dogs answered them ; the others had been eaten, 
 and the houses were all dark. But when Kotuko 
 shouted, " Ojo ! " (boiled meat), weak voices re- 
 plied, and when he called the muster of the vil- 
 lage name by name, very distinctly, there were 
 no gaps in it. 
 
 An hour later the lamps blazed in Kadlu's 
 
QUIQUERN 231 
 
 house ; snow-water was heating ; the pots were 
 beginning to simmer, and the snow was dripping 
 from the roof, as Amoraq made ready a meal for 
 all the village, and the boy-baby in the hood 
 chewed at a strip of rich nutty blubber, and 
 the hunters slowly and methodically filled them- 
 selves to the very brim with seal-meat. Kotuko 
 and the orirl told their tale. The two dogs sat 
 between them, and whenever their names came 
 in, they cocked an ear apiece and looked most 
 thoroughly ashamed of themselves. A dog who 
 has once gone mad and recovered, the Inuit say, 
 is safe against all further attacks. 
 
 " So the tornaq did not forget us," said Kotuko. 
 "The storm blew, the ice broke, and the seal 
 swam in behind the fish that were frightened by 
 the storm. Now the new seal-holes are not two 
 days' distant. Let the good hunters go to-mor- 
 row and bring back the seal I have speared — 
 twenty-five seal buried in the ice. When we have 
 eaten those we will all follow the seal on the floe." 
 
 " What do you do ? " said the sorcerer in the 
 same sort of voice as he used to Kadlu, richest of 
 the Tununirmiut. 
 
 Kotuko looked at the girl from the North, and said 
 quietly, " We build a house." He pointed to the 
 northwest side of Kadlu's house, for that is the side 
 on which the married son or daughter always lives. 
 
232 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 The girl turned her hands palm upward, with 
 a little despairing shake of her head. She was a 
 foreigner, picked up starving, and could bring 
 nothing to the housekeeping. 
 
 Amoraq jumped from the bench where she sat, 
 and began to sweep things into the girl's lap — 
 stone lamps, iron skin-scrapers, tin kettles, deer- 
 skins embroidered with musk-ox teeth, and real 
 canvas-needles such as sailors use — the finest 
 dowry that has ever been given on the far edge 
 of the Arctic Circle, and the girl from the North 
 bowed her head down to the very floor. 
 
 " Also these ! " said Kotuko, laughing and sign- 
 ing to the dogs, who thrust their cold muzzles 
 into the girl's face. 
 
 "Ah," said the angekok, with an important 
 cough, as though he had been thinking 1 it all over. 
 "As soon as Kotuko left the village I went to 
 the Singing- House and sang magic. I sang all 
 the long nights, and called upon the Spirit of the 
 Reindeer. My singing made the gale blow that 
 broke the ice and drew the two dogs toward 
 Kotuko when the ice would have crushed his 
 bones. My song drew the seal in behind the 
 broken ice. My body lay still in the quaggi, but 
 my spirit ran about on the ice, and guided Kotuko 
 and the dogs in all the things they did. I did it." 
 
QUIQUERN 233 
 
 Everybody was full and sleepy, so no one con- 
 tradicted ; and the angekok, by virtue of his 
 office, helped himself to yet another lump of boiled 
 meat, and lay down to sleep with the others in 
 the warm, well-lighted, oil-smelling home. 
 
 Now Kotuko, who drew very well in the Inuit 
 fashion, scratched pictures of all these adven- 
 tures on a long, flat piece of ivory with a hole at 
 one end. When he and the girl went north to 
 Ellesmere Land in the year of the Wonderful Open 
 Winter, he left the picture-story with Kadlu, who 
 lost it in the shingle when his dog-sleigh broke 
 down one summer on the beach of Lake Netil- 
 ling at Nikosiring, and there a Lake Inuit found 
 it next spring and sold it to a man at Imigen who 
 was interpreter on a Cumberland Sound whaler, 
 and he sold it to Hans Olsen, who was afterward 
 a quartermaster on board a big steamer that took 
 tourists to the North Cape in Norway. When 
 the tourist season was over, the steamer ran be- 
 tween London and Australia, stopping at Cey- 
 lon, and there Olsen sold the ivory to a Cingalese 
 jeweler for two imitation sapphires. I found 
 it under some rubbish in a house at Colombo, 
 and have translated it from one end to the other. 
 
"ANGUTIVUN TINA" 
 
 [This is a very free translation of the Song of the Re- 
 turning Hunter, as the men used to sing it after seal- 
 spearing. The Inuit always repeat things over and 
 over again.] 
 
 UR gloves are stiff with the frozen 
 blood, 
 Our furs with the drifted 
 snow, 
 As we come in with the 
 seal — the seal ! 
 In from the edge of the 
 / floe. 
 
 Aujana ! Aua ! Oka / Haq ! 
 
 And the yelping dog-teams go, 
 And the long whips crack, and the men come back, 
 
 Back from the edge of the floe ! 
 
 We tracked our seal to his secret place, 
 
 We heard him scratch below, 
 We made our mark, and we watched beside, 
 
 Out on the edge of the floe. 
 
ANGUTIVUN TINA 235 
 
 We raised our lance when he rose to breathe, 
 
 We drove it downward — so ! 
 And we played him thus, and we killed him thus 
 
 Out on the edge of the floe. 
 
 Our gloves are glued with the frozen blood, 
 
 Our eyes with the drifting snow ; 
 But we come back to our wives again, 
 
 Back from the edge of the floe ! 
 
 Aujana ! Aua ! Oha ! Hag ! 
 
 And the loaded dog- teams go, 
 And the wives can hear their men come back, 
 Back fr 0771 the edge of 'the floe ! 
 
RED DOG 
 
For our white and our excellent nights — for the nights of swift 
 running, 
 Fair ranging, far-seeing, good hunting, sure cunning! 
 For the smells of the dawning, untainted, ere dew has departed ! 
 For the rush through the mist, and the quarry blind-started ! 
 For the cry of our mates when the sambhur has wheeled and is 
 standing at bay, 
 
 For the risk and the riot of night ! 
 For the sleep at the lair-mouth by day. 
 It is met, and we go to the fight. 
 Bay! O bay! 
 
RED DOG 
 
 jT was after the letting in of the 
 Jungle that the pleasantest part of 
 Moweli's life be^an. He had the 
 ofood conscience that comes from 
 paying debts; all the Jungle was his 
 friend, and just a little afraid of him. 
 The things that he did and saw 
 and heard when he was wandering 
 from one people to another, with 
 or without his four companions, 
 would make many stories, each as 
 long as this one. So you will never be told how 
 he met the Mad Elephant of Mandla, who killed 
 
240 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 two-and-twenty bullocks drawing eleven carts of 
 coined silver to the Government Treasury, and 
 scattered the shiny rupees in the dust ; how he 
 fought Jacala, the Crocodile, all one long night 
 in the Marshes of the North, and broke his skin- 
 ning-knife on the brute's back-plates; how he 
 found a new and longer knife round the neck 
 of a man who had been killed by a wild boar, 
 and how he tracked that boar and killed him as a 
 fair price for the knife ; how he was caught up 
 once in the Great Famine, by the moving of the 
 deer, and nearly crushed to death in the swaying 
 hot herds ; how he saved Hathi the Silent from 
 being once more trapped in a pit with a stake at 
 the bottom, and how, next day, he himself fell 
 into a very cunning leopard-trap, and how Hathi 
 broke the thick wooden bars to pieces above him; 
 how he milked the wild buffaloes in the swamp, 
 and how — 
 
 But we must tell one tale at a time. Father 
 and Mother Wolf died, and Mowgli rolled a big 
 boulder against the mouth of their .cave, and 
 cried the Death Song over them ; Baloo grew 
 very old and stiff, and even Bagheera, whose 
 nerves were steel, and whose muscles were iron, 
 was a shade slower on the kill than he had been. 
 Akela turned from gray to milky white with pure 
 
RED DOG 241 
 
 age ; his ribs stuck out, and he walked as though 
 he had been made of wood, and Mowgli killed 
 for him. But the young wolves, the children of the 
 disbanded Seeonee Pack, throve and increased, 
 and when there were about forty of them, mas- 
 terless, full-voiced, clean-footed five-year-olds, 
 Akela told them that they ought to gather them- 
 selves together and follow the Law, and run un- 
 der one head, as befitted the Free People. 
 
 This was not a question in which Mowgli con- 
 cerned himself, for, as he said, he had eaten sour 
 fruit, and he knew the tree it hunsf from ; but 
 when Phao, son of Phaona (his father was the 
 Gray Tracker in the days of Akela's headship), 
 fought his way to the leadership of the Pack, ac- 
 cording to Jungle Law, and the old calls and 
 songs began to ring under the stars once more, 
 Mowgli came to the Council Rock for memory's 
 sake. When he chose to speak the Pack waited 
 till he had finished, and he sat at Akela's side on 
 the rock above Phao. Those were days of good 
 hunting and good sleeping. No stranger cared 
 to break into the jungles that belonged to 
 Mowgli's people, as they called the Pack, and 
 the young wolves grew fat and strong, and there 
 were many cubs to bring to the Looking-over. 
 Mowgli always attended a Looking-over, re- 
 
242 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 membering the night when a black panther 
 bought a naked brown baby into the Pack, and 
 the long call, " Look, look well, O Wolves," 
 made his heart flutter. Otherwise, he would be 
 far away in the Jungle with his four brothers, 
 tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things. 
 
 One twilight when he was trotting leisurely 
 across the ranges to give Akela the half of a 
 buck that he had killed, while the Four jog- 
 ged behind him, sparring a little, and tumbling 
 one another over for joy of being alive, he heard 
 a cry that had never been heard since the bad 
 days of Shere Khan. It was what they call in 
 the Jungle the pheeal, a hideous kind of shriek 
 that the jackal gives when he is hunting behind 
 a tiger, or when there is a big killing afoot. If 
 you can imagine a mixture of hate, triumph, fear, 
 and despair, with a kind of leer running through 
 it, you will get some notion of the pheeal that 
 rose and sank and wavered and quavered far away 
 across the Waingunga. The Four stopped at 
 once, bristling and growling. Mowgli's hand 
 went to his knife, and he checked, the blood in 
 his face, his eyebrows knotted. 
 
 " There is no Striped One dare kill here," he 
 said. 
 
 "That is not the cry of the Forerunner," an- 
 
RED DOG 243 
 
 swered Gray Brother. " It is some great killing. 
 Listen ! " 
 
 It broke out again, half sobbing and half chuck- 
 ling, just as though the jackal had soft human 
 lips. Then Mowgli drew deep breath, and ran 
 to the Council Rock, overtaking on his way hur- 
 rying wolves of the Pack. Phao and Akela were 
 on the Rock together, and below them, every 
 nerve strained, sat the others. The mothers and 
 the cubs were cantering off to their lairs ; for 
 when the pheeal cries it is no time for weak 
 things to be abroad. 
 
 They could hear nothing except the Wain- 
 gunga rushing and gurgling in the dark, and the 
 light evening winds among the tree-tops, till 
 suddenly across the river a wolf called. It was 
 no wolf of the Pack, for they were all at the Rock. 
 The note changed to a long, despairing bay ; 
 and " Dhole ! " it said, " Dhole ! dhole ! dhole ! " 
 They heard tired feet on the rocks, and a gaunt, 
 wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right 
 fore-paw useless, and his jaws white with foam, 
 flung himself into the circle and lay gasping at 
 Mowgli's feet. 
 
 "Good hunting! Under whose Headship?" 
 said Phao gravely. 
 
 " Good hunting ! Won-tolla am I," was the an- 
 
244 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 swer. He meant that he was a solitary wolf, 
 fending for himself, his mate, and his cubs in 
 some lonely lair, as do many wolves in the south. 
 Won-tolla means an Outlier — one who lies out 
 from any Pack. Then he panted, and they could 
 see his heart-beats shake him backward and 
 forward. 
 
 "What moves?" said Phao, for that is the 
 question all the Jungle asks after the phecal cries. 
 
 " The dhole, the dhole of the Dekkan — Red 
 Dog, the Killer ! They came north from the 
 south saying the Dekkan was empty and killing 
 out by the way. When this moon was new there 
 were four to me — my mate and three cubs. She 
 would teach them to kill on the grass plains, hid- 
 ing to drive the buck, as we do who are of the 
 open. At midnight I heard them together, full 
 tongue n the trail. At the dawn-wind I found 
 them stiff in the grass — four, Free People, four 
 when this moon was new. Then sought I my 
 Blood-Right and found the dhole." 
 
 "How many?" said Mowgli quickly; the 
 Pack growled deep in their throats. 
 
 " I do not know. Three of them will kill no 
 more, but at the last they drove me like the buck ; 
 on my three legs they drove me. Look, Free 
 People ! " 
 
RED DOG 245 
 
 He thrust out his mangled fore-foot, all dark 
 with dried blood. There were cruel bites low 
 down on his side, and his throat was torn and 
 worried. 
 
 "Eat," said Akela, rising up from the meat 
 Mowgli had brought him, and the Outlier flung 
 himself on it. 
 
 "This shall be no loss," he said humbly, when 
 he had taken off the first edge of his hunger. 
 " Give me a little strength, Free People, and I 
 also will kill. My lair is empty that was full when 
 this moon was new, and the Blood Debt is not all 
 paid." 
 
 Phao heard his teeth crack on a haunch-bone 
 and grunted approvingly. 
 
 "We shall need those jaws," said he. "Were 
 their cubs with the dhole ? " 
 
 " Nay, nay. Red Hunters all : grown dogs of 
 their Pack, heavy and strong, for all that they eat 
 lizards in the Dekkan." 
 
 What Won-tolla had said meant that the dhole, 
 the red hunting-dog of the Dekkan, was moving 
 to kill, and the Pack knew well that even the 
 tiger will surrender a new kill to the dhole. They 
 drive straight through the Jungle, and what they 
 meet they pull down and tear to pieces. Though 
 they are not as big nor half as cunning as the 
 
246 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 wolf, they are very strong and very numerous. 
 The dhole, for instance, do not begin to call them- 
 selves a pack till they are a hundred strong ; 
 whereas forty wolves make a very fair pack in- 
 deed. Mowgli's wanderings had taken him to 
 the edge of the high grassy downs of the Dek- 
 kan, and he had seen the fearless dholes sleep- 
 ing and playing and scratching themselves in 
 the little hollows and tussocks that they use 
 for lairs. He despised and hated them because 
 they did not smell like the Free People, be- 
 cause they did not live in caves, and, above all, 
 because they had hair between their toes while 
 he and his friends were clean-footed. But he 
 knew, for Hathi had told him, what a terrible 
 thing a dhole hunting-pack was. Even Hathi 
 moves aside from their line, and until they are 
 killed, or till game is scarce, they will go forward. 
 
 Akela knew something of the dholes, too, for 
 he said to Mowgli quietly . " It is better to die in 
 a Full Pack than leaderless and alone. This is 
 good hunting, and — my last. But, as men live, 
 thou hast very many more nights and days, 
 Little Brother. Go north and lie down, and if 
 any live after the dhole has gone by he shall 
 bring- thee word of the fight." 
 
 " Ah," said Mowgli, quite gravely, "must I go 
 
RED DOG 247 
 
 to the marshes and catch little fish and sleep in a 
 tree, or must I ask help of the Bandar-log and 
 crack nuts, while the Pack fight below ? " 
 
 " It is to the death," said Akela. " Thou hast 
 never met the dhole — the Red Killer. Even the 
 Striped One — " 
 
 " Aowa ! Aowa ! " said Mowgli pettingly. " I 
 have killed one striped ape, and sure am I in my 
 stomach that Shere Khan would have left his own 
 mate for meat to the dhole if he had winded a 
 pack across three ranges. Listen now : There 
 was a wolf, my father, and there was a wolf, my 
 mother, and there was an old gray wolf (not too 
 wise : he is white now) was my father and my 
 mother. Therefore I — " he raised his voice, " I 
 say that when the dhole come, and if the dhole 
 come, Mowgli and the Free People are of one 
 skin for that hunting ; and I say, by the Bull that 
 bought me — by the Bull Bagheera paid for me 
 in the old days which ye of the Pack do not re- 
 member — / say, that the Trees and the River 
 may hear and hold fast if I forget ; I say that this 
 my knife shall be as a tooth to the Pack — and I 
 do not think it is so blunt. This is my Word 
 which has gone from me." 
 
 "Thou dost not know the dhole, man with a 
 wolf's tongue," said Won-tolla. " I look only to 
 
248 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 clear the Blood Debt against them ere they have 
 me in many pieces. They move slowly, killing 
 out as they go, but in two days a little strength 
 will come back to me and I turn again for the 
 Blood Debt. But for ye, Free People, my word 
 is that ye go north and eat but little for a while 
 till the dhole are gone. There is no meat in this 
 hunting." 
 
 " Hear the Outlier ! " said Mowgli with a laugh. 
 " Free People, we must go north and dig lizards 
 and rats from the bank, lest by any chance we 
 meet the dhole. He must kill out our hunting- 
 grounds, while we lie hid in the north till it please 
 him to give us our own again. He is a dog — 
 and the pup of a dog — red, yellow-bellied, lair- 
 less, and haired between every toe ! He counts 
 his cubs six and eio-ht at the litter, as though he 
 were Chikai, the little leaping rat. Surely we 
 must run away, Free People, and beg leave of the 
 peoples of the north for the offal of dead cattle ! 
 Ye know the saying : ' North are the vermin ; 
 south are the lice. We are the Jungle.' Choose 
 ye, O choose. It is good hunting! For the Pack — 
 for the Full Pack — for the lair and the litter ; 
 for the in-kill and the out-kill ; for the mate that 
 drives the doe and the little, little cub within the 
 cave ; it is met ! — it is met ! — it is met ! " 
 
RED DOG 249 
 
 The Pack answered with one deep, crashing 
 bark that sounded in the night like a big tree 
 falling. " It is met ! " they cried. 
 
 " Stay with these," said Mowgli to the Four. 
 "We shall need every tooth. Phao and Akela 
 must make ready the battle. I go to count the 
 dogs." 
 
 "It is death!" Won-tolla cried, half rising. 
 " What can such a hairless one do against 
 the Red Dog? Even the Striped One, remem- 
 ber — " 
 
 "Thou art indeed an Outlier," Mowgli called 
 back; " but we will speak when the dholes are 
 dead. Good hunting all ! " 
 
 He hurried off into the darkness, wild with ex- 
 citement, hardly looking where he set foot, and 
 the natural consequence was that he tripped full 
 length over Kaa's great coils where the python 
 lay watching a deer-path near the river. 
 
 " Kssha! " said Kaa angrily. " Is this jungle- 
 work, to stamp and tramp and undo a night's 
 hunting — when the game are moving so well, 
 too?" 
 
 "The fault was mine," said Mowgli, picking 
 himself up. " Indeed I was seeking thee, Flat- 
 head, but each time we meet thou art longer and 
 broader by the length of my arm. There is none 
 
250 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 like thee in the Jungle, wise, old, strong, and 
 most beautiful Kaa." 
 
 " Now, whither does this trail lead ? " Kaa's 
 voice was gentler. " Not a moon since there was 
 a -Manling with a knife threw stones at my head, 
 and called me bad little tree-cat names, because I 
 lay asleep in the open." 
 
 "Ay, and turned every driven deer to all the 
 winds, and Mowgli was hunting, and this same 
 Flathead was too deaf to hear his whistle, and 
 leave the deer- roads free," Mowgli answered 
 composedly, sitting down among the painted coils. 
 
 " Now this same Manling comes with soft, 
 tickling words to this same Flathead, telling him 
 that he is wise and strong and beautiful, and 
 this same old Flathead believes and makes a 
 place, thus, for this same stone-throwing Manling, 
 and — . Art thou at ease now ? Could Ba- 
 gheera give thee so good a resting-place ? " 
 
 Kaa had, as usual, made a sort of soft, half-ham- 
 mock of himself under Mowgli's weight. The boy 
 reached out in the darkness, and gathered in the 
 supple cable-like neck till Kaa's head rested on 
 his shoulder, and then he told him all that had 
 happened in the Jungle that night. 
 
 "Wise I may be," said Kaa at the end; "but 
 deaf I surely am. Else I should have heard the 
 
RED DOG 251 
 
 pheeal. Small wonder the Eaters of Grass are 
 uneasy. How many be the dhole ? " 
 
 " I have not yet seen. I came hot-foot to thee. 
 Thou art older than Hathi. But oh, Kaa," — 
 here Mowgli wriggled with sheer joy, — "it will 
 be good hunting. Few of us will see another 
 moon." 
 
 "Dost thou strike in this? Remember thou 
 art a Man ; and remember what Pack cast thee 
 out. Let the Wolf look to the Dog. Thou art 
 a Man." 
 
 " Last year's nuts are this year's black earth," 
 said Mowgli. " It is true that I am a Man, but 
 it is in my stomach that this night I have said 
 that I am a Wolf. I called the River and the 
 Trees to remember. I am of the Free People, 
 Kaa, till the dhole has gone by." 
 
 " Free People," Kaa grunted. " Free thieves ! 
 And thou hast tied thyself into the death-knot 
 for the sake of the memory of the dead wolves? 
 This is no good hunting." 
 
 " It is my Word which I have spoken. The 
 Trees know, the River knows. Till the dhole 
 have gone by my Word comes not back to me." 
 
 "Ngsshi This changes all trails. I had 
 thought to take thee away with me to the north- 
 ern marshes, but the Word — even the Word of 
 
252 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 a little, naked, hairless manling — is the Word. 
 Now I, Kaa, say — " 
 
 " Think well, Flathead, lest thou tie thyself 
 into the death-knot also. I need no Word from 
 thee, for well I know — " 
 
 " Be it so, then," said Kaa. " I will give no 
 Word ; but what is in thy stomach to do when 
 the dhole come ? " 
 
 "They must swim the Waingunga. I thought 
 to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the 
 Pack behind me ; and so stabbing and thrusting 
 we a little might turn them down-stream, or cool 
 their throats." 
 
 " The dhole do not turn and their throats are 
 hot," said Kaa. "There will be neither Manling 
 nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only 
 dry bones." 
 
 " Alala! If we die, we die. It will be most 
 good hunting. But my stomach is young, and I 
 have not seen many Rains. I am not wise nor 
 strong. Hast thou a better plan, Kaa ? " 
 
 " I have seen a hundred and a hundred Rains. 
 Ere Hathi cast his milk-tushes my trail was big 
 in the dust. By the First Egg I am older than 
 many trees, and I have seen all that the Jungle 
 has done." 
 
 " But this is new hunting," said Mowgli. 
 
RED DOG 253 
 
 " Never before have the dhole crossed our 
 trail." 
 
 " What is has been. What will be is no more 
 than a forgotten year striking backward. Be 
 still while I count those my years." 
 
 For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the 
 coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the 
 ground, thought of all that he had seen and 
 known since the dav he came from the eg-o-. The 
 light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them 
 like stale opals, and now and again he made little 
 stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though 
 he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed 
 quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like 
 sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take 
 it at any hour of the day or night. 
 
 Then he felt Kaa's back grow bigger and 
 broader below him as the huge python puffed him- 
 self out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn 
 from a steel scabbard. 
 
 " I have seen all the dead seasons," Kaa said at 
 last, "and the great trees and the old elephants, 
 and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed 
 ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling? " 
 
 " It is only a little after moonset," said Mowgli. 
 " I do not understand — " 
 
 " Hssh ! I am again Kaa. I knew it was but 
 
254 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 a little time. Now we will go to the river, and I 
 will show thee what is to be done against the 
 dhole." 
 
 He turned, straight as an arrow, for the main 
 stream of the Waingunga, plunging in a little 
 above the pool that hid the Peace Rock, Mowgli 
 at his side. 
 
 " Nay, do not swim. I go swiftly. My back, 
 Little Brother ! " 
 
 Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa's neck, 
 dropped his right close to his body, and straight- 
 ened his feet. Then Kaa breasted the current as 
 he alone could, and the ripple of the checked 
 water stood up in a frill round Mowgli's neck, and 
 his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under 
 the python's lashing sides. A mile or two above 
 the Peace Rock the Waingunga narrows between 
 a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred 
 feet high, and the current runs like a mill-race 
 between and over all manner of ugly stones. 
 But Mowgli did not trouble his head about the 
 water; little water in the world could have given 
 him a moment's fear. He was looking at the 
 gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for 
 there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very 
 like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day. In- 
 stinctively he lowered himself in the water, only 
 
RED DOG 255 
 
 raising his head to breathe from time to time, 
 and Kaa came to anchor with a double twist of 
 his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in 
 the hollow of a coil, while the water raced on. 
 
 "This is the Place of Death," said the boy. 
 " Why do we come here ? " 
 
 " They sleep," said Kaa. " Hathi will not turn 
 aside for the Striped One. Yet Hathi and the 
 Striped One together turn aside for the dhole, 
 and the dhole they say turn aside for nothing. 
 And yet for whom do the Little People of the 
 Rocks turn aside ? Tell me, Master of the Jungle, 
 who is the Master of the Jungle ?" 
 
 " These," Mowgli whispered. " It is the Place 
 of Death. Let us go." 
 
 " Nay, look well, for they are asleep. It is as 
 it was when I was not the length of thy arm." 
 
 The split and weatherworn rocks of the gorge 
 of the Waingunga had been used since the begin- 
 ning of the Jungle by the Little People of the 
 Rocks — the busy, furious, black wild bees of 
 India ; and, as Mowgli knew well, all trails turned 
 off half a mile before they reached the gorge. 
 For centuries the Little People had hived and 
 swarmed from cleft to cleft, and swarmed again, 
 staining the white marble with stale honey, and 
 made their combs tall and deep in the dark 
 
256 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 of the inner caves, where neither man nor beast 
 nor fire nor water had ever touched them. The 
 length of the gorge on both sides was hung as it 
 were with black shimmery velvet curtains, and 
 Mowgli sank as he looked, for those were the 
 clotted millions of the sleeping bees. There were 
 other lumps and festoons and things like decayed 
 tree-trunks studded on the face of the rock, the 
 old combs of past years, or new cities built in the 
 shadow of the windless gorge, and huge masses 
 of spongy, rotten trash had rolled down and stuck 
 among the trees and creepers that clung to the 
 rock-face. As he listened he heard more than 
 once the rustle and slide of a honey-loaded comb 
 turning over or falling away somewhere in the 
 dark galleries; then a booming of angry wings 
 and the sullen drip, drip, drip, of the wasted honey, 
 guttering along till it lipped over some ledge in 
 the open air and sluggishly trickled down on the 
 twigs. There was a tiny little beach, not five 
 feet broad, on one side of the river, and that was 
 piled high with the rubbish of uncounted years. 
 There were dead bees, drones, sweepings, and 
 stale combs, and wings of marauding moths that 
 had strayed in after honey, all tumbled in smooth 
 piles of the finest black dust. The mere sharp 
 smell of it was enough to frighten anything that 
 
RED DOG 257 
 
 had no wings, and knew what the Little People 
 were. 
 
 Kaa moved up-stream again till he came to a 
 sandy bar at the head of the gorge. 
 
 " Here is this season's kill," said he. " Look! " 
 
 On the bank lay the skeletons of a couple of 
 young deer and a buffalo. Mowgli could see that 
 neither wolf nor jackal had touched the bones, 
 which were laid out naturally. 
 
 "They came beyond the line: they did not 
 know the Law," murmured Mowgli, "and the Lit- 
 tle People killed them. Let us go ere they wake." 
 
 "They do not w r ake till the dawn," said Kaa. 
 " Now I will tell thee. A hunted buck from the 
 south, many, many Rains ago, came hither from 
 the south, not knowing the Jungle, a Pack on his 
 trail. Being made blind by fear, he leaped from 
 above, the Pack running by sight, for they were 
 hot and blind on the trail. The sun was high, 
 and the Little People were many and very angry. 
 Many too were those of the Pack who leaped 
 into the Waingunga, but they were dead ere they 
 took water. Those who did not leap died also in 
 the rocks above. But the buck lived." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " Because he came first, running for his life, 
 leaping ere the Little People were aware, and 
 
258 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 was in the river when they gathered to kill. The 
 Pack, following, was altogether lost under the 
 weight of the Little People." 
 
 "The buck lived?" Mowgli repeated slowly. 
 
 " At least he did not die then, though none 
 waited his coming down with a strong body to 
 hold him safe against the water, as a certain old 
 fat, deaf, yellow Flathead would wait for a Man- 
 ling — yea, though there were all the dholes of 
 the Dekkan on his trail. What is in thy stomach ? " 
 Kaa's head was close to Mowgli's ear ; and it was 
 a little time before the boy answered. 
 
 " It is to pull the very whiskers of Death, 
 but — Kaa, thou art, indeed, the wisest of all the 
 Jungle." 
 
 " So many have said. Look now, if the dhole 
 follow thee — " 
 
 "As surely they will follow. Ho ! ho ! I have 
 many little thorns under my tongue to prick into 
 their hides." 
 
 " If they follow thee hot and blind, looking 
 only at thy shoulders, those who do not die up 
 above will take water either here or lower down, 
 for the Little People will rise up and cover them. 
 Now the Waingunga is hungry water, and they will 
 have no Kaa to hold them, but will go down, 
 such as live, to the shallows by the Seeonee 
 
RED DOG 259 
 
 lairs, and there thy Pack may meet them by the 
 throat." 
 
 " Akaif Eowawa! Better could not be till the 
 Rains fall in the dry season. There is now only 
 the little matter of the run and the leap. I will 
 make me known to the dholes, so that they shall 
 follow me very closely." 
 
 " Hast thou seen the rocks above thee ? From 
 the landward side ? " 
 
 " Indeed, no. That I had forgotten." 
 
 " Go look. It is all rotten ground, cut and full 
 of holes. One of thy clumsy feet set down with- 
 out seeing would end the hunt. See, I leave thee 
 here, and for thy sake only I will carry word to 
 the Pack that they may know where to look for 
 the dhole. For myself, I am not of one skin with 
 any wolf." 
 
 When Kaa disliked an acquaintance he could 
 be more unpleasant than any of the Jungle Peo- 
 ple, except perhaps Bagheera. He swam down- 
 stream and opposite the Rock he came on Phao 
 and Akela listening to the night noises. 
 
 " Hssh ! Dogs," he said cheerfully. "The 
 dholes will come down-stream. If ye be not 
 afraid ye can kill them in the shallows." 
 
 " When come they ? " said Phao. " And where 
 is my Man-cub ? " said Akela. 
 
260 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 "They come when they come," said Kaa. 
 " Wait and see. As for thy Man-cub, from whom 
 thou hast taken a Word and so laid him open to 
 Death, thy Man -cub is with me, and if he be not 
 already dead the fault is none of thine, bleached 
 dog ! Wait here for the dhole, and be glad that 
 the Man-cub and I strike on thy side." 
 
 He flashed up-stream again, and moored him- 
 self in the middle of the gorge, looking upward 
 at the line of the cliff. Presently he saw Mowgli's 
 head move against the stars, and then there was 
 a whizz in the air, the keen, clean schloop of a body 
 falling feet first, and next minute the boy was at 
 rest again in the loop of Kaa's body. 
 
 " It is no leap by night," said Mowgli quietly. 
 " I have jumped twice as far for sport ; but that 
 is an evil place above — low bushes and gullies 
 that go down very deep, all full of the Little 
 People. I have put big stones one above the 
 other by the side of three gullies. These I shall 
 throw down with my feet in running, and the Lit- 
 tle People will rise up behind me, very angry." 
 
 "That is Man's talk and Man's cunning," said 
 Kaa. "Thou art wise, but the Little People are 
 always angry." 
 
 " Nay, at twilight all wings near and far rest 
 for a while. I will play with the dhole at twilight, 
 
RED DOG 261 
 
 for the dhole hunts best by day. He follows 
 now Won-tolla's blood-trail." 
 
 " Chil does not leave a dead ox, nor the dhole 
 the blood-trail," said Kaa. 
 
 " Then I will make him a new blood-trail, of his 
 own blood, if I can, and give him dirt to eat. 
 Thou wilt stay here, Kaa, till I come again with 
 my dholes ? " 
 
 " Ay, but what if they kill thee in the Jungle, or 
 the Little People kill thee before thou canst leap 
 down to the river ? " 
 
 " When to-morrow comes we will kill for to- 
 morrow," said Mowgli, quoting a Jungle saying ; 
 and again, " When I am dead it is time to sing 
 the Death Song. Good hunting, Kaa ! " 
 
 He loosed his arm from the python's neck and 
 went down the gorge like a log in a freshet, pad- 
 dling toward the far bank, where he found slack- 
 water, and laughing aloud from sheer happiness. 
 There was nothing Mowgli liked better than, as 
 he himself said, "to pull the whiskers of Death," 
 and make the Jungle know that he was their over- 
 lord. He had often, with Baloo's help, robbed 
 bees' nests in single trees, and he knew that the 
 Little People hated the smell of wild garlic. So 
 he gathered a small bundle of it, tied it up with a 
 bark string, and then followed Won-tolla's blood- 
 
262 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 trail as it ran southerly from the lairs, for some 
 five miles, looking- at the trees with his head on 
 one side, and chuckling as he looked. 
 
 " Mowgli the Frog have I been," said he to 
 himself; " Mowgli the Wolf have I said that I am. 
 Now Mowgli the Ape must I be before I am 
 Mowgli the Buck. At the end I shall be Mowgli 
 the Man. Ho ! " and he slid his thumb along the 
 eighteen-inch blade of his knife. 
 
 Won-tolla's trail, all rank with dark blood-spots, 
 ran under a forest of thick trees that grew close to- 
 gether and stretched away northeastward, grad- 
 ually growing thinner and thinner to within two 
 miles of the Bee Rocks. From the last tree to 
 the low scrub of the Bee Rocks was open coun- 
 try, where there was hardly cover enough to hide 
 a wolf. Mowgli trotted along under the trees, 
 judging distances between branch and branch, 
 occasionally climbing up a trunk and taking a 
 trial leap from one tree to another, till he came 
 to the open ground, which he studied very care- 
 fully for an hour. Then he turned, picked up 
 Won-tolla's trail where he had left it, settled him- 
 self in a tree with an outrunning branch some 
 eight feet from the ground, and sat still, sharpen- 
 ing his knife on the sole of his foot and singing 
 to himself. 
 
RED DOG 263 
 
 A little before midday, when the sun was very 
 warm, he heard the patter of feet and smelt the 
 abominable smell of the dhole pack as they trot- 
 ted pitilessly along Won-tolla's trail. Seen from 
 above, the red dhole does not look half the size of 
 a wolf, but Mowgli knew how strong his feet and 
 jaws were. He watched the sharp bay head of 
 the leader snuffing along the trail and gave him 
 " Good hunting ! " 
 
 The brute looked up, and his companions halted 
 behind him, scores and scores of red dogs with 
 low-hung tails, heavy shoulders, weak quarters, 
 and bloody mouths. The dholes are a silent 
 people as a rule, and they have no manners even 
 in their own Jungle. Fully two hundred must 
 have gathered below him, but he could see that 
 the leaders sniffed hungrily on Won-tolla's trail, 
 and tried to drag the Pack forward. That would 
 never do, or they would be at the Lairs in broad 
 daylight, and Mowgli intended to hold them under 
 his tree till dusk. 
 
 " By whose leave do ye come here ? " said 
 Mowgli. 
 
 "All Jungles are our Jungle," was the reply, 
 and the dhole that gave it bared his white teeth. 
 Mowgli looked down with a smile, and imitated 
 perfectly the sharp chitter-chatter of Chikai, the 
 
264 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 leaping rat of the Dekkan, meaning the dholes to 
 understand that he considered them no better 
 than Chikai. The Pack closed up round the tree- 
 trunk and the leader bayed savagely, calling 
 Mowgli a tree-ape. For all answer Mowgli 
 stretched down one naked leg and wriggled his 
 bare toes just above the leader's head. That was 
 enough, and more than enough, to wake the Pack 
 to stupid rage. Those who have hair between 
 their toes do not care to be reminded of it. Mowgli 
 caught his foot away as the leader leaped up, and 
 said sweetly: " Dog, red dog! Go back to the 
 Dekkan and eat lizards. Go to Chikai thy bro- 
 ther — dog, dog — red, red, dog! There is hair 
 between every toe !" He twiddled his toes a sec- 
 ond time. 
 
 "Come down ere we starve thee out, hairless 
 ape ! " yelled the Pack, and this was exactly what 
 Mowgli wanted. He laid himself down along 
 the branch, his cheek to the bark, his right arm 
 free, and there he told the Pack what he thought 
 and knew about them, their manners, their cus- 
 toms, their mates, and their puppies. There is no 
 speech in the world so rancorous and so stinging 
 as the language the Jungle People use to show 
 scorn and contempt. When you come to think of 
 it you will see how this must be so. As Mowgli 
 
RED DOG 265 
 
 told Kaa, he had many little thorns under his 
 tongue, and slowly and deliberately he drove the 
 dholes from silence to growls, from growls to 
 yells, and from yells to hoarse slavery ravings. 
 They tried to answer his taunts, but a cub might 
 as well have tried to answer Kaa in a rage ; and 
 all the while Mowgli's right hand lay crooked at 
 his side, ready for action, his feet locked round 
 the branch. The big bay leader had leaped many 
 times in the air, but Mowgli dared not risk a false 
 blow. At last, made furious beyond his natural 
 strength, he bounded up seven or eight feet clear 
 of the ground. Then Mowgli's hand shot out 
 like the head of a tree-snake, and gripped him by 
 the scruff of his neck, and the branch shook with 
 the jar as his weight fell back, almost wrenching 
 Mowgli to the ground. But he never loosed his 
 grasp, and inch by inch he hauled the beast, 
 hanging like a drowned jackal, up on the branch. 
 With his left hand he reached for his knife and cut 
 off the red, bushy tail, flinging the dhole back to 
 earth again. That was all he needed. The Pack 
 would not go forward on Won-tolla's trail now 
 till they had killed Mowgli or Mowgli had killed 
 them. He saw them settle down in circles with a 
 quiver of the haunches that meant they were 
 going to stay, and so he climbed to a higher 
 
266 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 crotch, settled his back comfortably, and went to 
 sleep. 
 
 After four or five hours he waked and counted 
 the Pack. They were all there, silent, husky, and 
 dry, with eyes of steel. The sun was beginning 
 to sink. In half an hour the Little People of the 
 Rocks would be ending their labors, and, as he 
 knew, the dhole does not fight best in the twi- 
 light. 
 
 " I did not need such faithful watchers," he said 
 politely, standing up on a branch, "but I will re- 
 member this. Ye be true dholes, but to my 
 thinking over much of one kind. For that reason 
 I do not give the big lizard-eater his tail again. 
 Art thou not pleased, Red Dog ? " 
 
 " I myself will tear out thy stomach ! " yelled 
 the leader, scratching at the foot of the tree. 
 
 " Nay, but consider, wise rat of the Dekkan. 
 There will now be many litters of little tailless red 
 dogs, yea, with raw red stumps that sting when 
 the sand is hot. Go home, Red Dog, and cry 
 that an ape has done this. Ye will not go ? Come, 
 then, with me, and I will make you very wise ! " 
 
 He moved, Bandar-log fashion, into the next 
 tree, and so on into the next and the next, the 
 Pack following with lifted hungry heads. Now 
 and then he would pretend to fall, and the Pack 
 
RED DOG 267 
 
 would tumble one over the other in their haste to 
 be at the death. It was a curious sight — the 
 boy with the knife that shone in the low sunlight 
 as it shifted through the upper branches, and the 
 silent Pack with their red coats all aflame, hud- 
 dling and following below. When he came to 
 the last tree he took the garlic and rubbed him- 
 self all over carefully, and the dholes yelled with 
 scorn. "Ape with a wolf's tongue, dost thou think 
 to cover thy scent ? " they said. " We follow to 
 the death." 
 
 " Take thy tail," said Mowgli, flinging it back 
 along the course he had taken. The Pack instinc- 
 tively rushed after it. "And follow now — to 
 the death." 
 
 He had slipped down the tree-trunk, and 
 headed like the wind in bare feet for the Bee 
 Rocks, before the dholes saw what he would do. 
 
 They gave one deep howl, and settled down to 
 the long, lobbing canter that can at the last run 
 down anything that runs. Mowgli knew their 
 pack-pace to be much slower than that of the 
 wolves, or he would never have risked a two-mile 
 run in full sight. They were sure that the boy 
 was theirs at last, and he was sure that he held 
 them to play with as he pleased. All his trouble 
 was to keep them sufficiently hot behind him to 
 
268 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 prevent their turning off too soon. He ran cleanly, 
 evenly, and springily ; the tailless leader not five 
 yards behind him ; and the Pack tailing out over 
 perhaps a quarter of a mile of ground, crazy and 
 blind with the rage of slaughter. So he kept 
 his distance by ear, reserving his last effort for 
 the rush across the Bee Rocks. 
 
 The Little People had gone to sleep in the 
 early twilight, for it was not the season of late- 
 blossoming flowers; but as Mowgli's first footfalls 
 rang hollow on the hollow ground he heard a 
 sound as though all the earth were humming. 
 Then he ran as he had never run in his life before, 
 spurned aside one — two — three of the piles of 
 stones into the dark, sweet-smelling gullies; heard 
 a roar like the roar of the sea in a cave ; saw with 
 the tail of his eye the air grow dark behind him ; 
 saw the current of the Waingunga far below and 
 a flat, diamond-shaped head in the water ; leaped 
 outward with all his strength, the tailless dhole 
 snapping at his shoulder in mid-air, and dropped 
 feet first to the safety of the river, breathless and 
 triumphant. There was not a sting upon him, 
 for the smell of the garlic had checked the Little 
 People for just the few seconds that he was among 
 them. When he rose Kaa's coils were steadying 
 him and things were bounding over the edge of 
 
RED DOG 269 
 
 the cliff — great lumps, it seemed, of clustered 
 bees falling like plummets ; but before any lump 
 touched water the bees flew upward and the body 
 of a dhole whirled down-stream. Overhead they 
 could hear furious short yells that were drowned 
 in a roar like breakers — the roar of the wings 
 of the Little People of the Rocks. Some of the 
 dholes, too, had fallen into the gullies that com- 
 municated with the underground caves, and there 
 choked and fought and snapped among the tum- 
 bled honeycombs, and at last, borne up even when 
 they were dead on the heaving waves of bees 
 beneath them, shot out of some hole in the river- 
 face, to roll over on the black rubbish-heaps. 
 There were dholes who had leaped short into the 
 trees on the cliffs, and the bees blotted out their 
 shapes ; but the greater number of them, mad- 
 dened by the stings, had flung themselves into 
 the river ; and, as Kaa said, the Waingunga was 
 hungry water. 
 
 Kaa held Mowgli fast till the boy had recovered 
 his breath. 
 
 " We may not stay here," he said. " The Little 
 People are roused indeed. Come ! " 
 
 Swimming low and diving as often as he could, 
 Mowgli went down the river, knife in hand. 
 
 "Slowly, slowly," said Kaa. " One tooth does 
 
270 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 not kill a hundred unless it be a cobra's, and many 
 of the dholes took water swiftly when they saw 
 the Little People rise." 
 
 "The more work for my knife, then. Phai I 
 How the Little People follow ! " Mowgli sank 
 again. The face of the water was blanketed with 
 wild bees, buzzing sullenly and stinging all they 
 found. 
 
 " Nothing was ever yet lost by silence," said 
 Kaa — no sting could penetrate his scales — 
 " and thou hast all the long night for the hunting. 
 Hear them howl ! " 
 
 Nearly half the pack had seen the trap their 
 fellows rushed into, and turning sharp aside had 
 flung themselves into the water where the gorge 
 broke down in steep banks. Their cries of rage 
 and their threats against the " tree-ape" who had 
 brought them to their shame mixed with the yells 
 and growls of those who had been punished by the 
 Little People. To remain ashore was death, and 
 every dhole knew it. Their pack was swept along 
 the current, down to the deep eddies of the Peace 
 Pool, but even there the angry Little People 
 followed and forced them to the water again. 
 Mowgli could hear the voice of the tailless leader 
 bidding his people hold on and kill out every 
 wolf in Seeonee. But he did not waste his time 
 in listening. 
 
RED DOG 271 
 
 " One kills in the dark behind us !" snapped a 
 dhole. " Here is tainted water." 
 
 Mowgli had dived forward like an otter, 
 twitched a struggling dhole under water before he 
 could open his mouth, and dark rings rose as the 
 body plopped up, turning on its side. The dholes 
 tried to turn, but the current prevented them, and 
 the Little People darted at their heads and ears, 
 and they could hear the challenge of the Seeonee 
 Pack growing louder and deeper in the gathering 
 darkness. Again Mowgli dived, and again a 
 dhole went under, and rose dead, and again the 
 clamor broke out at the rear of the pack ; some 
 howling that it was best to go ashore, others call- 
 ing on their leader to lead them back to the 
 Dekkan, and others bidding Mowgli show him- 
 self and be killed. 
 
 "They come to the fight with two stomachs 
 and several voices," said Kaa. " The rest is with 
 thy brethren below yonder. The Little People 
 go back to sleep. They have chased us far. 
 Now I, too, turn back, for I am not of one skin 
 with any wolf. Good hunting, Little Brother, and 
 remember the dhole bites low." 
 
 A wolf came running along the bank on three 
 legs, leaping up and down, laying his head side- 
 ways close to the ground, hunching his back, and 
 
272 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 breaking high into the air, as though he were 
 playing with his cubs. It was Won-tolla, the 
 Outlier, and he said never a word, but continued 
 his horrible sport beside the dholes. They had 
 been long in the water now, and were swimming 
 wearily, their coats drenched and heavy, their 
 bushy tails dragging like sponges, so tired and 
 shaken that they, too, were silent, watching the 
 pair of blazing eyes that moved abreast. 
 
 "This is no good hunting," said one, panting. 
 
 "Good hunting!" said Mowgli, as he rose 
 boldly at the brute's side, and sent the long knife 
 home behind the shoulder, pushing hard to avoid 
 his dying snap. 
 
 "Art thou there, Man-cub?" said Won-tolla 
 across the water. 
 
 "Ask of the dead, Outlier," Mowgli replied. 
 " Have none come down-stream ? I have filled 
 these dogs' mouths with dirt ; I have tricked them 
 in the broad daylight, and their leader lacks 
 his tail, but here be some few for thee still. 
 Whither shall I drive them ? " 
 
 "I will wait," said Won-tolla. "The night 
 is before me." 
 
 Nearer and nearer came the bay of the Seeo- 
 nee wolves. " For the Pack, for the Full Pack 
 it is met ! " and a bend in the river drove the 
 
RED DOG 273 
 
 dholes forward among the sands and shoals op- 
 posite the Lairs. 
 
 Then they saw their mistake. They should 
 have landed half a mile higher up, and rushed 
 the wolves on dry ground. Now it was too late. 
 The bank was lined with burning eyes, and ex- 
 cept for the horrible//^^/ that had never stopped 
 since sundown, there was no sound in the Jungle. 
 It seemed as though Won-tolla were fawning on 
 them to come ashore ; and " Turn and take hold !" 
 said the leader of the dholes. The entire Pack 
 flung themselves at the shore, threshing and squat- 
 tering through the shoal water, till the face of the 
 Waingunga was all white and torn, and the great 
 ripples went from side to side, like bow-waves 
 from a boat. Mowgli followed the rush, stabbing 
 and slicing as the dholes, huddled together, 
 rushed up the river-beach in one wave. 
 
 Then the long fight began, heaving and strain- 
 ing and splitting and scattering and narrowing 
 and broadening along the red, wet sands, and 
 over and between the tangled tree-roots, and 
 through and among the brushes, and in and out 
 of the grass clumps; for even now the dholes were 
 two to one. But they met wolves fighting for 
 all that made the Pack, and not only the short, 
 high, deep-chested, white-tusked hunters of the 
 
274 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Pack, but the anxious-eyed lahinis — the she- 
 wolves of the lair, as the saying is — fighting for 
 their litters, with here and there a yearling wolf, 
 his first coat still half woolly, tugging and grap- 
 pling by their sides. A wolf, you must know, 
 flies at the throat or snaps at the flank, while a 
 dhole, by preference, bites at the belly ; so when 
 the dholes were struggling out of the water and 
 had to raise their heads, the odds were with the 
 wolves. On dry land the wolves suffered ; but 
 in the water or ashore, Mowgli's knife came and 
 went without ceasing. The Four had worried 
 their way to his side. Gray Brother, crouched 
 between the boy's knees, was protecting his stom- 
 ach, while the others guarded his back and either 
 side, or stood over him when the shock of a leap- 
 ing, yelling dhole who had thrown himself full on 
 the steady blade, bore him down. For the rest, it 
 was one tangled confusion — a locked and sway- 
 ing mob that moved from right to left and from 
 left to right along the bank ; and also ground 
 round and round slowly on its own center. Here 
 would be a heaving mound, like a water-blister in 
 a whirlpool, which would break like a water-blis- 
 ter, and throw up four or five mangled dogs, each 
 striving to get back to the center; here would be 
 a single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, 
 
RED DOG 275 
 
 laboriously dragging them forward, and sinking 
 the while ; here a yearling cub would be held up 
 by the pressure round him, though he had been 
 killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb 
 rage, rolled over and over, snapping, and passing 
 on ; and in the middle of the thickest press, per- 
 haps, one wolf and one dhole, forgetting every- 
 thing else, would be manceuvering for first hold 
 till they were whirled away by a rush of furious 
 fighters. Once Mowgli passed Akela, a dhole on 
 either flank, and his all but toothless jaws closed 
 over the loins of a third ; and once he saw Phao, 
 his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging the 
 unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could 
 finish him. But the bulk of the fia-ht was blind 
 flurry and smother in the dark ; hit, trip, and tum- 
 ble, yelp, groan, and worry- worry -worry, round 
 him and behind him and above him. As the 
 night wore on, the quick, giddy-go-round motion 
 increased. The dholes were cowed and afraid to 
 attack the stronger wolves, but did not yet dare 
 to run away. Mowgli felt that the end was com- 
 ing soon, and contented himself with striking 
 merely to cripple. The yearlings were growing 
 bolder; there was time now and again to breathe, 
 and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker 
 of the knife would sometimes turn a dog aside. 
 
276 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 "The meat is very near the bone," Gray 
 Brother yelled. He was bleeding from a score 
 of flesh-wounds. 
 
 " But the bone is yet to be cracked," said 
 Mowgli. " Eowawa ! Thus do we do in the 
 Jungle ! " The red blade ran like a flame along 
 the side of a dhole whose hind-quarters were hid- 
 den by the weight of a clinging wolf. 
 
 " My kill ! " snorted the wolf through his wrin- 
 kled nostrils. " Leave him to me." 
 
 "Is thy stomach still empty, Outlier?" said 
 Mowgli. Won-tolla was fearfully punished, but 
 his grip had paralyzed the dhole, who could not 
 turn round and reach him. 
 
 " By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli, 
 with a bitter laugh, " it is the tailless one ! " And 
 indeed it was the big bay-colored leader. 
 
 " It is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis," 
 Mowgli went on, philosophically, wiping the 
 blood out of his eyes, "unless one has also killed 
 the Outlier ; and it is in my stomach that this 
 Won-tolla kills thee." 
 
 A dhole leaped to his leader's aid ; but before 
 his teeth had found Won-tolla's flank, Mowgli's 
 knife was in his throat, and Gray Brother took 
 what was left. 
 
 "And thus do we do in the Jungle," said 
 Mowgli. 
 
RED DOG 277 
 
 Won-tolla said not a word, only his jaws were 
 closing and closing on the backbone as his life 
 ebbed. The dhole shuddered, his head dropped, 
 and he lay still, and Won-tolla dropped above 
 him. 
 
 " Huh! The Blood Debt is paid," said Mowgli. 
 "Sing the song, Won-tolla." 
 
 " He hunts no more," said Gray Brother; " and 
 Akela, too, is silent this long time." 
 
 "The bone is cracked!" thundered Phao, son 
 of Phaona. " They go ! Kill, kill out, O hunters 
 of the Free People ! " 
 
 Dhole after dhole was slinking away from those 
 dark and bloody sands to the river, to the thick 
 Jungle, up-stream or down-stream as he saw the 
 road clear. 
 
 "The debt! The debt!" shouted Mowgli. 
 "Pay the debt ! They have slain the Lone Wolf! 
 Let not a dog go ! " 
 
 He was flying to the river, knife in hand, to 
 check any dhole who dared to take water, when, 
 from under a mound of nine dead, rose Akela's 
 red head and fore-quarters, and Mowgli dropped 
 on his knees beside the Lone Wolf. 
 
 " Said I not it would be my last fight ? " Akela 
 panted. " It is good hunting. And thou, Little 
 Brother?" 
 
278 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " I live, having killed many." 
 
 " Even so. I die, and I would — I would die 
 by thee, Little Brother." 
 
 Mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his 
 knees, and put his arms round the torn neck. 
 
 "It is long since the old days of Shere Khan, 
 and a Man-cub that rolled naked in the dust." 
 
 " Nay, nay, I am a wolf. I am of one skin 
 with the Free People," Mowgli cried. " It is no 
 will of mine that I am a man." 
 
 " Thou art a man, Little Brother, wolfling of 
 my watching. Thou art a man, or else the Pack 
 had fled before the dhole. My life I owe to thee, 
 and to-day thou hast saved the Pack even as 
 once I saved thee. Hast thou forgotten ? All 
 debts are paid now. Go to thine own people. I 
 tell thee again, eye of my eye, this hunting is 
 ended. Go to thine own people." 
 
 " I will never go. I will hunt alone in the 
 Jungle. I have said it." 
 
 "After the summer come the Rains, and after 
 the Rains comes the spring. Go back before 
 thou art driven." 
 
 " Who will drive me ? " 
 
 " Mowgli will drive Mowgli. Go back to thy 
 people. Go to Man." 
 
 "When Mowgli drives Mowgli I will go," 
 Mowgli answered. 
 
RED DOG 279 
 
 "There is no more to say," said Akela. " Lit- 
 tle Brother, canst thou raise me to my feet ? I 
 also was a leader of the Free People." 
 
 Very carefully and gently Mowgli lifted the 
 bodies aside, and raised Akela to his feet, both 
 arms round him, and the Lone Wolf drew a long 
 breath, and began the Death Song that a leader 
 of the Pack should sing when he dies. It gath- 
 ered strength as he went on, lifting and lifting, 
 and ringing far across the river, till it came to 
 the last " Good hunting ! " and Akela shook him- 
 self clear of Mowgli for an instant, and, leaping 
 into the air, fell backward dead upon his last and 
 most terrible kill. 
 
 Mowgli sat with the head on his knees, careless 
 of anything else, while the remnant of the flying 
 dholes were being overtaken and run down by 
 the merciless lahinis. Little by little the cries 
 died away, and the wolves returned limping, as 
 their wounds stiffened, to take stock of the losses. 
 Fifteen of the Pack, as well as half a dozen lahi- 
 nis, lay dead by the river, and of the others not 
 one was unmarked. And Mowgli sat through 
 it all till the cold daybreak, when Phao's wet, red 
 muzzle was dropped in his hand, and Mowgli 
 drew back to show the gaunt body of Akela. 
 
 " Good hunting ! " said Phao, as though Akela 
 
280 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 were still alive, and then over his bitten shoulder 
 to the others: "Howl, dogs ! A Wolf has died 
 to-night ! " 
 
 But of all the Pack of two hundred fighting 
 dholes, whose boast was that all Jungles were their 
 Jungle, and that no living thing could stand be- 
 fore them, not one returned to the Dekkan to 
 carry that word. 
 
CHIL'S SONG 
 
 [This is the song that Chil sang as the kites dropped 
 down one after another to the river-bed, when the great 
 fight was finished. Chil is good friends with everybody, 
 but he is a cold-blooded kind of creature at heart, be- 
 cause he knows that almost everybody in the Jungle 
 comes to him in the long run.] 
 
 HESE were- my companions going 
 
 forth by night — 
 
 (For Chil! Look you, for Chill) 
 
 Now come I to whistle them the 
 
 ending of the fight. 
 
 (Chil ! Vanguards of Chil I s ) 
 
 Word they gave me overhead of 
 
 quarry newly slain, 
 Word I gave them underfoot of 
 buck upon the plain. 
 Here 's an end of every trail — they shall not speak 
 again ! 
 
 They that called the hunting-cry — they that followed 
 fast — 
 
 {For Chil ! Look you, for Chil!) 
 
 281 
 
282 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 They that bade the sambhur wheel, and pinned him as 
 
 he passed — 
 
 {Chil ! Vanguards of CJiil /) 
 They that lagged behind the scent — they that ran before, 
 They that shunned the level horn — they that overbore. 
 Here 's an end of every trail — they shall not follow 
 
 more. 
 
 These were my companions. Pity 't was they died ! 
 
 {For Chill Look you, for Chill) 
 Now come I to comfort them that knew them in their 
 
 pride. 
 
 {Chil ! Vanguards of Chil /) 
 Tattered flank and sunken eye, open mouth and red, 
 Locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their 
 
 dead. 
 Here 's an end of every trail — and here my hosts are 
 
 fed! 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 
 
Man goes to Man ! Cry the challenge through the Jungle ! 
 
 He that was our Brother goes away. 
 Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle, — 
 
 Answer, who shall turn him — who shall stay ? 
 
 Man goes to Man ! He is weeping in the Jungle: 
 
 He that was our Brother sorrows sore ! 
 Man goes to Man ! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle !) 
 
 To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more. 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 
 
 HE second year after the 
 great fight with Red Dog 
 and the death of Akela, 
 Mowgli must have been 
 nearly seventeen years 
 old. He looked older, 
 for hard exercise, the 
 best of good eating, and 
 baths whenever he felt 
 in the least hot or dusty, 
 had given him strength 
 and growth far beyond his 
 age. He could swing by 
 one hand from a top branch for half an hour at 
 a time, when he had occasion to look along the 
 tree-roads. He could stop a young buck in mid- 
 285 
 
286 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 gallop and throw him sideways by the head. 
 He could even jerk over the big, blue wild boars 
 that lived in the Marshes of the North. The 
 Jungle People who used to fear him for his wits 
 feared him now for his strength, and when he 
 moved quietly on his own affairs the mere whis- 
 per of his coming cleared the wood-paths. And 
 yet the look in his eyes was always gentle. 
 Even when he fought, his eyes never blazed as 
 Bagheera's did. They only grew more and more 
 interested and excited ; and that was one of the 
 things that Bagheera himself did not understand. 
 
 He asked Mowgli about it, and the boy laughed 
 and said : " When I miss the kill I am angry. 
 When I must go empty for two days I am very 
 angry. Do not my eyes talk then ? " 
 
 "The mouth is angry," said Bagheera, "but 
 the eyes say nothing. Hunting, eating, or swim- 
 ming, it is all one — like a stone in wet or dry 
 weather." Mowgli looked at him lazily from un- 
 der his long eyelashes, and, as usual, the panther's 
 head dropped. Bagheera knew his master. 
 
 They were lying out far up the side of a hill 
 overlooking the Waingunga, and the morning 
 mist hung below them in bands of white and 
 green. As the sun rose it changed into bub- 
 bling seas of red gold, churned off, and let the 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 287 
 
 low rays stripe the dried grass on which Mowgli 
 and Bagheera were resting. It was the end of 
 the cold weather, the leaves and the trees looked 
 worn and faded, and there was a dry, ticking 
 rustle everywhere when the wind blew. A little 
 leaf tap-tap-tapped furiously against a twig, as a 
 sino-le leaf caught in a current will. It roused 
 Bagheera, for he snuffed the morning air with a 
 deep, hollow cough, threw himself on his back, 
 and struck with his fore- paws at the nodding leaf 
 above. 
 
 " The year turns," he said. " The Jungle goes 
 forward. The Time of New Talk is near. That 
 leaf knows. It is very good." 
 
 "The grass is dry," Mowgli answered, pulling 
 up a tuft. " Even Eye-of- the- Spring [that is a 
 little trumpet-shaped, waxy red flower that runs 
 in and out among the grasses] — even Eye-of-the 
 Spring is shut, and . . . Bagheera, is it well for 
 the Black Panther so to lie on his back and beat 
 with his paws in the air, as though he were the 
 tree-cat? " 
 
 " Aowh ? " said Bagheera. He seemed to be 
 thinking of other things. 
 
 " I say, is it well for the Black Panther so to 
 mouth and cough, and howl and roll ? Remem- 
 ber, we be the Masters of the Jungle, thou and I." 
 
288 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " Indeed, yes : I hear, Man-cub." Bagheera 
 rolled over hurriedly and sat up, the dust on his 
 ragged, black flanks. (He was just casting his 
 winter coat.) "We be surely the Masters of the 
 Jungle ! Who is so strong as Mowgli ? Who 
 so wise ? " There was a curious drawl in the 
 voice that made Mowgli turn to see whether by 
 any chance the Black Panther were making fun 
 of him, for the Jungle is full of words that sound 
 like one thing, but mean another. " I said we be 
 beyond question the Masters of the Jungle," Ba- 
 gheera repeated. " Have I done wrong? I did 
 not know that the Man-cub no longer lay upon 
 the ground. Does he fly, then ? " 
 
 Mowgli sat with his elbows on his knees, look- 
 ing out across the valley at the daylight. Some- 
 where down in the woods below a bird was try- 
 ing over in a husky, reedy voice the first few 
 notes of his spring song. It was no more than 
 a shadow of the liquid, tumbling call he would 
 be pouring later, but Bagheera heard it. 
 
 " I said the Time of New Talk is near," growled 
 the panther, switching his tail. 
 
 " I hear," Mowgli answered. " Bagheera, why 
 dost thou shake all over? The sun is warm." 
 
 "That is Ferao, the scarlet woodpecker," said 
 Bagheera. " He has not forgotten. Now I, too, 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 289 
 
 must remember my song," and he began purring 
 and crooning to himself, harking back dissatis- 
 fied again and again. 
 
 "There is no grame afoot," said Moweli. 
 
 "Little Brother, are both thine ears stopped? 
 That is no killing-word, but my song that I make 
 ready against the need." 
 
 " I had forgotten. I shall know when the 
 Time of New Talk is here, because then thou and 
 the others all run away and leave me alone." 
 Mowgli spoke rather savagely. 
 
 "But, indeed, Little Brother," Bagheera began, 
 "we do not always — " 
 
 " I say ye do," said Mowgli, shooting out his 
 forefinger angrily. "Ye do run away, and I, 
 who am the Master of the Jungle, must needs 
 walk alone. How was it last season, when I 
 would gather sugar-cane from the fields of a 
 Man-Pack? I sent a runner — I sent thee ! — to 
 Hathi, bidding him to come upon such a night 
 and pluck the sweet grass for me with his trunk." 
 
 " He came only two nights later," said Ba- 
 gheera, cowering a little; "and of that long, sweet 
 grass that pleased thee so he gathered more 
 than any Man-cub could eat in all the nights of 
 the Rains. That was no fault of mine." 
 
 " He did not come upon the night when I sent 
 
290 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 him the word. No, he was trumpeting and run- 
 ning and roaring through the valleys in the moon- 
 light. His trail was like the trail of three ele- 
 phants, for he would not hide among the trees. 
 He danced in the moonlight before the houses of 
 the Man-Pack. I saw him, and yet he would 
 not come to me ; and / am the Master of the 
 Jungle ! " 
 
 "It was the Time of New Talk," said the pan- 
 ther, always very humble. " Perhaps, Little 
 Brother, thou didst not that time call him by a 
 Master-word ? Listen to Ferao, and be glad ! " 
 
 Mowgli's bad temper seemed to have boiled it- 
 self away. He lay back with his head on his 
 arms, his eyes shut. " I do not know — nor do 
 I care," he said sleepily. " Let us sleep, Ba- 
 gheera. My stomach is heavy in me. Make me 
 a rest for my head." 
 
 The panther lay down again with a sigh, be- 
 cause he could hear Ferao practising and re- 
 practising his song against the Springtime of 
 New Talk, as they say. 
 
 In an Indian Jungle the seasons slide one into 
 the other almost without division. There seem 
 to be only two — the wet and the dry ; but if 
 you look closely below the torrents of rain and 
 the clouds of char and dust you will find all four 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 291 
 
 going round in their regular ring. Spring is the 
 most wonderful, because she has not to cover a 
 clean, bare field with new leaves and flowers, but 
 to drive before her and to put away the hang- 
 ing-on, over-surviving raffle of half-green things 
 which the gentle winter has suffered to live, and 
 to make the partly dressed stale earth feel new 
 and young once more. And this she does so 
 well that there is no spring in the world like the 
 Jungle spring. 
 
 There is one day when all things are tired, and 
 the very smells, as they drift on the heavy air, are 
 old and used. One cannot explain this, but it 
 feels so. Then there is another day — to the 
 eye nothing whatever has changed — when all 
 the smells are new and delightful, and the whis- 
 kers of the Jungle People quiver to their roots, 
 and the winter hair comes away from their sides 
 in long, draggled locks. Then, perhaps, a little 
 rain falls, and all the trees and the bushes and the 
 bamboos and the mosses and the juicy-leaved 
 plants wake with a noise of growing that you can 
 almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and 
 night, a deep hum. That is the noise of the 
 spring — a vibrating boom which is neither bees, 
 nor falling water, nor the wind in tree-tops, but 
 the purring of the warm, happy world. 
 
292 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Up to this year Mowgli had always delighted 
 in the turn of the seasons. It was he who gen- 
 erally saw the first Eye-of- the- Spring deep down 
 among the grasses, and the first bank of spring 
 clouds which are like nothing else in the Jungle. 
 His voice could be heard in all sorts of wet, star- 
 lighted, blossoming places, helping the big frogs 
 through their choruses, or mocking the little up- 
 side-down owls that hoot through the white 
 nights. Like all his people, spring was the sea- 
 son he chose for his flittings — moving, for the 
 mere joy of rushing through the warm air, thirty, 
 forty, or fifty miles between twilight and the 
 morning star, and coming back panting and 
 laughing and wreathed with strange flowers. 
 The Four did not follow him on these wild ring- 
 ings of the Jungle, but went off to sing songs 
 with other wolves. The Jungle People are very 
 busy in the spring, and Mowgli could hear them 
 grunting and screaming and whistling according 
 to their kind. Their voices then are different 
 from their voices at other times of the year, and 
 that is one of the reasons why spring in the Jun- 
 gle is called the Time of New Talk. 
 
 But that spring, as he told Bagheera, his stom- 
 ach was changed m n } m- Ever since the bamboo 
 shoots turned spotty-brown he had been looking 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 293 
 
 forward to the morning when the smells should 
 change. But when the morning came, and Mor 
 the Peacock, blazing in bronze and blue and 
 gold, cried it aloud all along the misty woods, 
 and Mowgli opened his mouth to send on the 
 cry, the words choked between his teeth, and a 
 feeling came over him that began at his toes and 
 ended in his hair — a feeling of pure unhappiness, 
 so that he looked himself over to be sure that he 
 had not trod on a thorn. Mor cried the new 
 smells, the other birds took it over, and from the 
 rocks by the Waingunga he heard Bagheera's 
 hoarse scream — something between the scream 
 of an eagle and the neighing of a horse. There 
 was a yelling and scattering of bandar-log in the 
 new-budding branches above, and there stood 
 Mowgli, his chest, filled to answer Mor, sinking 
 in little gasps as the breath was driven out of it 
 by this unhappiness. 
 
 He stared all round him, but he could see no 
 more than the mocking bandar-log scudding 
 through the trees, and Mor, his tail spread in full 
 splendor, dancing on the slopes below. 
 
 " The smells have changed," screamed Mor. 
 " Good hunting, Little Brother ! Where is thy 
 answer? " 
 
 " Little Brother, good hunting ! " whistled Chil 
 
294 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 the Kite and his mate, swooping down together. 
 The two barfed under Mowgli's nose so close that 
 a pinch of downy white feathers brushed away. 
 
 A light spring rain — elephant-rain they call 
 it — drove across the Jungle in a belt half a mile 
 wide, left the new leaves wet and nodding be- 
 hind, and died out in a double rainbow and a 
 light roll of thunder. The spring hum broke out 
 for a minute, and was silent, but all the Jungle 
 Folk seemed to be giving tongue at once. All 
 except Mowgli. 
 
 " I have eaten good food," he said to himself. 
 " I have drunk good water. Nor does my throat 
 burn and grow small, as it did when I bit the 
 blue-spotted root that Oo the Turtle said was 
 clean food. But my stomach is heavy, and I 
 have given very bad talk to Bagheera and others, 
 people of the Jungle and my people. Now, too, 
 I am hot and now I am cold, and now I am neither 
 hot nor cold, but angry with that which I cannot 
 see. Huhu! It is time to make a running! To- 
 night I will cross the ranges ; yes, I will make a 
 spring running to the Marshes of the North, and 
 back again. I have hunted too easily too long. 
 The Four shall come with me, for they grow as 
 fat as white grubs." 
 
 He called, but never one of the Four answered. 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 295 
 
 They were far beyond earshot, singing over the 
 spring songs — the Moon and Sambhur Songs 
 — with the wolves of the Pack ; for in the spring- 
 time the Jungle People make very little differ- 
 ence between the day and the night. He gave the 
 sharp, barking note, but his only answer was the 
 mocking maiou of the little spotted tree-cat wind- 
 ing in and out among the branches for early 
 birds' nests. At this he shook all over with rage, 
 and half drew his knife. Then he became very 
 haughty, though there was no one to see him, 
 and stalked severely down the hillside, chin up 
 and eyebrows down. But never a single one of 
 his people asked him a question, for they were 
 all too busy with their own affairs. 
 
 " Yes," said Mowgli to himself, though in his 
 heart he knew that he had no reason. " Let the 
 Red Dhole come from the Dekkan, or the Red 
 Flower dance among the bamboos, and all the 
 Jungle runs whining to Mowgli, calling him great 
 elephant-names. But now, because Eye-of-the- 
 Spring is red, and Mor, forsooth, must show his 
 naked legs in some spring dance, the Jungle goes 
 mad as Tabaqui. . . . By the Bull that bought 
 me ! am I the Master of the Jungle, or am I not ? 
 Be silent ! What do ye here ? " 
 
 A couple of young wolves of the Pack were 
 
296 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 cantering down a path, looking for open ground 
 in which to fight. (You will remember that the 
 Law of the Jungle forbids fighting where the 
 Pack can see.) Their neck-bristles were as stiff 
 as wire, and they bayed furiously, crouching for 
 the first grapple. Mowgli leaped forward, caught 
 one outstretched throat in either hand, expecting 
 to fling the creatures backward as he had often 
 done in games or Pack hunts. But he had never 
 before interfered with a spring fight. The two 
 leaped forward and dashed him aside, and with- 
 out word to waste rolled over and over close 
 locked. 
 
 Mowgli was on his feet almost before he fell, his 
 knife and his white teeth were bared, and at that 
 minute he would have killed both for no reason but 
 that they were fighting when he wished them to 
 be quiet, although every wolf has full right under 
 the Law to fight. He danced round them with 
 lowered shoulders and quivering hand, ready to 
 send in a double blow when the first flurry of the 
 scuffle should be over ; but while he waited the 
 strength seemed to ebb from his body, the knife- 
 point lowered, and he sheathed the knife and 
 watched. 
 
 " I have surely eaten poison," he sighed at 
 last. " Since I broke up the Council with the 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 297 
 
 Red Flower — since I killed Shere Khan — 
 none of the Pack could fling me aside. And 
 these be only tail-wolves in the Pack, little hunt- 
 ers ! My strength is gone from me, and presently 
 I shall die. Oh, Mowgli, why dost thou not kill 
 them both ? " 
 
 The fight went on till one wolf ran away, and 
 Mowgli was left alone on the torn and bloody 
 ground, looking now at his knife, and now at his 
 legs and arms, while the feeling of unhappiness 
 he had never known before covered him as wa> 
 ter covers a log. 
 
 He killed early that evening and eat but little, 
 so as to be in good fettle for his spring running, 
 and he eat alone because all the Jungle People 
 were away singing or fighting. It was a perfect 
 white night, as they call it. All green things 
 seemed to have made a month's growth since the 
 morning. The branch that was yellow-leaved 
 the day before dripped sap when Mowgli broke 
 it. The mosses curled deep and warm over his 
 feet, the young grass had no cutting edges, and 
 all the voices of the Jungle boomed like one deep 
 harp-string touched by the moon — the Moon 
 of New Talk, who splashed her light full on 
 rock and pool, slipped it between trunk and 
 creeper, and sifted it through a million leaves. 
 
298 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Forgetting his unhappiness, Mowgli sang aloud 
 with pure delight as he settled into his stride. It 
 was more like flying than anything else, for he 
 had chosen the long downward slope that leads 
 to the Northern Marshes through the heart of the 
 main Jungle, where the springy ground dead- 
 ened the fall of his feet. A man-taught man 
 would have picked his way with many stumbles 
 through the cheating moonlight, but Mowgli's 
 muscles, trained by years of experience, bore 
 him up as though he were a feather. When 
 a rotten log or a hidden stone turned under his 
 foot he saved himself, never checking his pace, 
 without effort and without thought. When he 
 tired of ground-going he threw up his hands 
 monkey-fashion to the nearest creeper, and 
 seemed to float rather than to climb up into the 
 thin branches, whence he would follow a tree- 
 road till his mood changed, and he shot down- 
 ward in a long, leafy curve to the levels again. 
 There were still, hot hollows surrounded by wet 
 rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy 
 scents of the night flowers and the bloom along 
 the creeper-buds ; dark avenues where the moon- 
 light lay in belts as regular as checkered marbles 
 in a church aisle ; thickets where the wet young 
 growth stood breast-high about him and threw 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 299 
 
 its arms round his waist ; and hilltops crowned 
 with broken rock, where he leaped from stone to 
 stone above the lairs of the frightened little foxes. 
 He would hear, very faint and far off, the chug- 
 drug of a boar sharpening his tusks on a bole ; 
 and would come across the great gray brute all 
 alone, scribing and rending the bark of a tall tree, 
 his mouth dripping with foam, and his eyes blaz- 
 ing like fire. Or he would turn aside to the 
 sound of clashing horns and hissing grunts, and 
 dash past a couple of furious sambhur, stagger- 
 ing to and fro with lowered heads, striped with 
 blood that showed black in the moonlight. Or at 
 some rushing ford he would hear Jacala the Croc- 
 odile bellowing like a bull, or disturb a twined 
 knot of the Poison People, but before they could 
 strike he would be away and across the glistening 
 shingle, deep in the Jungle again. 
 
 So he ran, sometimes shouting, sometimes 
 singing to himself, the happiest thing in all the 
 Jungle that night, till the smell of the flowers 
 warned him that he was near the marshes, and 
 those lay far beyond his furthest hunting-grounds. 
 
 Here, again, a man-trained man would have sunk 
 overhead in three strides, but Mowgli's feet had 
 eyes in them, and they passed him from tussock to 
 tussock and clump to quaking clump without ask- 
 
300 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 ing help from the eyes in his head. He ran out to 
 the middle of the swamp, disturbing the duck as 
 he ran, and sat down on a moss-coated tree-trunk 
 lapped in the black water. The marsh was 
 awake all round him, for in the spring the Bird- 
 People sleep very lightly, and companies of them 
 were coming or going the night through. But no 
 one took any notice of Mowgli sitting among the 
 tall reeds humming songs without words, and look- 
 ing at the soles of his hard brown feet in case of 
 neglected thorns. All his unhappiness seemed to 
 have been left behind in his own jungle, and he 
 was just beginning a full-throat song when it 
 came back a^ain — ten times worse than before. 
 
 This time Mowgli was frightened. " It is here 
 also ! " he said half aloud. " It has followed me," 
 and he looked over his shoulder to see whether 
 the It were not standing behind him. "There is 
 no one here." The night noises of the marsh 
 went on, but never a bird or beast spoke to him, 
 and the new feeling of misery grew. 
 
 " I have surely eaten poison," he said in an 
 awe-stricken voice. " It must be that carelessly 
 I have eaten poison, and my strength is going 
 from me. I was afraid — and yet it was not / 
 that was afraid — Mowgli was afraid when the 
 two wolves fought. Akela, or even Phao, would 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 301 
 
 have silenced them ; yet Mowgli was afraid. 
 That is true sign I have eaten poison. . . . 
 But what do they care in the Jungle ? They sing 
 and howl and fight, and run in companies under 
 the moon, and I — Hai-mai ! — I am dying in the 
 marshes, of that poison which I have eaten." He 
 was so sorry for himself that he nearly wept. 
 "And after," he went on, "they will find me ly- 
 ing in the black water. Nay, I will go back to 
 my own Jungle, and I will die upon the Council 
 Rock, and Bagheera, whom I love, if he is not 
 screaming in the valley — Bagheera, perhaps, 
 may watch by what is left for a little, lest Chil 
 use me as he used Akela." 
 
 A large, warm tear splashed down on his knee, 
 and, miserable as he was, Mowgli felt happy that 
 he was so miserable, if you can understand that 
 upside-down sort of happiness. "As Chil the 
 Kite used Akela," he repeated, " on the night I 
 saved the Pack from Red Dog." He was quiet 
 for a little, thinking of the last words of the 
 Lone Wolf, which you, of course, remember. 
 " Now Akela said to me many foolish things 
 before he died, for when we die our stomachs 
 change. He said . . . None the less, I am of 
 the Jungle ! " 
 
 In his excitement, as he remembered the fight 
 
302 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 on Waingunga bank, he shouted the last words 
 aloud, and a wild buffalo-cow among the reeds 
 sprang to her knees, snorting, " Man ! " 
 
 " Uhh ! " said Mysa the Wild Buffalo (Mowgli 
 could hear him turn in his wallow), " that is no 
 man. It is only the hairless wolf of the. Seeonee 
 Pack. On such nights runs he to and fro." 
 
 " Uhh ! " said the cow, dropping her head again 
 to graze, " I thought it was Man." 
 
 " I say no. Oh, Mowgli, is it danger ? " lowed 
 Mysa. 
 
 "Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?" the boy called 
 back mockingly. "That is all Mysa thinks for: 
 Is it danger? But for Mowgli, who goes to and 
 fro in the Jungle by night, watching, what do 
 ye care ? " 
 
 " How loud he cries ! " said the cow. 
 
 " Thus do they cry," Mysa answered contemp- 
 tuously, "who, having torn up the grass, know 
 not how to eat it." 
 
 " For less than this," Mowgli groaned to him- 
 self — "for less than this even last Rains I had 
 pricked Mysa out of his wallow, and ridden him 
 through the swamp on a rush halter." He 
 stretched a hand to break one of the feathery 
 reeds, but drew it back with a sigh. Mysa went 
 on steadily chewing the cud, and the long grass 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 303 
 
 ripped where the cow grazed. " I will not die 
 here" he said angrily. " Mysa, who is of one 
 blood with Jacala and the pig, would see me. 
 Let us go beyond the swamp, and see what 
 comes. Never have I run such a spring running 
 — hot and cold together. Up, Mowgli ! " 
 
 He could not resist the temptation of stealing 
 across the reeds to Mysa and pricking him with 
 the point of his knife. The great dripping bull 
 broke out of his wallow like a shell exploding, 
 while Mowsdi laughed till he sat down. 
 
 " Say now that the hairless wolf of the Seeonee 
 Pack once herded thee, Mysa," he called. 
 
 "Wolf! Thou?" the bull snorted, stamp- 
 ing in the mud. " All the Jungle knows thou 
 wast a herder of tame cattle — such a man's brat 
 as shouts in the dust by the crops yonder. Thou 
 of the Jungle ! What hunter would have crawled 
 like a snake among the leeches, and for a muddy 
 jest — a jackal's jest — have shamed me before 
 my cow? Come to firm ground, and I will — I 
 will . . . " Mysa frothed at the mouth, for 
 Mysa has nearly the worst temper of any one in 
 the Jungle. 
 
 Mowgli watched him puff and blow with eyes 
 that never changed. When he could make him- 
 self heard through the spattering mud, he said: 
 
304 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " What Man-Pack lair here by the marshes, 
 Mysa? This is new jungle to me." 
 
 " Go north, then," roared the angry bull, for 
 Mowgli had pricked him rather sharply. " It was 
 a naked cowherd's jest. Go and tell them at the 
 village at the foot of the marsh." 
 
 "The Man-Pack do not love jungle-tales, nor 
 do I think, Mysa, that a scratch more or less on 
 thy hide is any matter for a council. But I will 
 go and look at this village. Yes, I will go. 
 Softly now. It is not every night that the Mas- 
 ter of the Jungle comes to herd thee." 
 
 He stepped out to the shivering ground on the 
 edge of the marsh, well knowing that Mysa 
 would never charge over it, and laughed, as he 
 ran, to think of the bull's anger. 
 
 " My strength is not altogether gone," he said. 
 " It may be that the poison is not to the bone. 
 There is a star sitting low yonder." He looked 
 at it between his half-shut hands. " By the Bull 
 that bought me, it is the Red Flower — the Red 
 Flower that I lay beside before — before I came 
 even to the first Seeonee Pack ! Now that I have 
 seen, I will finish the running." 
 
 The marsh ended in a broad plain where a light 
 twinkled. It was a long time since Mowgli had 
 concerned himself with the doings of men, but 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 305 
 
 this night the glimmer of the Red Flower drew 
 him forward. 
 
 "I will look," said he, "as I did in the old 
 days, and I -will see how far the Man- Pack has 
 changed." 
 
 Forgetting that he was no longer in his own 
 jungle, where he could do what he pleased, he 
 trod carelessly through the dew-loaded grasses 
 till he came to the hut where the ligdit stood. 
 Three or four yelping dogs gave tongue, for he 
 was on the outskirts of a village. 
 
 "Ho!" said Mowgli, sitting down noiselessly, 
 after sending back a deep wolf-growl that silenced 
 the curs. " What comes will come. Mowgli, 
 what hast thou to do any more with the lairs of 
 the Man-Pack?" He rubbed his mouth, remem- 
 bering where a stone had struck it years ago when 
 the other Man-Pack had cast him out. 
 
 The door of the hut opened, and a woman 
 stood peering out into the darkness. A child 
 cried, and the woman said over her shoulder, 
 " Sleep. It was but a jackal that waked the 
 dogs. In a little time morning comes." 
 
 Mowgli in the gfrass begfan to shake as though 
 he had fever. He knew that voice well, but to 
 make sure he cried softly, surprised to find how 
 man's talk came back, " Messua ! O Messua ! " 
 
306 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " Who calls ? " said the woman, a quiver in her 
 voice. 
 
 "Hast thou forgotten?" said Mowgli. His 
 throat was dry as he spoke. 
 
 " If it be thou, what name did I give thee ? 
 Say ! " She had half shut the door, and her hand 
 was clutching at her breast. 
 
 " Nathoo ! Ohe Nathoo ! " said Mowgli, for, 
 as you remember, that was the name Messua 
 gave him when he first came to the Man- Pack. 
 
 " Come, my son," she called, and Mowgli 
 stepped into the light, and looked full at Messua, 
 the woman who had been good to him, and whose 
 life he had saved from the Man- Pack so long be- 
 fore. She was older, and her hair was gray, but 
 her eyes and her voice had not changed. Wo- 
 man-like, she expected to find Mowgli where she 
 had left him, and her eyes traveled upward in a 
 puzzled way from his chest to his head, that 
 touched the top of the door. 
 
 " My son," she stammered; and then, sinking 
 to his feet : " But it is no longer my son. It is a 
 Godling of the Woods! Ahai ! " 
 
 As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, 
 strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair 
 sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging 
 at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 307 
 
 of white jasmine, he might easily have been mis- 
 taken for some wild god of a jungle legend. The 
 child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked 
 aloud with terror. Messua turned to soothe him, 
 while Mowgli stood still, looking in at the water- 
 jars and the cooking-pots, the grain-bin, and all 
 the other human belongings that he found himself 
 remembering so well. 
 
 " What wilt thou eat or drink ? " Messua mur- 
 mured. " This is all thine. We owe our lives to 
 thee. But art thou him I called Nathoo, or a 
 Godling, indeed ? " 
 
 " I am Nathoo," said Mowgli, " I am very far 
 from my own place. I saw this light, and came 
 hither. I did not know thou wast here." 
 
 "After we came to Kanhiwara," Messua said 
 timidly, " the English would have helped us 
 against those villagers that sought to burn us. 
 Rememberest thou ? " 
 
 " Indeed, I have not forgotten." 
 
 " But when the English Law was made ready, 
 we went to the village of those evil people, and 
 it was no more to be found." 
 
 "That also I remember," said Mowgli, with a 
 quiver of his nostril. 
 
 " My man, therefore, took service in the fields, 
 and at last — for, indeed, he was a strong man — 
 
308 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 we held a little land here. It is not so rich as 
 the old village, but we do not need much — we 
 two." 
 
 "Where is he — the man that dug in the dirt 
 when he was afraid on that night?" 
 
 " He is dead — a year." 
 
 "And he?" Mowgli pointed to the child. 
 
 " My son that was born two Rains ago. If 
 thou art a Godling, give him the Favor of the 
 Jungle, that he may be safe among thy — thy 
 people, as we were safe on that night." 
 
 She lifted up the child, who, forgetting his 
 fright, reached out to play with the knife that 
 hung on Mowgli's chest, and Mowgli put the lit- 
 tle fingers aside very carefully. 
 
 "And if thou art Nathoo whom the tigers car- 
 ried away," Messua went on, choking, "he is 
 then thy younger brother. Give him an elder 
 brother's blessing." 
 
 " Hai-mai / What do I know of the thing 
 called a blessing? I am neither a Godling nor his 
 brother, and — O mother, mother, my heart is 
 heavy in me." He shivered as he set down the 
 child. 
 
 " Like enough," said Messua, bustling among 
 the cooking-pots. " This comes of running about 
 the marshes by night. Beyond question, the 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 309 
 
 fever has soaked thee to the marrow." Mowgli 
 smiled a little at the idea of anything in the Jun- 
 gle hurting him. " I will make a fire, and thou 
 shalt drink warm milk. Put away the jasmine 
 wreath : the smell is heavy in so small a place." 
 
 Mowgli sat down, muttering, with his face in his 
 hands. All manner of strange feelings that he 
 had never felt before were running over him, ex- 
 actly as though he had been poisoned, and he 
 felt dizzy and a little sick. He drank the warm 
 milk in long gulps, Messua patting him on the 
 shoulder from time to time, not quite sure whe- 
 ther he were her son Nathoo of the long - ago 
 days, or some wonderful Jungle being, but glad 
 to feel that he was at least flesh and blood. 
 
 " Son," she said at last, — her eyes were full of 
 pride, — " have any told thee that thou art beauti- 
 ful beyond all men ? " 
 
 " Hah ? " said Mowgli, for naturally he had 
 never heard anything of the kind. Messua 
 laughed softly and happily. The look in his 
 face was enough for her. 
 
 " I am the first, then ? It is right, though it 
 comes seldom, that a mother should tell her son 
 these good things. Thou art very beautiful. 
 Never have I looked upon such a man." 
 
 Mowgli twisted his head and tried to see over 
 
310 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 his own hard shoulder, and Messua laughed 
 again so long that Mowgli, not knowing why, 
 was forced to laugh with her, and the child ran 
 from one to the other, laughing too. 
 i " Nay, thou must not mock thy brother," said 
 Messua, catching him to her breast. " When 
 thou art one half as fair we will marry thee to 
 the youngest daughter of a king, and thou shalt 
 ride great elephants." 
 
 Mowgli could not understand one word in 
 three of the talk here ; the warm milk was taking 
 effect on him after his long run, so he curled up 
 and in a minute was deep asleep, and Messua 
 put the hair back from his eyes, threw a cloth 
 over him, and was happy. Jungle-fashion, he 
 slept out the rest of that night and all the next 
 day ; for his instincts, which never wholly slept, 
 warned him there was nothing to fear. He 
 waked at last with a bound that shook the hut, 
 for the cloth over his face made him dream of 
 traps ; and there he stood, his hand on his knife, 
 the sleep all heavy in his rolling eyes, ready for 
 any fight. 
 
 Messua laughed, and set the evening meal be- 
 fore him. There were only a few coarse cakes 
 baked over the smoky fire, some rice, and a lump 
 of sour preserved tamarinds — just enough to go 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 311 
 
 on with till he could get to his evening kill. The 
 smell of the dew in the marshes made him hungry 
 and restless. He wanted to finish his spring 
 running, but the child insisted on sitting in his 
 arms, and Messua would have it that his long, 
 blue-black hair must be combed out. So she 
 sang, as she combed, foolish little baby-songs, 
 now calling Mowgli her son, and now begging 
 him to give some of his jungle power to the child. 
 The hut door was closed, but Mowgli heard a 
 sound he knew well, and saw Messua's jaw drop 
 with horror as a great gray paw came under the 
 bottom of the door, and Gray Brother outside 
 whined a muffled and penitent whine of anxiety 
 and fear. 
 
 "Out and wait! Ye would not come when I 
 called," said Mowgli in jungle-talk, without turn- 
 ing his head, and the great gray paw disappeared. 
 
 " Do not — do not bring thy — thy servants 
 with thee," said Messua. "I — we have always 
 lived at peace with the Jungle." 
 
 "It is peace," said Mowgli, rising. "Think 
 of that night on the road to Kanhiwara. There 
 were scores of such folk before thee and behind 
 thee. But I see that even in springtime the 
 Jungle People do not always forget. Mother, 
 I go." 
 
312 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Messua drew aside humbly — he was indeed a 
 wood-god, she thought ; but as his hand was on 
 the door the mother in her made her throw her 
 arms round Mowgli's neck again and again. 
 
 "Come back!" she whispered. "Son or no 
 son, come back, for I love thee — Look, he too 
 grieves." 
 
 The child was crying because the man with 
 the shiny knife was going away. 
 
 "Come back again," Messua repeated. "By 
 night or by day this door is never shut to thee." 
 
 Mowgli's throat worked as though the cords in 
 it were being pulled, and his voice seemed to be 
 dragged from it as he answered, " I will surely 
 come back." 
 
 "And now," he said, as he put by the head 
 of the fawning wolf on the threshold, " I have 
 a little cry against thee, Gray Brother. Why 
 came ye not all four when I called so long 
 ago? 
 
 " So long ago ? It was but last night. I — 
 we — were singing in the Jungle the new songs, 
 for this is the Time of New Talk. Rememberest 
 thou ? " 
 
 "Truly, truly." 
 
 "And as soon as the songs were sung," Gray 
 Brother went on earnestly, " I followed thy trail. 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 313 
 
 I ran from all the others and followed hot-foot. 
 But, O Little Brother, what hast thou done, 
 eating and sleeping with the Man-Pack?" 
 
 " If ye had come when I called, this had never 
 been," said Mowgli, running much faster. 
 
 " And now what is to be ? " said Gray Brother. 
 
 Mowgli was just going to answer when a girl 
 in a white cloth came down some path that led 
 from the outskirts of the village. Gray Brother 
 dropped out of sight at once, and Mowgli backed 
 noiselessly into a field of high-springing crops. 
 He could almost have touched her with his hand 
 when the warm, green stalks closed before his 
 face and he disappeared like a ghost. The girl 
 screamed, for she thought she had seen a spirit, 
 and then she gave a deep sigh. Mowgli parted 
 the stalks with his hands and watched her till she 
 was out of sight. 
 
 "And now I do not know," he said, sighing in 
 his turn. " Why did ye not come when I called?" 
 
 "We follow thee — we follow thee," Gray 
 Brother mumbled, licking at Mowgli's heel. 
 " We follow thee always, except in the Time of 
 the New Talk." 
 
 " And would ye follow me to the Man-Pack ? " 
 Mowgli whispered. 
 
 " Did I not follow thee on the night our old 
 
314 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Pack cast thee out? Who waked thee lying 
 among the crops ? " 
 
 " Ay, but again ? " 
 
 " Have I not followed thee to-night? " 
 
 "Ay, but again and again, and it may be 
 again, Gray Brother ? " 
 
 Gray Brother was silent. When he spoke he 
 growled to himself, " The Black One spoke truth." 
 
 "And he said?" 
 
 " Man goes to Man at the last. Raksha, our 
 mother, said — " 
 
 " So also said Akela on the night of Red Dog," 
 Mowgli muttered. 
 
 " So also says Kaa, who is wiser than us all." 
 
 "What dost thou say, Gray Brother?" 
 
 " They cast thee out once, with bad talk. They 
 cut thy mouth with stones. They sent Buldeo 
 to slay thee. They would have thrown thee into 
 the Red Flower. Thou, and not I, hast said that 
 they are evil and senseless. Thou, and not I — 
 I follow my own people — didst let in the Jungle 
 upon them. Thou, and not I, didst make song 
 against them more bitter even than our song 
 against Red Dog." 
 
 " I ask thee what thou say est? " 
 
 They were talking as they ran. Gray Brother 
 cantered on a while without replying, and then 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 315 
 
 he said, — between bound and bound as it were, 
 — " Man -cub — Master of the Jungle — Son of 
 Raksha, Lair-brother to me — though I forget 
 for a little while in the spring, thy trail is my 
 trail, thy lair is my lair, thy kill is my kill, and 
 thy death-fight is my death-fight. I speak for 
 the Three. But what wilt thou say to the 
 Jungle ? " 
 
 " That is well thought. Between the sight and 
 the kill it is not good to wait. Go before and 
 cry them all to the Council Rock, and I will tell 
 them what is in my stomach. But they may not 
 come — in the Time of New Talk they may for- 
 get me." 
 
 " Hast thou, then, forgotten nothing ? " snapped 
 Gray Brother over his shoulder, as he laid him- 
 self down to gallop, and Mowgli followed, thinking. 
 
 At any other season the news would have 
 called all the Jungle together with bristling necks, 
 but now they were busy hunting and fighting 
 and killing and singing. From one to another 
 Gray Brother ran, crying, "The Master of the 
 Jungle goes back to Man ! Come to the Council 
 Rock." And the happy, eager People only 
 answered, " He will return in the summer heats. 
 The Rains will drive him to lair. Run and sing 
 with us, Gray Brother." 
 
316 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " But the Master of the Jungle goes back to 
 Man," Gray Brother would repeat. 
 
 " Eee — Yoawa? Is the Time of New Talk 
 any less sweet for that ? " they would reply. So 
 when Mowgli, heavy-hearted, came up through 
 the well-remembered rocks to the place where 
 he had been brought into the Council, he found 
 only the Four, Baloo, who was nearly blind with 
 age, and the heavy, cold-blooded Kaa coiled 
 around Akela's empty seat. 
 
 "Thy trail ends here, then, Manling?" said 
 Kaa, as Mowgli threw himself down, his face in 
 his hands. " Cry thy cry." We be of one blood, 
 thou and I — man and snake together." 
 
 "Why did I not die under Red Dog?" the 
 boy moaned. " My strength is gone from me, 
 and it is not any poison. By night and by 
 day I hear a double step upon my trail. When 
 I turn my head it is as though one had hidden 
 himself from me that instant. I go to look be- 
 hind the trees, and he is not there. I call and 
 none cry again ; but it is as though one listened 
 and kept back the answer. I lie down, but I 
 do not rest. I run the spring running, but I am 
 not made still. I bathe, but I am not made cool. 
 The kill sickens me, but I have no heart to fight 
 except I kill. The Red Flower is in my body, 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 317 
 
 my bones are water — and — I know not what 
 I know." 
 
 " What need of talk ? " said Baloo slowly, turn- 
 ing his head to where Mowgli lay. " Akela by the 
 river said it, that Mowgli should drive Mowgli 
 back to the Man- Pack. I said it. But who listens 
 now to Baloo? Bagheera — where is Bagheera 
 this night? — he knows also. It is the Law." 
 
 " When we met at Cold Lairs, Manling, I 
 knew it," said Kaa, turning a little in his mighty 
 coils. " Man goes to Man at the last, though 
 the Jungle does not cast him out." 
 
 The Four looked at one another and at Mow- 
 gli, puzzled but obedient. 
 
 "The Jungle does not cast me out, then?" 
 Mowgli stammered. 
 
 Gray Brother and the Three growled furi- 
 ously, beginning, " So long as we live none shall 
 dare — " But Baloo checked them. 
 
 " I taught thee the Law. It is for me to 
 speak," he said; "and, though I cannot now see 
 the rocks before me, I see far. Little Frog, 
 take thine own trail ; make thy lair with thine 
 own blood and pack and people ; but when there 
 is need of foot or tooth or eye, or a word carried 
 swiftly by night, remember, Master of the Jungle, 
 the Jungle is thine at call." 
 
318 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " The Middle Jungle is thine also," said Kaa. 
 11 1 speak for no small people." 
 
 " Hai-mai, my brothers," cried Mowgli, throw- 
 ing up his arms with a sob. " I know not what 
 F know ! I would not go; but I am drawn by 
 both feet. How shall I leave these nights ? " 
 
 " Nay, look up, Little Brother," Baloo repeated. 
 "There is no shame in this hunting. When the 
 honey is eaten we leave the empty hive." 
 
 "Having cast the skin," said Kaa, "we may 
 not creep into it afresh. It is the Law." 
 
 "Listen, dearest of all to me," said Baloo. 
 "There is neither word nor will here to hold 
 thee back. Look up ! Who may question the 
 Master of the Jungle? I saw thee playing 
 among the white pebbles yonder when thou wast 
 a little frog ; and Bagheera, that bought thee for 
 the price of a young bull newly killed, saw thee 
 also. Of that Looking Over we two only re- 
 main ; for Raksha, thy lair-mother, is dead with 
 thy lair-father ; the old Wolf Pack is long since 
 dead ; thou knowest whither Shere Khan went, 
 and Akela died among the dholes, where, but for 
 thy wisdom and strength, the second Seeonee 
 Pack would also have died. There remains no- 
 thing but old bones. It is no longer the Man- 
 
THE SPRING RUNNING 319 
 
 cub that asks leave of his Pack, but the Master 
 of the Jungle that changes his trail. Who shall 
 question Man in his ways?" 
 
 " But Bagheera and the Bull that bought me," 
 said Mowgli. " I would not — " 
 
 His words were cut short by a roar and a crash 
 in the thicket below, and Bagheera, light, strong, 
 and terrible as always, stood before him. 
 
 " Therefore" he said, stretching out a dripping 
 right paw, " I did not come. It was a long hunt, 
 but he lies dead in the bushes now — a bull in his 
 second year — the Bull that frees thee, Little 
 Brother. All debts are paid now. For the rest, 
 my word is Baloo's word." He licked Mowgli's 
 foot. " Remember, Bagheera loved thee," he 
 cried and bounded away. At the foot of the hill 
 he cried again long and loud, " Good hunting on 
 a new trail, Master of the Jungle ! Remember, 
 Bagheera loved thee." 
 
 "Thou hast heard," said Baloo. "There is no 
 more. Go now ; but first come to me. O wise 
 Little Frog, come to me ! " 
 
 "It is hard to cast the skin," said Kaa as 
 Mowgli sobbed and sobbed, with his head on 
 the blind bear's side and his arms round his neck, 
 while Baloo tried feebly to lick his feet. 
 
320 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 " The stars are thin," said Gray Brother, snuff- 
 ing' at the dawn-wind. " Where shall we lair 
 to-day? for, from now, we follow new trails." 
 
 And this is the last of the Mowgli stories. 
 
THE OUTSONG 
 
 This is the song that Mowgli heard behind him in the 
 Jungle till he came to Messua's door again : 
 
 BALOO — 
 
 as33S ^OR the sake of him who showed 
 
 One wise Frog the Jungle-Road, 
 Keep the Law the Man-Pack make — 
 For thy blind old Baloo's sake ! 
 Clean or tainted, hot or stale, 
 Hold it as it were the Trail, 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 Questing neither left nor right. 
 For the sake of him who loves 
 Thee beyond all else that moves, 
 When thy Pack would make thee pain, 
 Say: " Tabaqui sings again." 
 When thy Pack would work thee ill, 
 
322 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Say : " Shere Khan is yet to kill." 
 When the knife is drawn to slay, 
 Keep the Law and go thy way. 
 (Root and honey, palm and spathe, 
 Guard a cub from harm and scathe !) 
 Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, 
 Jungle- Favor go with thee ! 
 
 Kaa— 
 
 Anger is the egg of Fear — 
 Only lidless eyes are clear. 
 Cobra-poison none may leech ; 
 Even so with Cobra-speech. 
 Open talk shall call to thee 
 Strength, whose mate is Courtesy. 
 Send no lunge beyond thy length ; 
 Lend no rotten bough thy strength. 
 Gauge thy gape with buck or goat, 
 Lest thine eye should choke thy throat. 
 After gorging, wouldst thou sleep, 
 Look the den is hid and deep, 
 Lest a wrong, by thee forgot, 
 Draw thy killer to the spot. 
 East and West and North and South, 
 Wash thy hide and close thy mouth. 
 (Pit and rift and blue pool-brim, 
 Middle Jungle follow him !) 
 Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, 
 Jungle -Favor go with thee ! 
 
THE OUTSONG 323 
 
 BAGHEERA — 
 
 In the cage my life began ; 
 Well I know the worth of Man. 
 By the Broken Lock that freed — 
 Man-cub, 'ware the Man-cub's breed ! 
 Scenting- dew or starlight pale, 
 Choose no tangled tree-cat trail. 
 Pack or council, hunt or den, 
 Cry no truce with Jackal-Men. 
 Feed them silence when they say : 
 " Come with us an easy way." 
 Feed them silence when they seek 
 Help of thine to hurt the weak. 
 Make no bandar's boast of skill ; 
 Hold thy peace above the kill. 
 Let nor call nor song nor sign 
 Turn thee from thy hunting-line. 
 (Morning mist or twilight clear, 
 Serve him, Wardens of the Deer !) 
 Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, 
 Jungle- Favor go with thee! 
 
 The Three — 
 
 On the trail that thou must tread 
 To the thresholds of our dread, 
 Where the Flower blossoms red ; 
 Through the nights when thou shall lie 
 Prisoned from our Mother- sky, 
 
3 2 4 
 
 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK 
 
 Hearing us, thy loves, go by ; 
 In the dawns, when thou shalt wake 
 To the toil thou canst not break, 
 Heartsick for the Jungle's sake : 
 Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, 
 Wisdom, Strength, and Courtesy, 
 Jungle-Favor go with thee /