"THE JUNGLE BOOK\n\nBy Rudyard Kipling\n\n\n\nContents\n\n     Mowgli's Brothers\n     Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack\n     Kaa's Hunting\n     Road-Song of the Bandar-Log\n     \"Tiger! Tiger!\"\n     Mowgli's Song\n     The White Seal\n     Lukannon\n     \"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi\"\n     Darzee's Chant\n     Toomai of the Elephants\n     Shiv and the Grasshopper\n     Her Majesty's Servants\n     Parade Song of the Camp Animals\n\n\n\n\nMowgli's Brothers\n\n     Now Rann the Kite brings home the night\n        That Mang the Bat sets free--\n     The herds are shut in byre and hut\n        For loosed till dawn are we.\n     This is the hour of pride and power,\n        Talon and tush and claw.\n     Oh, hear the call!--Good hunting all\n        That keep the Jungle Law!\n     Night-Song in the Jungle\n\nIt was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when\nFather Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and\nspread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling\nin their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her\nfour tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the\ncave where they all lived. \"Augrh!\" said Father Wolf. \"It is time to\nhunt again.\" He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with\na bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: \"Good luck go with you, O\nChief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble\nchildren that they may never forget the hungry in this world.\"\n\nIt was the jackal--Tabaqui, the Dish-licker--and the wolves of India\ndespise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling\ntales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village\nrubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more\nthan anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets\nthat he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting\neverything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui\ngoes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake\na wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee--the\nmadness--and run.\n\n\"Enter, then, and look,\" said Father Wolf stiffly, \"but there is no food\nhere.\"\n\n\"For a wolf, no,\" said Tabaqui, \"but for so mean a person as myself a\ndry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people],\nto pick and choose?\" He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he\nfound the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end\nmerrily.\n\n\"All thanks for this good meal,\" he said, licking his lips. \"How\nbeautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so young\ntoo! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children of kings\nare men from the beginning.\"\n\nNow, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so\nunlucky as to compliment children to their faces. It pleased him to see\nMother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.\n\nTabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then\nhe said spitefully:\n\n\"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt\namong these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.\"\n\nShere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty\nmiles away.\n\n\"He has no right!\" Father Wolf began angrily--\"By the Law of the Jungle\nhe has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He will\nfrighten every head of game within ten miles, and I--I have to kill for\ntwo, these days.\"\n\n\"His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing,\" said\nMother Wolf quietly. \"He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That\nis why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are\nangry with him, and he has come here to make our villagers angry.\nThey will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and our\nchildren must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very\ngrateful to Shere Khan!\"\n\n\"Shall I tell him of your gratitude?\" said Tabaqui.\n\n\"Out!\" snapped Father Wolf. \"Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast\ndone harm enough for one night.\"\n\n\"I go,\" said Tabaqui quietly. \"Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the\nthickets. I might have saved myself the message.\"\n\nFather Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little\nriver he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has\ncaught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows it.\n\n\"The fool!\" said Father Wolf. \"To begin a night's work with that noise!\nDoes he think that our buck are like his fat Waingunga bullocks?\"\n\n\"H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,\" said Mother\nWolf. \"It is Man.\"\n\nThe whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come\nfrom every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders\nwoodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run\nsometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.\n\n\"Man!\" said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. \"Faugh! Are there\nnot enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on\nour ground too!\"\n\nThe Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason,\nforbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his\nchildren how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds\nof his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that man-killing\nmeans, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with\nguns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches.\nThen everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among\nthemselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living\nthings, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too--and it is\ntrue--that man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.\n\nThe purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated \"Aaarh!\" of the\ntiger's charge.\n\nThen there was a howl--an untigerish howl--from Shere Khan. \"He has\nmissed,\" said Mother Wolf. \"What is it?\"\n\nFather Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering and\nmumbling savagely as he tumbled about in the scrub.\n\n\"The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter's campfire,\nand has burned his feet,\" said Father Wolf with a grunt. \"Tabaqui is\nwith him.\"\n\n\"Something is coming uphill,\" said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear. \"Get\nready.\"\n\nThe bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped\nwith his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been\nwatching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world--the\nwolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was\nhe was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result was\nthat he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing\nalmost where he left ground.\n\n\"Man!\" he snapped. \"A man's cub. Look!\"\n\nDirectly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked\nbrown baby who could just walk--as soft and as dimpled a little atom\nas ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf's\nface, and laughed.\n\n\"Is that a man's cub?\" said Mother Wolf. \"I have never seen one. Bring\nit here.\"\n\nA Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg\nwithout breaking it, and though Father Wolf's jaws closed right on the\nchild's back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down\namong the cubs.\n\n\"How little! How naked, and--how bold!\" said Mother Wolf softly. The\nbaby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm hide.\n\"Ahai! He is taking his meal with the others. And so this is a man's\ncub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's cub among\nher children?\"\n\n\"I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our Pack or in\nmy time,\" said Father Wolf. \"He is altogether without hair, and I\ncould kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not\nafraid.\"\n\nThe moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan's\ngreat square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui,\nbehind him, was squeaking: \"My lord, my lord, it went in here!\"\n\n\"Shere Khan does us great honor,\" said Father Wolf, but his eyes were\nvery angry. \"What does Shere Khan need?\"\n\n\"My quarry. A man's cub went this way,\" said Shere Khan. \"Its parents\nhave run off. Give it to me.\"\n\nShere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter's campfire, as Father Wolf had\nsaid, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father Wolf\nknew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in\nby. Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and forepaws were cramped\nfor want of room, as a man's would be if he tried to fight in a barrel.\n\n\"The Wolves are a free people,\" said Father Wolf. \"They take orders from\nthe Head of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The man's\ncub is ours--to kill if we choose.\"\n\n\"Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing? By the\nbull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog's den for my fair\ndues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!\"\n\nThe tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook herself\nclear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in\nthe darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.\n\n\"And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man's cub is mine,\nLungri--mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with\nthe Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of\nlittle naked cubs--frog-eater--fish-killer--he shall hunt thee! Now get\nhence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back\nthou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever\nthou camest into the world! Go!\"\n\nFather Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when he\nwon Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in\nthe Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment's sake. Shere Khan\nmight have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother\nWolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the\nground, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave mouth\ngrowling, and when he was clear he shouted:\n\n\"Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say to\nthis fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will\ncome in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!\"\n\nMother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father Wolf\nsaid to her gravely:\n\n\"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack.\nWilt thou still keep him, Mother?\"\n\n\"Keep him!\" she gasped. \"He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry;\nyet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side\nalready. And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run\noff to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our\nlairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little\nfrog. O thou Mowgli--for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee--the time will\ncome when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee.\"\n\n\"But what will our Pack say?\" said Father Wolf.\n\nThe Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he\nmarries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon as his cubs\nare old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack\nCouncil, which is generally held once a month at full moon, in order\nthat the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection the cubs\nare free to run where they please, and until they have killed their\nfirst buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one\nof them. The punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if\nyou think for a minute you will see that this must be so.\n\nFather Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on the\nnight of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf to the\nCouncil Rock--a hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred\nwolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack\nby strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and\nbelow him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from\nbadger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black\nthree-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a\nyear now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he\nhad been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs\nof men. There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over\neach other in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers\nsat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look\nat him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes a\nmother would push her cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that\nhe had not been overlooked. Akela from his rock would cry: \"Ye know\nthe Law--ye know the Law. Look well, O Wolves!\" And the anxious mothers\nwould take up the call: \"Look--look well, O Wolves!\"\n\nAt last--and Mother Wolf's neck bristles lifted as the time came--Father\nWolf pushed \"Mowgli the Frog,\" as they called him, into the center,\nwhere he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that glistened in\nthe moonlight.\n\nAkela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the\nmonotonous cry: \"Look well!\" A muffled roar came up from behind the\nrocks--the voice of Shere Khan crying: \"The cub is mine. Give him to\nme. What have the Free People to do with a man's cub?\" Akela never even\ntwitched his ears. All he said was: \"Look well, O Wolves! What have\nthe Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free People? Look\nwell!\"\n\nThere was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth year\nflung back Shere Khan's question to Akela: \"What have the Free People to\ndo with a man's cub?\" Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there\nis any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he\nmust be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his\nfather and mother.\n\n\"Who speaks for this cub?\" said Akela. \"Among the Free People who\nspeaks?\" There was no answer and Mother Wolf got ready for what she knew\nwould be her last fight, if things came to fighting.\n\nThen the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council--Baloo,\nthe sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle:\nold Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only\nnuts and roots and honey--rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.\n\n\"The man's cub--the man's cub?\" he said. \"I speak for the man's cub.\nThere is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak\nthe truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I\nmyself will teach him.\"\n\n\"We need yet another,\" said Akela. \"Baloo has spoken, and he is our\nteacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?\"\n\nA black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black\nPanther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing\nup in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew\nBagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as\nTabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded\nelephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree,\nand a skin softer than down.\n\n\"O Akela, and ye the Free People,\" he purred, \"I have no right in your\nassembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which\nis not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may\nbe bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay\nthat price. Am I right?\"\n\n\"Good! Good!\" said the young wolves, who are always hungry. \"Listen to\nBagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law.\"\n\n\"Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave.\"\n\n\"Speak then,\" cried twenty voices.\n\n\"To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you\nwhen he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo's word\nI will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile\nfrom here, if ye will accept the man's cub according to the Law. Is it\ndifficult?\"\n\nThere was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: \"What matter? He will\ndie in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can\na naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is the bull,\nBagheera? Let him be accepted.\" And then came Akela's deep bay, crying:\n\"Look well--look well, O Wolves!\"\n\nMowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not notice\nwhen the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they all went\ndown the hill for the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and\nMowgli's own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for\nhe was very angry that Mowgli had not been handed over to him.\n\n\"Ay, roar well,\" said Bagheera, under his whiskers, \"for the time will\ncome when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I\nknow nothing of man.\"\n\n\"It was well done,\" said Akela. \"Men and their cubs are very wise. He\nmay be a help in time.\"\n\n\"Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the Pack\nforever,\" said Bagheera.\n\nAkela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every\nleader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler\nand feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader\ncomes up--to be killed in his turn.\n\n\"Take him away,\" he said to Father Wolf, \"and train him as befits one of\nthe Free People.\"\n\nAnd that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the\nprice of a bull and on Baloo's good word.\n\nNow you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only\nguess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves,\nbecause if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He\ngrew up with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves almost\nbefore he was a child. And Father Wolf taught him his business, and the\nmeaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every\nbreath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head,\nevery scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and\nevery splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much\nto him as the work of his office means to a business man. When he was\nnot learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleep\nagain. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and\nwhen he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as\npleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera\nshowed him how to do. Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, \"Come\nalong, Little Brother,\" and at first Mowgli would cling like the sloth,\nbut afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as\nboldly as the gray ape. He took his place at the Council Rock, too,\nwhen the Pack met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any\nwolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare\nfor fun. At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads\nof his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their\ncoats. He would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night,\nand look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a\nmistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop\ngate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it,\nand told him that it was a trap. He loved better than anything else to\ngo with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the forest, to sleep all\nthrough the drowsy day, and at night see how Bagheera did his\nkilling. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did\nMowgli--with one exception. As soon as he was old enough to understand\nthings, Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had\nbeen bought into the Pack at the price of a bull's life. \"All the jungle\nis thine,\" said Bagheera, \"and thou canst kill everything that thou art\nstrong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee\nthou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. That is the Law of\nthe Jungle.\" Mowgli obeyed faithfully.\n\nAnd he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that\nhe is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of\nexcept things to eat.\n\nMother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature\nto be trusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan. But though a\nyoung wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot\nit because he was only a boy--though he would have called himself a wolf\nif he had been able to speak in any human tongue.\n\nShere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela grew\nolder and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the\nyounger wolves of the Pack, who followed him for scraps, a thing Akela\nwould never have allowed if he had dared to push his authority to the\nproper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such\nfine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man's\ncub. \"They tell me,\" Shere Khan would say, \"that at Council ye dare\nnot look him between the eyes.\" And the young wolves would growl and\nbristle.\n\nBagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this, and\nonce or twice he told Mowgli in so many words that Shere Khan would kill\nhim some day. Mowgli would laugh and answer: \"I have the Pack and I have\nthee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my\nsake. Why should I be afraid?\"\n\nIt was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera--born of\nsomething that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki the Porcupine had told him;\nbut he said to Mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay\nwith his head on Bagheera's beautiful black skin, \"Little Brother, how\noften have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?\"\n\n\"As many times as there are nuts on that palm,\" said Mowgli, who,\nnaturally, could not count. \"What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and\nShere Khan is all long tail and loud talk--like Mao, the Peacock.\"\n\n\"But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the Pack\nknow it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui has told thee\ntoo.\"\n\n\"Ho! ho!\" said Mowgli. \"Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some rude\ntalk that I was a naked man's cub and not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I\ncaught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to\nteach him better manners.\"\n\n\"That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he would\nhave told thee of something that concerned thee closely. Open those\neyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the jungle. But\nremember, Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill\nhis buck, and then he will be leader no more. Many of the wolves that\nlooked thee over when thou wast brought to the Council first are old\ntoo, and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has taught them, that\na man-cub has no place with the Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a\nman.\"\n\n\"And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?\" said\nMowgli. \"I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle,\nand there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn.\nSurely they are my brothers!\"\n\nBagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes.\n\"Little Brother,\" said he, \"feel under my jaw.\"\n\nMowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under Bagheera's silky\nchin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy hair,\nhe came upon a little bald spot.\n\n\"There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that\nmark--the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born among\nmen, and it was among men that my mother died--in the cages of the\nking's palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I paid the price\nfor thee at the Council when thou wast a little naked cub. Yes, I too\nwas born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind\nbars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera--the\nPanther--and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one\nblow of my paw and came away. And because I had learned the ways of men,\nI became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it not so?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Mowgli, \"all the jungle fear Bagheera--all except Mowgli.\"\n\n\"Oh, thou art a man's cub,\" said the Black Panther very tenderly. \"And\neven as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men at last--to\nthe men who are thy brothers--if thou art not killed in the Council.\"\n\n\"But why--but why should any wish to kill me?\" said Mowgli.\n\n\"Look at me,\" said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him steadily between\nthe eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half a minute.\n\n\"That is why,\" he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. \"Not even I can\nlook thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love thee,\nLittle Brother. The others they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet\nthine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from\ntheir feet--because thou art a man.\"\n\n\"I did not know these things,\" said Mowgli sullenly, and he frowned\nunder his heavy black eyebrows.\n\n\"What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By\nthy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is\nin my heart that when Akela misses his next kill--and at each hunt\nit costs him more to pin the buck--the Pack will turn against him and\nagainst thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then--and\nthen--I have it!\" said Bagheera, leaping up. \"Go thou down quickly to\nthe men's huts in the valley, and take some of the Red Flower which they\ngrow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger\nfriend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red\nFlower.\"\n\nBy Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will\ncall fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it,\nand invents a hundred ways of describing it.\n\n\"The Red Flower?\" said Mowgli. \"That grows outside their huts in the\ntwilight. I will get some.\"\n\n\"There speaks the man's cub,\" said Bagheera proudly. \"Remember that it\ngrows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for time of\nneed.\"\n\n\"Good!\" said Mowgli. \"I go. But art thou sure, O my Bagheera\"--he\nslipped his arm around the splendid neck and looked deep into the big\neyes--\"art thou sure that all this is Shere Khan's doing?\"\n\n\"By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little Brother.\"\n\n\"Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full tale for\nthis, and it may be a little over,\" said Mowgli, and he bounded away.\n\n\"That is a man. That is all a man,\" said Bagheera to himself, lying down\nagain. \"Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunting than that frog-hunt\nof thine ten years ago!\"\n\nMowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his heart\nwas hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew\nbreath, and looked down the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother\nWolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that something was\ntroubling her frog.\n\n\"What is it, Son?\" she said.\n\n\"Some bat's chatter of Shere Khan,\" he called back. \"I hunt among the\nplowed fields tonight,\" and he plunged downward through the bushes, to\nthe stream at the bottom of the valley. There he checked, for he heard\nthe yell of the Pack hunting, heard the bellow of a hunted Sambhur,\nand the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there were wicked, bitter\nhowls from the young wolves: \"Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show his\nstrength. Room for the leader of the Pack! Spring, Akela!\"\n\nThe Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli heard the\nsnap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him over with\nhis forefoot.\n\nHe did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells grew\nfainter behind him as he ran into the croplands where the villagers\nlived.\n\n\"Bagheera spoke truth,\" he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle\nfodder by the window of a hut. \"To-morrow is one day both for Akela and\nfor me.\"\n\nThen he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on\nthe hearth. He saw the husbandman's wife get up and feed it in the night\nwith black lumps. And when the morning came and the mists were all white\nand cold, he saw the man's child pick up a wicker pot plastered inside\nwith earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his\nblanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre.\n\n\"Is that all?\" said Mowgli. \"If a cub can do it, there is nothing to\nfear.\" So he strode round the corner and met the boy, took the pot from\nhis hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy howled with fear.\n\n\"They are very like me,\" said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as he had\nseen the woman do. \"This thing will die if I do not give it things to\neat\"; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway up\nthe hill he met Bagheera with the morning dew shining like moonstones on\nhis coat.\n\n\"Akela has missed,\" said the Panther. \"They would have killed him last\nnight, but they needed thee also. They were looking for thee on the\nhill.\"\n\n\"I was among the plowed lands. I am ready. See!\" Mowgli held up the\nfire-pot.\n\n\"Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and\npresently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou not\nafraid?\"\n\n\"No. Why should I fear? I remember now--if it is not a dream--how,\nbefore I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm and\npleasant.\"\n\nAll that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire pot and dipping\ndry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that\nsatisfied him, and in the evening when Tabaqui came to the cave and told\nhim rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council Rock, he laughed\ntill Tabaqui ran away. Then Mowgli went to the Council, still laughing.\n\nAkela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the\nleadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following of\nscrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly being flattered. Bagheera lay\nclose to Mowgli, and the fire pot was between Mowgli's knees. When they\nwere all gathered together, Shere Khan began to speak--a thing he would\nnever have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.\n\n\"He has no right,\" whispered Bagheera. \"Say so. He is a dog's son. He\nwill be frightened.\"\n\nMowgli sprang to his feet. \"Free People,\" he cried, \"does Shere Khan\nlead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?\"\n\n\"Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak--\"\nShere Khan began.\n\n\"By whom?\" said Mowgli. \"Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle\nbutcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack alone.\"\n\nThere were yells of \"Silence, thou man's cub!\" \"Let him speak. He has\nkept our Law\"; and at last the seniors of the Pack thundered: \"Let the\nDead Wolf speak.\" When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is\ncalled the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long.\n\nAkela raised his old head wearily:--\n\n\"Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons I\nhave led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been\ntrapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot\nwas made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make my\nweakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on\nthe Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end of the\nLone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the Jungle, that ye come\none by one.\"\n\nThere was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela to\nthe death. Then Shere Khan roared: \"Bah! What have we to do with this\ntoothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too\nlong. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. I\nam weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle for ten\nseasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not give\nyou one bone. He is a man, a man's child, and from the marrow of my\nbones I hate him!\"\n\nThen more than half the Pack yelled: \"A man! A man! What has a man to do\nwith us? Let him go to his own place.\"\n\n\"And turn all the people of the villages against us?\" clamored Shere\nKhan. \"No, give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him\nbetween the eyes.\"\n\nAkela lifted his head again and said, \"He has eaten our food. He has\nslept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of the\nLaw of the Jungle.\"\n\n\"Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The worth of a\nbull is little, but Bagheera's honor is something that he will perhaps\nfight for,\" said Bagheera in his gentlest voice.\n\n\"A bull paid ten years ago!\" the Pack snarled. \"What do we care for\nbones ten years old?\"\n\n\"Or for a pledge?\" said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his lip.\n\"Well are ye called the Free People!\"\n\n\"No man's cub can run with the people of the jungle,\" howled Shere Khan.\n\"Give him to me!\"\n\n\"He is our brother in all but blood,\" Akela went on, \"and ye would kill\nhim here! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are eaters of\ncattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere Khan's teaching,\nye go by dark night and snatch children from the villager's doorstep.\nTherefore I know ye to be cowards, and it is to cowards I speak. It is\ncertain that I must die, and my life is of no worth, or I would offer\nthat in the man-cub's place. But for the sake of the Honor of\nthe Pack,--a little matter that by being without a leader ye have\nforgotten,--I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I\nwill not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye. I will\ndie without fighting. That will at least save the Pack three lives.\nMore I cannot do; but if ye will, I can save ye the shame that comes of\nkilling a brother against whom there is no fault--a brother spoken for\nand bought into the Pack according to the Law of the Jungle.\"\n\n\"He is a man--a man--a man!\" snarled the Pack. And most of the wolves\nbegan to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to switch.\n\n\"Now the business is in thy hands,\" said Bagheera to Mowgli. \"We can do\nno more except fight.\"\n\nMowgli stood upright--the fire pot in his hands. Then he stretched out\nhis arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was furious with\nrage and sorrow, for, wolflike, the wolves had never told him how they\nhated him. \"Listen you!\" he cried. \"There is no need for this dog's\njabber. Ye have told me so often tonight that I am a man (and indeed I\nwould have been a wolf with you to my life's end) that I feel your words\nare true. So I do not call ye my brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as\na man should. What ye will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours\nto say. That matter is with me; and that we may see the matter more\nplainly, I, the man, have brought here a little of the Red Flower which\nye, dogs, fear.\"\n\nHe flung the fire pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit\na tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in\nterror before the leaping flames.\n\nMowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit and\ncrackled, and whirled it above his head among the cowering wolves.\n\n\"Thou art the master,\" said Bagheera in an undertone. \"Save Akela from\nthe death. He was ever thy friend.\"\n\nAkela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave\none piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black\nhair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that\nmade the shadows jump and quiver.\n\n\"Good!\" said Mowgli, staring round slowly. \"I see that ye are dogs. I go\nfrom you to my own people--if they be my own people. The jungle is shut\nto me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship. But I will be\nmore merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood,\nI promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as\nye have betrayed me.\" He kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks\nflew up. \"There shall be no war between any of us in the Pack. But here\nis a debt to pay before I go.\" He strode forward to where Shere Khan sat\nblinking stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin.\nBagheera followed in case of accidents. \"Up, dog!\" Mowgli cried. \"Up,\nwhen a man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze!\"\n\nShere Khan's ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes, for\nthe blazing branch was very near.\n\n\"This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he had\nnot killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs\nwhen we are men. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down\nthy gullet!\" He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the\ntiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear.\n\n\"Pah! Singed jungle cat--go now! But remember when next I come to the\nCouncil Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan's hide\non my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will\nnot kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I think that ye\nwill sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though ye were\nsomebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out--thus! Go!\" The fire was\nburning furiously at the end of the branch, and Mowgli struck right\nand left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling with the sparks\nburning their fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and perhaps\nten wolves that had taken Mowgli's part. Then something began to hurt\nMowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he\ncaught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.\n\n\"What is it? What is it?\" he said. \"I do not wish to leave the jungle,\nand I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?\"\n\n\"No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use,\" said Bagheera.\n\"Now I know thou art a man, and a man's cub no longer. The jungle is\nshut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only\ntears.\" So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he\nhad never cried in all his life before.\n\n\"Now,\" he said, \"I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to my\nmother.\" And he went to the cave where she lived with Father Wolf, and\nhe cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably.\n\n\"Ye will not forget me?\" said Mowgli.\n\n\"Never while we can follow a trail,\" said the cubs. \"Come to the foot of\nthe hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we will come\ninto the croplands to play with thee by night.\"\n\n\"Come soon!\" said Father Wolf. \"Oh, wise little frog, come again soon;\nfor we be old, thy mother and I.\"\n\n\"Come soon,\" said Mother Wolf, \"little naked son of mine. For, listen,\nchild of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs.\"\n\n\"I will surely come,\" said Mowgli. \"And when I come it will be to lay\nout Shere Khan's hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them\nin the jungle never to forget me!\"\n\nThe dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside\nalone, to meet those mysterious things that are called men.\n\n\n\n\nHunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack\n\n     As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled\n        Once, twice and again!\n     And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up\n     From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.\n     This I, scouting alone, beheld,\n        Once, twice and again!\n\n     As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled\n        Once, twice and again!\n     And a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back\n     To carry the word to the waiting pack,\n     And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track\n        Once, twice and again!\n\n     As the dawn was breaking the Wolf Pack yelled\n        Once, twice and again!\n     Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!\n\n     Eyes that can see in the dark--the dark!\n     Tongue--give tongue to it!  Hark!  O hark!\n        Once, twice and again!\n\n\n\n\nKaa's Hunting\n\n     His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the\n        Buffalo's pride.\n     Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the\n        gloss of his hide.\n     If ye find that the Bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed\n        Sambhur can gore;\n     Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten seasons\n        before.\n     Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister\n        and Brother,\n     For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is\n        their mother.\n     \"There is none like to me!\" says the Cub in the pride of his\n        earliest kill;\n     But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small.  Let him\n        think and be still.\n                                 Maxims of Baloo\n\n\nAll that is told here happened some time before Mowgli was turned out of\nthe Seeonee Wolf Pack, or revenged himself on Shere Khan the tiger. It\nwas in the days when Baloo was teaching him the Law of the Jungle. The\nbig, serious, old brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil,\nfor the young wolves will only learn as much of the Law of the Jungle\nas applies to their own pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they can\nrepeat the Hunting Verse--\"Feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in\nthe dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white\nteeth, all these things are the marks of our brothers except Tabaqui the\nJackal and the Hyaena whom we hate.\" But Mowgli, as a man-cub, had to\nlearn a great deal more than this. Sometimes Bagheera the Black Panther\nwould come lounging through the jungle to see how his pet was getting\non, and would purr with his head against a tree while Mowgli recited the\nday's lesson to Baloo. The boy could climb almost as well as he could\nswim, and swim almost as well as he could run. So Baloo, the Teacher of\nthe Law, taught him the Wood and Water Laws: how to tell a rotten branch\nfrom a sound one; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came\nupon a hive of them fifty feet above ground; what to say to Mang the\nBat when he disturbed him in the branches at midday; and how to warn the\nwater-snakes in the pools before he splashed down among them. None of\nthe Jungle People like being disturbed, and all are very ready to fly at\nan intruder. Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers' Hunting Call,\nwhich must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the\nJungle-People hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, \"Give\nme leave to hunt here because I am hungry.\" And the answer is, \"Hunt\nthen for food, but not for pleasure.\"\n\nAll this will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart, and he\ngrew very tired of saying the same thing over a hundred times. But, as\nBaloo said to Bagheera, one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and run off\nin a temper, \"A man's cub is a man's cub, and he must learn all the Law\nof the Jungle.\"\n\n\"But think how small he is,\" said the Black Panther, who would have\nspoiled Mowgli if he had had his own way. \"How can his little head carry\nall thy long talk?\"\n\n\"Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No. That is\nwhy I teach him these things, and that is why I hit him, very softly,\nwhen he forgets.\"\n\n\"Softly! What dost thou know of softness, old Iron-feet?\" Bagheera\ngrunted. \"His face is all bruised today by thy--softness. Ugh.\"\n\n\"Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than\nthat he should come to harm through ignorance,\" Baloo answered very\nearnestly. \"I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that\nshall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt\non four feet, except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he\nwill only remember the words, from all in the jungle. Is not that worth\na little beating?\"\n\n\"Well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no\ntree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master\nWords? I am more likely to give help than to ask it\"--Bagheera stretched\nout one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end\nof it--\"still I should like to know.\"\n\n\"I will call Mowgli and he shall say them--if he will. Come, Little\nBrother!\"\n\n\"My head is ringing like a bee tree,\" said a sullen little voice over\ntheir heads, and Mowgli slid down a tree trunk very angry and indignant,\nadding as he reached the ground: \"I come for Bagheera and not for thee,\nfat old Baloo!\"\n\n\"That is all one to me,\" said Baloo, though he was hurt and grieved.\n\"Tell Bagheera, then, the Master Words of the Jungle that I have taught\nthee this day.\"\n\n\"Master Words for which people?\" said Mowgli, delighted to show off.\n\"The jungle has many tongues. I know them all.\"\n\n\"A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank\ntheir teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank\nold Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People,\nthen--great scholar.\"\n\n\"We be of one blood, ye and I,\" said Mowgli, giving the words the Bear\naccent which all the Hunting People use.\n\n\"Good. Now for the birds.\"\n\nMowgli repeated, with the Kite's whistle at the end of the sentence.\n\n\"Now for the Snake-People,\" said Bagheera.\n\nThe answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and Mowgli kicked up his\nfeet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped\non to Bagheera's back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on\nthe glossy skin and making the worst faces he could think of at Baloo.\n\n\"There--there! That was worth a little bruise,\" said the brown bear\ntenderly. \"Some day thou wilt remember me.\" Then he turned aside to\ntell Bagheera how he had begged the Master Words from Hathi the Wild\nElephant, who knows all about these things, and how Hathi had taken\nMowgli down to a pool to get the Snake Word from a water-snake, because\nBaloo could not pronounce it, and how Mowgli was now reasonably safe\nagainst all accidents in the jungle, because neither snake, bird, nor\nbeast would hurt him.\n\n\"No one then is to be feared,\" Baloo wound up, patting his big furry\nstomach with pride.\n\n\"Except his own tribe,\" said Bagheera, under his breath; and then aloud\nto Mowgli, \"Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all this\ndancing up and down?\"\n\nMowgli had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at Bagheera's\nshoulder fur and kicking hard. When the two listened to him he was\nshouting at the top of his voice, \"And so I shall have a tribe of my\nown, and lead them through the branches all day long.\"\n\n\"What is this new folly, little dreamer of dreams?\" said Bagheera.\n\n\"Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old Baloo,\" Mowgli went on. \"They\nhave promised me this. Ah!\"\n\n\"Whoof!\" Baloo's big paw scooped Mowgli off Bagheera's back, and as the\nboy lay between the big fore-paws he could see the Bear was angry.\n\n\"Mowgli,\" said Baloo, \"thou hast been talking with the Bandar-log--the\nMonkey People.\"\n\nMowgli looked at Bagheera to see if the Panther was angry too, and\nBagheera's eyes were as hard as jade stones.\n\n\"Thou hast been with the Monkey People--the gray apes--the people\nwithout a law--the eaters of everything. That is great shame.\"\n\n\"When Baloo hurt my head,\" said Mowgli (he was still on his back), \"I\nwent away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and had pity on\nme. No one else cared.\" He snuffled a little.\n\n\"The pity of the Monkey People!\" Baloo snorted. \"The stillness of the\nmountain stream! The cool of the summer sun! And then, man-cub?\"\n\n\"And then, and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to eat, and\nthey--they carried me in their arms up to the top of the trees and said\nI was their blood brother except that I had no tail, and should be their\nleader some day.\"\n\n\"They have no leader,\" said Bagheera. \"They lie. They have always lied.\"\n\n\"They were very kind and bade me come again. Why have I never been taken\namong the Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I do. They do\nnot hit me with their hard paws. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad\nBaloo, let me up! I will play with them again.\"\n\n\"Listen, man-cub,\" said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on\na hot night. \"I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the\npeoples of the jungle--except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees.\nThey have no law. They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own,\nbut use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep,\nand wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are\nwithout leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and\npretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the\njungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all\nis forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not\ndrink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do\nnot hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever\nheard me speak of the Bandar-log till today?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo\nhad finished.\n\n\"The Jungle-People put them out of their mouths and out of their minds.\nThey are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they\nhave any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not\nnotice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads.\"\n\nHe had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down\nthrough the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and\nangry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.\n\n\"The Monkey-People are forbidden,\" said Baloo, \"forbidden to the\nJungle-People. Remember.\"\n\n\"Forbidden,\" said Bagheera, \"but I still think Baloo should have warned\nthee against them.\"\n\n\"I--I? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. The Monkey\nPeople! Faugh!\"\n\nA fresh shower came down on their heads and the two trotted away, taking\nMowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly\ntrue. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look\nup, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross\neach other's path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded\ntiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks\nand nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then\nthey would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People\nto climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles\nover nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the\nJungle-People could see them. They were always just going to have a\nleader, and laws and customs of their own, but they never did, because\ntheir memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they\ncompromised things by making up a saying, \"What the Bandar-log think now\nthe jungle will think later,\" and that comforted them a great deal. None\nof the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none of the beasts\nwould notice them, and that was why they were so pleased when Mowgli\ncame to play with them, and they heard how angry Baloo was.\n\nThey never meant to do any more--the Bandar-log never mean anything at\nall; but one of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and\nhe told all the others that Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in\nthe tribe, because he could weave sticks together for protection from\nthe wind; so, if they caught him, they could make him teach them.\nOf course Mowgli, as a woodcutter's child, inherited all sorts of\ninstincts, and used to make little huts of fallen branches without\nthinking how he came to do it. The Monkey-People, watching in the trees,\nconsidered his play most wonderful. This time, they said, they were\nreally going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the\njungle--so wise that everyone else would notice and envy them. Therefore\nthey followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jungle very\nquietly till it was time for the midday nap, and Mowgli, who was\nvery much ashamed of himself, slept between the Panther and the Bear,\nresolving to have no more to do with the Monkey People.\n\nThe next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and\narms--hard, strong, little hands--and then a swash of branches in his\nface, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo\nwoke the jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk\nwith every tooth bared. The Bandar-log howled with triumph and scuffled\naway to the upper branches where Bagheera dared not follow, shouting:\n\"He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. All the Jungle-People\nadmire us for our skill and our cunning.\" Then they began their flight;\nand the flight of the Monkey-People through tree-land is one of\nthe things nobody can describe. They have their regular roads and\ncrossroads, up hills and down hills, all laid out from fifty to seventy\nor a hundred feet above ground, and by these they can travel even at\nnight if necessary. Two of the strongest monkeys caught Mowgli under\nthe arms and swung off with him through the treetops, twenty feet at a\nbound. Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the\nboy's weight held them back. Sick and giddy as Mowgli was he could not\nhelp enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below\nfrightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing\nover nothing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth. His\nescort would rush him up a tree till he felt the thinnest topmost\nbranches crackle and bend under them, and then with a cough and a whoop\nwould fling themselves into the air outward and downward, and bring\nup, hanging by their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next\ntree. Sometimes he could see for miles and miles across the still green\njungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea,\nand then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he\nand his two guards would be almost down to earth again. So, bounding and\ncrashing and whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log swept\nalong the tree-roads with Mowgli their prisoner.\n\nFor a time he was afraid of being dropped. Then he grew angry but knew\nbetter than to struggle, and then he began to think. The first thing was\nto send back word to Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace the monkeys\nwere going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. It was useless\nto look down, for he could only see the topsides of the branches, so he\nstared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann the Kite balancing\nand wheeling as he kept watch over the jungle waiting for things to die.\nRann saw that the monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a\nfew hundred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He\nwhistled with surprise when he saw Mowgli being dragged up to a treetop\nand heard him give the Kite call for--\"We be of one blood, thou and I.\"\nThe waves of the branches closed over the boy, but Rann balanced away to\nthe next tree in time to see the little brown face come up again. \"Mark\nmy trail!\" Mowgli shouted. \"Tell Baloo of the Seeonee Pack and Bagheera\nof the Council Rock.\"\n\n\"In whose name, Brother?\" Rann had never seen Mowgli before, though of\ncourse he had heard of him.\n\n\"Mowgli, the Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my trail!\"\n\nThe last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air, but\nRann nodded and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of dust,\nand there he hung, watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the\ntreetops as Mowgli's escort whirled along.\n\n\"They never go far,\" he said with a chuckle. \"They never do what they\nset out to do. Always pecking at new things are the Bandar-log. This\ntime, if I have any eye-sight, they have pecked down trouble for\nthemselves, for Baloo is no fledgling and Bagheera can, as I know, kill\nmore than goats.\"\n\nSo he rocked on his wings, his feet gathered up under him, and waited.\n\nMeantime, Baloo and Bagheera were furious with rage and grief. Bagheera\nclimbed as he had never climbed before, but the thin branches broke\nbeneath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark.\n\n\"Why didst thou not warn the man-cub?\" he roared to poor Baloo, who had\nset off at a clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the monkeys. \"What\nwas the use of half slaying him with blows if thou didst not warn him?\"\n\n\"Haste! O haste! We--we may catch them yet!\" Baloo panted.\n\n\"At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher of the\nLaw--cub-beater--a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee\nopen. Sit still and think! Make a plan. This is no time for chasing.\nThey may drop him if we follow too close.\"\n\n\"Arrula! Whoo! They may have dropped him already, being tired of\ncarrying him. Who can trust the Bandar-log? Put dead bats on my head!\nGive me black bones to eat! Roll me into the hives of the wild bees\nthat I may be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyaena, for I am most\nmiserable of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O Mowgli, Mowgli! Why did I not\nwarn thee against the Monkey-Folk instead of breaking thy head? Now\nperhaps I may have knocked the day's lesson out of his mind, and he will\nbe alone in the jungle without the Master Words.\"\n\nBaloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro moaning.\n\n\"At least he gave me all the Words correctly a little time ago,\" said\nBagheera impatiently. \"Baloo, thou hast neither memory nor respect. What\nwould the jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like\nIkki the Porcupine, and howled?\"\n\n\"What do I care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead by now.\"\n\n\"Unless and until they drop him from the branches in sport, or kill him\nout of idleness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and well\ntaught, and above all he has the eyes that make the Jungle-People\nafraid. But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the\nBandar-log, and they, because they live in trees, have no fear of any of\nour people.\" Bagheera licked one forepaw thoughtfully.\n\n\"Fool that I am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that I am,\" said\nBaloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk, \"it is true what Hathi the Wild\nElephant says: `To each his own fear'; and they, the Bandar-log, fear\nKaa the Rock Snake. He can climb as well as they can. He steals the\nyoung monkeys in the night. The whisper of his name makes their wicked\ntails cold. Let us go to Kaa.\"\n\n\"What will he do for us? He is not of our tribe, being footless--and\nwith most evil eyes,\" said Bagheera.\n\n\"He is very old and very cunning. Above all, he is always hungry,\" said\nBaloo hopefully. \"Promise him many goats.\"\n\n\"He sleeps for a full month after he has once eaten. He may be asleep\nnow, and even were he awake what if he would rather kill his own goats?\"\nBagheera, who did not know much about Kaa, was naturally suspicious.\n\n\"Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make him see\nreason.\" Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther,\nand they went off to look for Kaa the Rock Python.\n\nThey found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the afternoon sun,\nadmiring his beautiful new coat, for he had been in retirement for the\nlast ten days changing his skin, and now he was very splendid--darting\nhis big blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twisting the thirty feet\nof his body into fantastic knots and curves, and licking his lips as he\nthought of his dinner to come.\n\n\"He has not eaten,\" said Baloo, with a grunt of relief, as soon as\nhe saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket. \"Be careful,\nBagheera! He is always a little blind after he has changed his skin, and\nvery quick to strike.\"\n\nKaa was not a poison snake--in fact he rather despised the poison snakes\nas cowards--but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once\nlapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said. \"Good\nhunting!\" cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches. Like all snakes of\nhis breed Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at first. Then\nhe curled up ready for any accident, his head lowered.\n\n\"Good hunting for us all,\" he answered. \"Oho, Baloo, what dost thou do\nhere? Good hunting, Bagheera. One of us at least needs food. Is there\nany news of game afoot? A doe now, or even a young buck? I am as empty\nas a dried well.\"\n\n\"We are hunting,\" said Baloo carelessly. He knew that you must not hurry\nKaa. He is too big.\n\n\"Give me permission to come with you,\" said Kaa. \"A blow more or less is\nnothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I--I have to wait and wait for\ndays in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a\nyoung ape. Psshaw! The branches are not what they were when I was young.\nRotten twigs and dry boughs are they all.\"\n\n\"Maybe thy great weight has something to do with the matter,\" said\nBaloo.\n\n\"I am a fair length--a fair length,\" said Kaa with a little pride. \"But\nfor all that, it is the fault of this new-grown timber. I came very\nnear to falling on my last hunt--very near indeed--and the noise of my\nslipping, for my tail was not tight wrapped around the tree, waked the\nBandar-log, and they called me most evil names.\"\n\n\"Footless, yellow earth-worm,\" said Bagheera under his whiskers, as\nthough he were trying to remember something.\n\n\"Sssss! Have they ever called me that?\" said Kaa.\n\n\"Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we\nnever noticed them. They will say anything--even that thou hast lost all\nthy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they\nare indeed shameless, these Bandar-log)--because thou art afraid of the\nhe-goat's horns,\" Bagheera went on sweetly.\n\nNow a snake, especially a wary old python like Kaa, very seldom shows\nthat he is angry, but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing\nmuscles on either side of Kaa's throat ripple and bulge.\n\n\"The Bandar-log have shifted their grounds,\" he said quietly. \"When I\ncame up into the sun today I heard them whooping among the tree-tops.\"\n\n\"It--it is the Bandar-log that we follow now,\" said Baloo, but the words\nstuck in his throat, for that was the first time in his memory that one\nof the Jungle-People had owned to being interested in the doings of the\nmonkeys.\n\n\"Beyond doubt then it is no small thing that takes two such\nhunters--leaders in their own jungle I am certain--on the trail of the\nBandar-log,\" Kaa replied courteously, as he swelled with curiosity.\n\n\"Indeed,\" Baloo began, \"I am no more than the old and sometimes very\nfoolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf-cubs, and Bagheera\nhere--\"\n\n\"Is Bagheera,\" said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut with a snap,\nfor he did not believe in being humble. \"The trouble is this, Kaa. Those\nnut-stealers and pickers of palm leaves have stolen away our man-cub of\nwhom thou hast perhaps heard.\"\n\n\"I heard some news from Ikki (his quills make him presumptuous) of a\nman-thing that was entered into a wolf pack, but I did not believe. Ikki\nis full of stories half heard and very badly told.\"\n\n\"But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was,\" said Baloo. \"The\nbest and wisest and boldest of man-cubs--my own pupil, who shall\nmake the name of Baloo famous through all the jungles; and besides,\nI--we--love him, Kaa.\"\n\n\"Ts! Ts!\" said Kaa, weaving his head to and fro. \"I also have known what\nlove is. There are tales I could tell that--\"\n\n\"That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise properly,\"\nsaid Bagheera quickly. \"Our man-cub is in the hands of the Bandar-log\nnow, and we know that of all the Jungle-People they fear Kaa alone.\"\n\n\"They fear me alone. They have good reason,\" said Kaa. \"Chattering,\nfoolish, vain--vain, foolish, and chattering, are the monkeys. But a\nman-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts\nthey pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day, meaning\nto do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. That man-thing\nis not to be envied. They called me also--`yellow fish' was it not?\"\n\n\"Worm--worm--earth-worm,\" said Bagheera, \"as well as other things which\nI cannot now say for shame.\"\n\n\"We must remind them to speak well of their master. Aaa-ssp! We must\nhelp their wandering memories. Now, whither went they with the cub?\"\n\n\"The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe,\" said Baloo. \"We\nhad thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa.\"\n\n\"I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do not hunt the\nBandar-log, or frogs--or green scum on a water-hole, for that matter.\"\n\n\"Up, Up! Up, Up! Hillo! Illo! Illo, look up, Baloo of the Seeonee Wolf\nPack!\"\n\nBaloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was Rann the\nKite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his\nwings. It was near Rann's bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle\nlooking for the Bear and had missed him in the thick foliage.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Baloo.\n\n\"I have seen Mowgli among the Bandar-log. He bade me tell you. I\nwatched. The Bandar-log have taken him beyond the river to the monkey\ncity--to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a night, or ten nights,\nor an hour. I have told the bats to watch through the dark time. That is\nmy message. Good hunting, all you below!\"\n\n\"Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann,\" cried Bagheera. \"I will\nremember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee alone, O\nbest of kites!\"\n\n\"It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I could\nhave done no less,\" and Rann circled up again to his roost.\n\n\"He has not forgotten to use his tongue,\" said Baloo with a chuckle of\npride. \"To think of one so young remembering the Master Word for the\nbirds too while he was being pulled across trees!\"\n\n\"It was most firmly driven into him,\" said Bagheera. \"But I am proud of\nhim, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.\"\n\nThey all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle People ever\nwent there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted\ncity, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that\nmen have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes do not.\nBesides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live\nanywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it\nexcept in times of drought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs\nheld a little water.\n\n\"It is half a night's journey--at full speed,\" said Bagheera, and Baloo\nlooked very serious. \"I will go as fast as I can,\" he said anxiously.\n\n\"We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on the\nquick-foot--Kaa and I.\"\n\n\"Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four,\" said Kaa shortly.\nBaloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, and so they\nleft him to come on later, while Bagheera hurried forward, at the quick\npanther-canter. Kaa said nothing, but, strive as Bagheera might, the\nhuge Rock-python held level with him. When they came to a hill stream,\nBagheera gained, because he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head and\ntwo feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground Kaa made up\nthe distance.\n\n\"By the Broken Lock that freed me,\" said Bagheera, when twilight had\nfallen, \"thou art no slow goer!\"\n\n\"I am hungry,\" said Kaa. \"Besides, they called me speckled frog.\"\n\n\"Worm--earth-worm, and yellow to boot.\"\n\n\"All one. Let us go on,\" and Kaa seemed to pour himself along the\nground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and keeping to\nit.\n\nIn the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking of Mowgli's\nfriends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, and were\nvery much pleased with themselves for the time. Mowgli had never seen an\nIndian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed\nvery wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little\nhill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led up to the\nruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted\nhinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the battlements were\ntumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung out of the windows of\nthe towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps.\n\nA great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the\ncourtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and green,\nand the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king's elephants\nused to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees.\nFrom the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that\nmade up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness;\nthe shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where\nfour roads met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public\nwells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs\nsprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and\npretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest.\nAnd yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to\nuse them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council\nchamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run\nin and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old\nbricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight\nand cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the\nterraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose trees and\nthe oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored\nall the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of\nlittle dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what\nthey had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling\neach other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and\nmade the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they\nwould all rush together in mobs and shout: \"There is no one in the\njungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the\nBandar-log.\" Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city\nand went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice\nthem.\n\nMowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not like\nor understand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the Cold\nLairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli\nwould have done after a long journey, they joined hands and danced about\nand sang their foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a speech and told\nhis companions that Mowgli's capture marked a new thing in the history\nof the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show them how to weave sticks\nand canes together as a protection against rain and cold. Mowgli picked\nup some creepers and began to work them in and out, and the monkeys\ntried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost interest and began\nto pull their friends' tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.\n\n\"I wish to eat,\" said Mowgli. \"I am a stranger in this part of the\njungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here.\"\n\nTwenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts and wild\npawpaws. But they fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much\ntrouble to go back with what was left of the fruit. Mowgli was sore and\nangry as well as hungry, and he roamed through the empty city giving the\nStrangers' Hunting Call from time to time, but no one answered him, and\nMowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed. \"All that Baloo\nhas said about the Bandar-log is true,\" he thought to himself. \"They\nhave no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders--nothing but foolish words\nand little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here,\nit will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jungle.\nBaloo will surely beat me, but that is better than chasing silly rose\nleaves with the Bandar-log.\"\n\nNo sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him\nback, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinching\nhim to make him grateful. He set his teeth and said nothing, but\nwent with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above the red sandstone\nreservoirs that were half-full of rain water. There was a ruined\nsummer-house of white marble in the center of the terrace, built for\nqueens dead a hundred years ago. The domed roof had half fallen in and\nblocked up the underground passage from the palace by which the\nqueens used to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble\ntracery--beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians\nand jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill it\nshone through the open work, casting shadows on the ground like black\nvelvet embroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mowgli could not\nhelp laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him\nhow great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he\nwas to wish to leave them. \"We are great. We are free. We are wonderful.\nWe are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and\nso it must be true,\" they shouted. \"Now as you are a new listener and\ncan carry our words back to the Jungle-People so that they may notice us\nin future, we will tell you all about our most excellent selves.\" Mowgli\nmade no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on\nthe terrace to listen to their own speakers singing the praises of the\nBandar-log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would\nall shout together: \"This is true; we all say so.\" Mowgli nodded and\nblinked, and said \"Yes\" when they asked him a question, and his head\nspun with the noise. \"Tabaqui the Jackal must have bitten all these\npeople,\" he said to himself, \"and now they have madness. Certainly this\nis dewanee, the madness. Do they never go to sleep? Now there is a cloud\ncoming to cover that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might\ntry to run away in the darkness. But I am tired.\"\n\nThat same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined\nditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well how\ndangerous the Monkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to run\nany risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, and\nfew in the jungle care for those odds.\n\n\"I will go to the west wall,\" Kaa whispered, \"and come down swiftly with\nthe slope of the ground in my favor. They will not throw themselves upon\nmy back in their hundreds, but--\"\n\n\"I know it,\" said Bagheera. \"Would that Baloo were here, but we must do\nwhat we can. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go to the terrace.\nThey hold some sort of council there over the boy.\"\n\n\"Good hunting,\" said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the west wall. That\nhappened to be the least ruined of any, and the big snake was delayed\nawhile before he could find a way up the stones. The cloud hid the moon,\nand as Mowgli wondered what would come next he heard Bagheera's light\nfeet on the terrace. The Black Panther had raced up the slope almost\nwithout a sound and was striking--he knew better than to waste time in\nbiting--right and left among the monkeys, who were seated round Mowgli\nin circles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl of fright and rage,\nand then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling kicking bodies beneath him,\na monkey shouted: \"There is only one here! Kill him! Kill.\" A scuffling\nmass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over\nBagheera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall\nof the summerhouse and pushed him through the hole of the broken dome.\nA man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a\ngood fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and\nlanded on his feet.\n\n\"Stay there,\" shouted the monkeys, \"till we have killed thy friends, and\nlater we will play with thee--if the Poison-People leave thee alive.\"\n\n\"We be of one blood, ye and I,\" said Mowgli, quickly giving the Snake's\nCall. He could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish all round him\nand gave the Call a second time, to make sure.\n\n\"Even ssso! Down hoods all!\" said half a dozen low voices (every ruin\nin India becomes sooner or later a dwelling place of snakes, and the old\nsummerhouse was alive with cobras). \"Stand still, Little Brother, for\nthy feet may do us harm.\"\n\nMowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through the open work and\nlistening to the furious din of the fight round the Black Panther--the\nyells and chatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera's deep, hoarse cough\nas he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his\nenemies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was fighting for\nhis life.\n\n\"Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come alone,\" Mowgli\nthought. And then he called aloud: \"To the tank, Bagheera. Roll to the\nwater tanks. Roll and plunge! Get to the water!\"\n\nBagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe gave him new\ncourage. He worked his way desperately, inch by inch, straight for the\nreservoirs, halting in silence. Then from the ruined wall nearest the\njungle rose up the rumbling war-shout of Baloo. The old Bear had done\nhis best, but he could not come before. \"Bagheera,\" he shouted, \"I am\nhere. I climb! I haste! Ahuwora! The stones slip under my feet! Wait my\ncoming, O most infamous Bandar-log!\" He panted up the terrace only\nto disappear to the head in a wave of monkeys, but he threw himself\nsquarely on his haunches, and, spreading out his forepaws, hugged as\nmany as he could hold, and then began to hit with a regular bat-bat-bat,\nlike the flipping strokes of a paddle wheel. A crash and a splash told\nMowgli that Bagheera had fought his way to the tank where the monkeys\ncould not follow. The Panther lay gasping for breath, his head just\nout of the water, while the monkeys stood three deep on the red steps,\ndancing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides\nif he came out to help Baloo. It was then that Bagheera lifted up his\ndripping chin, and in despair gave the Snake's Call for protection--\"We\nbe of one blood, ye and I\"--for he believed that Kaa had turned tail\nat the last minute. Even Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on\nthe edge of the terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the Black\nPanther asking for help.\n\nKaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, landing with a\nwrench that dislodged a coping stone into the ditch. He had no intention\nof losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself\nonce or twice, to be sure that every foot of his long body was in\nworking order. All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the\nmonkeys yelled in the tank round Bagheera, and Mang the Bat, flying to\nand fro, carried the news of the great battle over the jungle, till even\nHathi the Wild Elephant trumpeted, and, far away, scattered bands of\nthe Monkey-Folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help their\ncomrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused all the\nday birds for miles round. Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious\nto kill. The fighting strength of a python is in the driving blow of\nhis head backed by all the strength and weight of his body. If you can\nimagine a lance, or a battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half\na ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can\nroughly imagine what Kaa was like when he fought. A python four or five\nfeet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and\nKaa was thirty feet long, as you know. His first stroke was delivered\ninto the heart of the crowd round Baloo. It was sent home with shut\nmouth in silence, and there was no need of a second. The monkeys\nscattered with cries of--\"Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run!\"\n\nGenerations of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the stories\ntheir elders told them of Kaa, the night thief, who could slip along the\nbranches as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey\nthat ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead\nbranch or a rotten stump that the wisest were deceived, till the branch\ncaught them. Kaa was everything that the monkeys feared in the jungle,\nfor none of them knew the limits of his power, none of them could look\nhim in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug. And so\nthey ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the\nhouses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was much thicker\nthan Bagheera's, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. Then Kaa\nopened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hissing word, and\nthe far-away monkeys, hurrying to the defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed\nwhere they were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and crackled\nunder them. The monkeys on the walls and the empty houses stopped\ntheir cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the city Mowgli heard\nBagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up from the tank. Then the\nclamor broke out again. The monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They\nclung around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they\nskipped along the battlements, while Mowgli, dancing in the summerhouse,\nput his eye to the screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front\nteeth, to show his derision and contempt.\n\n\"Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more,\" Bagheera gasped.\n\"Let us take the man-cub and go. They may attack again.\"\n\n\"They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!\" Kaa hissed, and\nthe city was silent once more. \"I could not come before, Brother, but I\nthink I heard thee call\"--this was to Bagheera.\n\n\"I--I may have cried out in the battle,\" Bagheera answered. \"Baloo, art\nthou hurt?\n\n\"I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little\nbearlings,\" said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. \"Wow! I\nam sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives--Bagheera and I.\"\n\n\"No matter. Where is the manling?\"\n\n\"Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out,\" cried Mowgli. The curve of the\nbroken dome was above his head.\n\n\"Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will crush our\nyoung,\" said the cobras inside.\n\n\"Hah!\" said Kaa with a chuckle, \"he has friends everywhere, this\nmanling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O Poison People. I break\ndown the wall.\"\n\nKaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble\ntracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head\nto get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear\nof the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows,\nnose-first. The screen-work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and\nrubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself between\nBaloo and Bagheera--an arm around each big neck.\n\n\"Art thou hurt?\" said Baloo, hugging him softly.\n\n\"I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have handled\nye grievously, my Brothers! Ye bleed.\"\n\n\"Others also,\" said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the\nmonkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.\n\n\"It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride of all\nlittle frogs!\" whimpered Baloo.\n\n\"Of that we shall judge later,\" said Bagheera, in a dry voice that\nMowgli did not at all like. \"But here is Kaa to whom we owe the battle\nand thou owest thy life. Thank him according to our customs, Mowgli.\"\n\nMowgli turned and saw the great Python's head swaying a foot above his\nown.\n\n\"So this is the manling,\" said Kaa. \"Very soft is his skin, and he is\nnot unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake\nthee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.\"\n\n\"We be one blood, thou and I,\" Mowgli answered. \"I take my life from\nthee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa.\"\n\n\"All thanks, Little Brother,\" said Kaa, though his eyes twinkled. \"And\nwhat may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I may follow when next he\ngoes abroad.\"\n\n\"I kill nothing,--I am too little,--but I drive goats toward such as can\nuse them. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the truth.\nI have some skill in these [he held out his hands], and if ever thou art\nin a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee, to Bagheera, and to\nBaloo, here. Good hunting to ye all, my masters.\"\n\n\"Well said,\" growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned thanks very\nprettily. The Python dropped his head lightly for a minute on Mowgli's\nshoulder. \"A brave heart and a courteous tongue,\" said he. \"They shall\ncarry thee far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly\nwith thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it\nis not well that thou shouldst see.\"\n\nThe moon was sinking behind the hills and the lines of trembling monkeys\nhuddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged shaky\nfringes of things. Baloo went down to the tank for a drink and Bagheera\nbegan to put his fur in order, as Kaa glided out into the center of the\nterrace and brought his jaws together with a ringing snap that drew all\nthe monkeys' eyes upon him.\n\n\"The moon sets,\" he said. \"Is there yet light enough to see?\"\n\nFrom the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-tops--\"We see, O\nKaa.\"\n\n\"Good. Begins now the dance--the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa. Sit still\nand watch.\"\n\nHe turned twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving his head from right\nto left. Then he began making loops and figures of eight with his\nbody, and soft, oozy triangles that melted into squares and five-sided\nfigures, and coiled mounds, never resting, never hurrying, and never\nstopping his low humming song. It grew darker and darker, till at last\nthe dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but they could hear the rustle\nof the scales.\n\nBaloo and Bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their throats,\ntheir neck hair bristling, and Mowgli watched and wondered.\n\n\"Bandar-log,\" said the voice of Kaa at last, \"can ye stir foot or hand\nwithout my order? Speak!\"\n\n\"Without thy order we cannot stir foot or hand, O Kaa!\"\n\n\"Good! Come all one pace nearer to me.\"\n\nThe lines of the monkeys swayed forward helplessly, and Baloo and\nBagheera took one stiff step forward with them.\n\n\"Nearer!\" hissed Kaa, and they all moved again.\n\nMowgli laid his hands on Baloo and Bagheera to get them away, and the\ntwo great beasts started as though they had been waked from a dream.\n\n\"Keep thy hand on my shoulder,\" Bagheera whispered. \"Keep it there, or I\nmust go back--must go back to Kaa. Aah!\"\n\n\"It is only old Kaa making circles on the dust,\" said Mowgli. \"Let us\ngo.\" And the three slipped off through a gap in the walls to the jungle.\n\n\"Whoof!\" said Baloo, when he stood under the still trees again. \"Never\nmore will I make an ally of Kaa,\" and he shook himself all over.\n\n\"He knows more than we,\" said Bagheera, trembling. \"In a little time,\nhad I stayed, I should have walked down his throat.\"\n\n\"Many will walk by that road before the moon rises again,\" said Baloo.\n\"He will have good hunting--after his own fashion.\"\n\n\"But what was the meaning of it all?\" said Mowgli, who did not know\nanything of a python's powers of fascination. \"I saw no more than a big\nsnake making foolish circles till the dark came. And his nose was all\nsore. Ho! Ho!\"\n\n\"Mowgli,\" said Bagheera angrily, \"his nose was sore on thy account, as\nmy ears and sides and paws, and Baloo's neck and shoulders are bitten\non thy account. Neither Baloo nor Bagheera will be able to hunt with\npleasure for many days.\"\n\n\"It is nothing,\" said Baloo; \"we have the man-cub again.\"\n\n\"True, but he has cost us heavily in time which might have been spent in\ngood hunting, in wounds, in hair--I am half plucked along my back--and\nlast of all, in honor. For, remember, Mowgli, I, who am the Black\nPanther, was forced to call upon Kaa for protection, and Baloo and I\nwere both made stupid as little birds by the Hunger Dance. All this,\nman-cub, came of thy playing with the Bandar-log.\"\n\n\"True, it is true,\" said Mowgli sorrowfully. \"I am an evil man-cub, and\nmy stomach is sad in me.\"\n\n\"Mf! What says the Law of the Jungle, Baloo?\"\n\nBaloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trouble, but he could\nnot tamper with the Law, so he mumbled: \"Sorrow never stays punishment.\nBut remember, Bagheera, he is very little.\"\n\n\"I will remember. But he has done mischief, and blows must be dealt now.\nMowgli, hast thou anything to say?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou are wounded. It is just.\"\n\nBagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps from a panther's point of\nview (they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs), but for a\nseven-year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could\nwish to avoid. When it was all over Mowgli sneezed, and picked himself\nup without a word.\n\n\"Now,\" said Bagheera, \"jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will go\nhome.\"\n\nOne of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores.\nThere is no nagging afterward.\n\nMowgli laid his head down on Bagheera's back and slept so deeply that he\nnever waked when he was put down in the home-cave.\n\n\n\n\nRoad-Song of the Bandar-Log\n\n     Here we go in a flung festoon,\n     Half-way up to the jealous moon!\n     Don't you envy our pranceful bands?\n     Don't you wish you had extra hands?\n     Wouldn't you like if your tails were--so--\n     Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?\n        Now you're angry, but--never mind,\n        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!\n\n     Here we sit in a branchy row,\n     Thinking of beautiful things we know;\n     Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,\n     All complete, in a minute or two--\n     Something noble and wise and good,\n     Done by merely wishing we could.\n        We've forgotten, but--never mind,\n        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!\n\n     All the talk we ever have heard\n     Uttered by bat or beast or bird--\n     Hide or fin or scale or feather--\n     Jabber it quickly and all together!\n     Excellent!  Wonderful!  Once again!\n\n     Now we are talking just like men!\n        Let's pretend we are ... never mind,\n        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!\n        This is the way of the Monkey-kind.\n\n     Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,\n     That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.\n     By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,\n     Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!\n\n\n\n\n\"Tiger! Tiger!\"\n\n     What of the hunting, hunter bold?\n        Brother, the watch was long and cold.\n     What of the quarry ye went to kill?\n        Brother, he crops in the jungle still.\n     Where is the power that made your pride?\n        Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.\n     Where is the haste that ye hurry by?\n        Brother, I go to my lair--to die.\n\nNow we must go back to the first tale. When Mowgli left the wolf's cave\nafter the fight with the Pack at the Council Rock, he went down to the\nplowed lands where the villagers lived, but he would not stop there\nbecause it was too near to the jungle, and he knew that he had made at\nleast one bad enemy at the Council. So he hurried on, keeping to\nthe rough road that ran down the valley, and followed it at a steady\njog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that he\ndid not know. The valley opened out into a great plain dotted over with\nrocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, and at\nthe other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds,\nand stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over the\nplain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in\ncharge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow\npariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked. Mowgli walked\non, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the village gate he\nsaw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at twilight,\npushed to one side.\n\n\"Umph!\" he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in\nhis night rambles after things to eat. \"So men are afraid of the People\nof the Jungle here also.\" He sat down by the gate, and when a man came\nout he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that\nhe wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one street of the\nvillage shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in\nwhite, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to\nthe gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked\nand shouted and pointed at Mowgli.\n\n\"They have no manners, these Men Folk,\" said Mowgli to himself. \"Only\nthe gray ape would behave as they do.\" So he threw back his long hair\nand frowned at the crowd.\n\n\"What is there to be afraid of?\" said the priest. \"Look at the marks on\nhis arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child\nrun away from the jungle.\"\n\nOf course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped Mowgli harder\nthan they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and\nlegs. But he would have been the last person in the world to call these\nbites, for he knew what real biting meant.\n\n\"Arre! Arre!\" said two or three women together. \"To be bitten by wolves,\npoor child! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire. By my\nhonor, Messua, he is not unlike thy boy that was taken by the tiger.\"\n\n\"Let me look,\" said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and\nankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the palm of her hand. \"Indeed he\nis not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy.\"\n\nThe priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua was wife to the\nrichest villager in the place. So he looked up at the sky for a minute\nand said solemnly: \"What the jungle has taken the jungle has restored.\nTake the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to honor the\npriest who sees so far into the lives of men.\"\n\n\"By the Bull that bought me,\" said Mowgli to himself, \"but all this\ntalking is like another looking-over by the Pack! Well, if I am a man, a\nman I must become.\"\n\nThe crowd parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to her hut, where there\nwas a red lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain chest with funny\nraised patterns on it, half a dozen copper cooking pots, an image of a\nHindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall a real looking glass, such\nas they sell at the country fairs.\n\nShe gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid her\nhand on his head and looked into his eyes; for she thought perhaps that\nhe might be her real son come back from the jungle where the tiger had\ntaken him. So she said, \"Nathoo, O Nathoo!\" Mowgli did not show that he\nknew the name. \"Dost thou not remember the day when I gave thee thy new\nshoes?\" She touched his foot, and it was almost as hard as horn. \"No,\"\nshe said sorrowfully, \"those feet have never worn shoes, but thou art\nvery like my Nathoo, and thou shalt be my son.\"\n\nMowgli was uneasy, because he had never been under a roof before. But as\nhe looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if he\nwanted to get away, and that the window had no fastenings. \"What is the\ngood of a man,\" he said to himself at last, \"if he does not understand\nman's talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the\njungle. I must speak their talk.\"\n\nIt was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to\nimitate the challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little\nwild pig. So, as soon as Messua pronounced a word Mowgli would imitate\nit almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many\nthings in the hut.\n\nThere was a difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would not sleep under\nanything that looked so like a panther trap as that hut, and when they\nshut the door he went through the window. \"Give him his will,\" said\nMessua's husband. \"Remember he can never till now have slept on a bed.\nIf he is indeed sent in the place of our son he will not run away.\"\n\nSo Mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge of\nthe field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked him\nunder the chin.\n\n\"Phew!\" said Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Mother Wolf's cubs).\n\"This is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou smellest\nof wood smoke and cattle--altogether like a man already. Wake, Little\nBrother; I bring news.\"\n\n\"Are all well in the jungle?\" said Mowgli, hugging him.\n\n\"All except the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now,\nlisten. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows\nagain, for he is badly singed. When he returns he swears that he will\nlay thy bones in the Waingunga.\"\n\n\"There are two words to that. I also have made a little promise. But\nnews is always good. I am tired to-night,--very tired with new things,\nGray Brother,--but bring me the news always.\"\n\n\"Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make thee\nforget?\" said Gray Brother anxiously.\n\n\"Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in our cave. But\nalso I will always remember that I have been cast out of the Pack.\"\n\n\"And that thou mayest be cast out of another pack. Men are only men,\nLittle Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. When\nI come down here again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at the edge\nof the grazing-ground.\"\n\nFor three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the village\ngate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had\nto wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had\nto learn about money, which he did not in the least understand, and\nabout plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then the little children\nin the village made him very angry. Luckily, the Law of the Jungle had\ntaught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle life and food depend on\nkeeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would not\nplay games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the\nknowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him\nfrom picking them up and breaking them in two.\n\nHe did not know his own strength in the least. In the jungle he knew he\nwas weak compared with the beasts, but in the village people said that\nhe was as strong as a bull.\n\nAnd Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes\nbetween man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the clay pit,\nMowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their\njourney to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for\nthe potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When the priest\nscolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey too, and the\npriest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had better be set to work as\nsoon as possible; and the village head-man told Mowgli that he would\nhave to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while they\ngrazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because he\nhad been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off\nto a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great\nfig-tree. It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and\nthe barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old Buldeo, the\nvillage hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys\nsat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the\nplatform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk\nevery night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree\nand talked, and pulled at the big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into\nthe night. They told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts; and\nBuldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the\njungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged\nout of their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle\nwas always at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their\ncrops, and now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within\nsight of the village gates.\n\nMowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of,\nhad to cover his face not to show that he was laughing, while Buldeo,\nthe Tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story\nto another, and Mowgli's shoulders shook.\n\nBuldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away Messua's son\nwas a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked,\nold money-lender, who had died some years ago. \"And I know that this is\ntrue,\" he said, \"because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he\ngot in a riot when his account books were burned, and the tiger that I\nspeak of he limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are unequal.\"\n\n\"True, true, that must be the truth,\" said the gray-beards, nodding\ntogether.\n\n\"Are all these tales such cobwebs and moon talk?\" said Mowgli. \"That\ntiger limps because he was born lame, as everyone knows. To talk of the\nsoul of a money-lender in a beast that never had the courage of a jackal\nis child's talk.\"\n\nBuldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the head-man\nstared.\n\n\"Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?\" said Buldeo. \"If thou art so\nwise, better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government has set\na hundred rupees on his life. Better still, talk not when thy elders\nspeak.\"\n\nMowgli rose to go. \"All the evening I have lain here listening,\" he\ncalled back over his shoulder, \"and, except once or twice, Buldeo has\nnot said one word of truth concerning the jungle, which is at his very\ndoors. How, then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and gods and\ngoblins which he says he has seen?\"\n\n\"It is full time that boy went to herding,\" said the head-man, while\nBuldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli's impertinence.\n\nThe custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the cattle\nand buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back\nat night. The very cattle that would trample a white man to death allow\nthemselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by children that\nhardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with the herds\nthey are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cattle. But\nif they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes\ncarried off. Mowgli went through the village street in the dawn, sitting\non the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-blue buffaloes,\nwith their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out their\nbyres, one by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to\nthe children with him that he was the master. He beat the buffaloes with\na long, polished bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the\ncattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be\nvery careful not to stray away from the herd.\n\nAn Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little\nravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The buffaloes\ngenerally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing\nor basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them on to the edge\nof the plain where the Waingunga came out of the jungle; then he dropped\nfrom Rama's neck, trotted off to a bamboo clump, and found Gray Brother.\n\"Ah,\" said Gray Brother, \"I have waited here very many days. What is the\nmeaning of this cattle-herding work?\"\n\n\"It is an order,\" said Mowgli. \"I am a village herd for a while. What\nnews of Shere Khan?\"\n\n\"He has come back to this country, and has waited here a long time for\nthee. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. But he means to\nkill thee.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" said Mowgli. \"So long as he is away do thou or one of the\nfour brothers sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come out of\nthe village. When he comes back wait for me in the ravine by the dhak\ntree in the center of the plain. We need not walk into Shere Khan's\nmouth.\"\n\nThen Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while\nthe buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest\nthings in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move\non again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes\nvery seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after\nanother, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and\nstaring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and then they lie like\nlogs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd children\nhear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead,\nand they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep\ndown, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and\nthe next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be\na score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and\nwake and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put\ngrasshoppers in them; or catch two praying mantises and make them fight;\nor string a necklace of red and black jungle nuts; or watch a lizard\nbasking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they\nsing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and\nthe day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they\nmake a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and\nput reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the\nfigures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. Then\nevening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of\nthe sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other,\nand they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village\nlights.\n\nDay after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and\nday after day he would see Gray Brother's back a mile and a half away\nacross the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day\nafter day he would lie on the grass listening to the noises round him,\nand dreaming of old days in the jungle. If Shere Khan had made a false\nstep with his lame paw up in the jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would\nhave heard him in those long, still mornings.\n\nAt last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal place,\nand he laughed and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the dhk tree,\nwhich was all covered with golden-red flowers. There sat Gray Brother,\nevery bristle on his back lifted.\n\n\"He has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He crossed the\nranges last night with Tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail,\" said the Wolf,\npanting.\n\nMowgli frowned. \"I am not afraid of Shere Khan, but Tabaqui is very\ncunning.\"\n\n\"Have no fear,\" said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little. \"I met\nTabaqui in the dawn. Now he is telling all his wisdom to the kites, but\nhe told me everything before I broke his back. Shere Khan's plan is to\nwait for thee at the village gate this evening--for thee and for no one\nelse. He is lying up now, in the big dry ravine of the Waingunga.\"\n\n\"Has he eaten today, or does he hunt empty?\" said Mowgli, for the answer\nmeant life and death to him.\n\n\"He killed at dawn,--a pig,--and he has drunk too. Remember, Shere Khan\ncould never fast, even for the sake of revenge.\"\n\n\"Oh! Fool, fool! What a cub's cub it is! Eaten and drunk too, and he\nthinks that I shall wait till he has slept! Now, where does he lie up?\nIf there were but ten of us we might pull him down as he lies. These\nbuffaloes will not charge unless they wind him, and I cannot speak their\nlanguage. Can we get behind his track so that they may smell it?\"\n\n\"He swam far down the Waingunga to cut that off,\" said Gray Brother.\n\n\"Tabaqui told him that, I know. He would never have thought of it\nalone.\" Mowgli stood with his finger in his mouth, thinking. \"The big\nravine of the Waingunga. That opens out on the plain not half a mile\nfrom here. I can take the herd round through the jungle to the head of\nthe ravine and then sweep down--but he would slink out at the foot. We\nmust block that end. Gray Brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for\nme?\"\n\n\"Not I, perhaps--but I have brought a wise helper.\" Gray Brother trotted\noff and dropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a huge gray head that\nMowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry\nof all the jungle--the hunting howl of a wolf at midday.\n\n\"Akela! Akela!\" said Mowgli, clapping his hands. \"I might have known\nthat thou wouldst not forget me. We have a big work in hand. Cut the\nherd in two, Akela. Keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls and\nthe plow buffaloes by themselves.\"\n\nThe two wolves ran, ladies'-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which\nsnorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps. In one,\nthe cow-buffaloes stood with their calves in the center, and glared\nand pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and\ntrample the life out of him. In the other, the bulls and the young bulls\nsnorted and stamped, but though they looked more imposing they were much\nless dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. No six men could have\ndivided the herd so neatly.\n\n\"What orders!\" panted Akela. \"They are trying to join again.\"\n\nMowgli slipped on to Rama's back. \"Drive the bulls away to the left,\nAkela. Gray Brother, when we are gone, hold the cows together, and drive\nthem into the foot of the ravine.\"\n\n\"How far?\" said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.\n\n\"Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump,\" shouted Mowgli.\n\"Keep them there till we come down.\" The bulls swept off as Akela bayed,\nand Gray Brother stopped in front of the cows. They charged down on him,\nand he ran just before them to the foot of the ravine, as Akela drove\nthe bulls far to the left.\n\n\"Well done! Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful,\nnow--careful, Akela. A snap too much and the bulls will charge. Hujah!\nThis is wilder work than driving black-buck. Didst thou think these\ncreatures could move so swiftly?\" Mowgli called.\n\n\"I have--have hunted these too in my time,\" gasped Akela in the dust.\n\"Shall I turn them into the jungle?\"\n\n\"Ay! Turn. Swiftly turn them! Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I could only\ntell him what I need of him to-day.\"\n\nThe bulls were turned, to the right this time, and crashed into the\nstanding thicket. The other herd children, watching with the cattle half\na mile away, hurried to the village as fast as their legs could carry\nthem, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run away.\n\nBut Mowgli's plan was simple enough. All he wanted to do was to make a\nbig circle uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the\nbulls down it and catch Shere Khan between the bulls and the cows; for\nhe knew that after a meal and a full drink Shere Khan would not be in\nany condition to fight or to clamber up the sides of the ravine. He was\nsoothing the buffaloes now by voice, and Akela had dropped far to the\nrear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the rear-guard. It was a\nlong, long circle, for they did not wish to get too near the ravine and\ngive Shere Khan warning. At last Mowgli rounded up the bewildered herd\nat the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down to\nthe ravine itself. From that height you could see across the tops of the\ntrees down to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides\nof the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they\nran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung\nover them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out.\n\n\"Let them breathe, Akela,\" he said, holding up his hand. \"They have not\nwinded him yet. Let them breathe. I must tell Shere Khan who comes. We\nhave him in the trap.\"\n\nHe put his hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine--it was almost\nlike shouting down a tunnel--and the echoes jumped from rock to rock.\n\nAfter a long time there came back the drawling, sleepy snarl of a\nfull-fed tiger just wakened.\n\n\"Who calls?\" said Shere Khan, and a splendid peacock fluttered up out of\nthe ravine screeching.\n\n\"I, Mowgli. Cattle thief, it is time to come to the Council Rock!\nDown--hurry them down, Akela! Down, Rama, down!\"\n\nThe herd paused for an instant at the edge of the slope, but Akela gave\ntongue in the full hunting-yell, and they pitched over one after the\nother, just as steamers shoot rapids, the sand and stones spurting up\nround them. Once started, there was no chance of stopping, and before\nthey were fairly in the bed of the ravine Rama winded Shere Khan and\nbellowed.\n\n\"Ha! Ha!\" said Mowgli, on his back. \"Now thou knowest!\" and the torrent\nof black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the\nravine just as boulders go down in floodtime; the weaker buffaloes being\nshouldered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through the\ncreepers. They knew what the business was before them--the terrible\ncharge of the buffalo herd against which no tiger can hope to stand.\nShere Khan heard the thunder of their hoofs, picked himself up, and\nlumbered down the ravine, looking from side to side for some way of\nescape, but the walls of the ravine were straight and he had to hold on,\nheavy with his dinner and his drink, willing to do anything rather than\nfight. The herd splashed through the pool he had just left, bellowing\ntill the narrow cut rang. Mowgli heard an answering bellow from the foot\nof the ravine, saw Shere Khan turn (the tiger knew if the worst came\nto the worst it was better to meet the bulls than the cows with their\ncalves), and then Rama tripped, stumbled, and went on again over\nsomething soft, and, with the bulls at his heels, crashed full into the\nother herd, while the weaker buffaloes were lifted clean off their feet\nby the shock of the meeting. That charge carried both herds out into the\nplain, goring and stamping and snorting. Mowgli watched his time, and\nslipped off Rama's neck, laying about him right and left with his stick.\n\n\"Quick, Akela! Break them up. Scatter them, or they will be fighting one\nanother. Drive them away, Akela. Hai, Rama! Hai, hai, hai! my children.\nSoftly now, softly! It is all over.\"\n\nAkela and Gray Brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes' legs,\nand though the herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, Mowgli\nmanaged to turn Rama, and the others followed him to the wallows.\n\nShere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were\ncoming for him already.\n\n\"Brothers, that was a dog's death,\" said Mowgli, feeling for the knife\nhe always carried in a sheath round his neck now that he lived with men.\n\"But he would never have shown fight. His hide will look well on the\nCouncil Rock. We must get to work swiftly.\"\n\nA boy trained among men would never have dreamed of skinning a ten-foot\ntiger alone, but Mowgli knew better than anyone else how an animal's\nskin is fitted on, and how it can be taken off. But it was hard work,\nand Mowgli slashed and tore and grunted for an hour, while the wolves\nlolled out their tongues, or came forward and tugged as he ordered them.\nPresently a hand fell on his shoulder, and looking up he saw Buldeo with\nthe Tower musket. The children had told the village about the buffalo\nstampede, and Buldeo went out angrily, only too anxious to correct\nMowgli for not taking better care of the herd. The wolves dropped out of\nsight as soon as they saw the man coming.\n\n\"What is this folly?\" said Buldeo angrily. \"To think that thou canst\nskin a tiger! Where did the buffaloes kill him? It is the Lame Tiger\ntoo, and there is a hundred rupees on his head. Well, well, we will\noverlook thy letting the herd run off, and perhaps I will give thee one\nof the rupees of the reward when I have taken the skin to Khanhiwara.\"\nHe fumbled in his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to\nsinge Shere Khan's whiskers. Most native hunters always singe a tiger's\nwhiskers to prevent his ghost from haunting them.\n\n\"Hum!\" said Mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin of a\nforepaw. \"So thou wilt take the hide to Khanhiwara for the reward, and\nperhaps give me one rupee? Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for\nmy own use. Heh! Old man, take away that fire!\"\n\n\"What talk is this to the chief hunter of the village? Thy luck and the\nstupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. The tiger has\njust fed, or he would have gone twenty miles by this time. Thou canst\nnot even skin him properly, little beggar brat, and forsooth I, Buldeo,\nmust be told not to singe his whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give thee one\nanna of the reward, but only a very big beating. Leave the carcass!\"\n\n\"By the Bull that bought me,\" said Mowgli, who was trying to get at the\nshoulder, \"must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon? Here, Akela,\nthis man plagues me.\"\n\nBuldeo, who was still stooping over Shere Khan's head, found himself\nsprawling on the grass, with a gray wolf standing over him, while Mowgli\nwent on skinning as though he were alone in all India.\n\n\"Ye-es,\" he said, between his teeth. \"Thou art altogether right, Buldeo.\nThou wilt never give me one anna of the reward. There is an old war\nbetween this lame tiger and myself--a very old war, and--I have won.\"\n\nTo do Buldeo justice, if he had been ten years younger he would have\ntaken his chance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf\nwho obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating\ntigers was not a common animal. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind,\nthought Buldeo, and he wondered whether the amulet round his neck would\nprotect him. He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see\nMowgli turn into a tiger too.\n\n\"Maharaj! Great King,\" he said at last in a husky whisper.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Mowgli, without turning his head, chuckling a little.\n\n\"I am an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a\nherdsboy. May I rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to\npieces?\"\n\n\"Go, and peace go with thee. Only, another time do not meddle with my\ngame. Let him go, Akela.\"\n\nBuldeo hobbled away to the village as fast as he could, looking back\nover his shoulder in case Mowgli should change into something terrible.\nWhen he got to the village he told a tale of magic and enchantment and\nsorcery that made the priest look very grave.\n\nMowgli went on with his work, but it was nearly twilight before he and\nthe wolves had drawn the great gay skin clear of the body.\n\n\"Now we must hide this and take the buffaloes home! Help me to herd\nthem, Akela.\"\n\nThe herd rounded up in the misty twilight, and when they got near the\nvillage Mowgli saw lights, and heard the conches and bells in the temple\nblowing and banging. Half the village seemed to be waiting for him\nby the gate. \"That is because I have killed Shere Khan,\" he said\nto himself. But a shower of stones whistled about his ears, and the\nvillagers shouted: \"Sorcerer! Wolf's brat! Jungle demon! Go away! Get\nhence quickly or the priest will turn thee into a wolf again. Shoot,\nBuldeo, shoot!\"\n\nThe old Tower musket went off with a bang, and a young buffalo bellowed\nin pain.\n\n\"More sorcery!\" shouted the villagers. \"He can turn bullets. Buldeo,\nthat was thy buffalo.\"\n\n\"Now what is this?\" said Mowgli, bewildered, as the stones flew thicker.\n\n\"They are not unlike the Pack, these brothers of thine,\" said Akela,\nsitting down composedly. \"It is in my head that, if bullets mean\nanything, they would cast thee out.\"\n\n\"Wolf! Wolf's cub! Go away!\" shouted the priest, waving a sprig of the\nsacred tulsi plant.\n\n\"Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is because I\nam a wolf. Let us go, Akela.\"\n\nA woman--it was Messua--ran across to the herd, and cried: \"Oh, my son,\nmy son! They say thou art a sorcerer who can turn himself into a beast\nat will. I do not believe, but go away or they will kill thee. Buldeo\nsays thou art a wizard, but I know thou hast avenged Nathoo's death.\"\n\n\"Come back, Messua!\" shouted the crowd. \"Come back, or we will stone\nthee.\"\n\nMowgli laughed a little short ugly laugh, for a stone had hit him in\nthe mouth. \"Run back, Messua. This is one of the foolish tales they tell\nunder the big tree at dusk. I have at least paid for thy son's life.\nFarewell; and run quickly, for I shall send the herd in more swiftly\nthan their brickbats. I am no wizard, Messua. Farewell!\"\n\n\"Now, once more, Akela,\" he cried. \"Bring the herd in.\"\n\nThe buffaloes were anxious enough to get to the village. They hardly\nneeded Akela's yell, but charged through the gate like a whirlwind,\nscattering the crowd right and left.\n\n\"Keep count!\" shouted Mowgli scornfully. \"It may be that I have stolen\none of them. Keep count, for I will do your herding no more. Fare you\nwell, children of men, and thank Messua that I do not come in with my\nwolves and hunt you up and down your street.\"\n\nHe turned on his heel and walked away with the Lone Wolf, and as he\nlooked up at the stars he felt happy. \"No more sleeping in traps for me,\nAkela. Let us get Shere Khan's skin and go away. No, we will not hurt\nthe village, for Messua was kind to me.\"\n\nWhen the moon rose over the plain, making it look all milky, the\nhorrified villagers saw Mowgli, with two wolves at his heels and a\nbundle on his head, trotting across at the steady wolf's trot that eats\nup the long miles like fire. Then they banged the temple bells and blew\nthe conches louder than ever. And Messua cried, and Buldeo embroidered\nthe story of his adventures in the jungle, till he ended by saying that\nAkela stood up on his hind legs and talked like a man.\n\nThe moon was just going down when Mowgli and the two wolves came to the\nhill of the Council Rock, and they stopped at Mother Wolf's cave.\n\n\"They have cast me out from the Man-Pack, Mother,\" shouted Mowgli, \"but\nI come with the hide of Shere Khan to keep my word.\"\n\nMother Wolf walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind her, and\nher eyes glowed as she saw the skin.\n\n\"I told him on that day, when he crammed his head and shoulders into\nthis cave, hunting for thy life, Little Frog--I told him that the hunter\nwould be the hunted. It is well done.\"\n\n\"Little Brother, it is well done,\" said a deep voice in the thicket.\n\"We were lonely in the jungle without thee,\" and Bagheera came running\nto Mowgli's bare feet. They clambered up the Council Rock together, and\nMowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone where Akela used to sit,\nand pegged it down with four slivers of bamboo, and Akela lay down upon\nit, and called the old call to the Council, \"Look--look well, O Wolves,\"\nexactly as he had called when Mowgli was first brought there.\n\nEver since Akela had been deposed, the Pack had been without a leader,\nhunting and fighting at their own pleasure. But they answered the call\nfrom habit; and some of them were lame from the traps they had fallen\ninto, and some limped from shot wounds, and some were mangy from eating\nbad food, and many were missing. But they came to the Council Rock, all\nthat were left of them, and saw Shere Khan's striped hide on the rock,\nand the huge claws dangling at the end of the empty dangling feet. It\nwas then that Mowgli made up a song that came up into his throat all\nby itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down on the rattling\nskin, and beating time with his heels till he had no more breath left,\nwhile Gray Brother and Akela howled between the verses.\n\n\"Look well, O Wolves. Have I kept my word?\" said Mowgli. And the wolves\nbayed \"Yes,\" and one tattered wolf howled:\n\n\"Lead us again, O Akela. Lead us again, O Man-cub, for we be sick of\nthis lawlessness, and we would be the Free People once more.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" purred Bagheera, \"that may not be. When ye are full-fed, the\nmadness may come upon you again. Not for nothing are ye called the Free\nPeople. Ye fought for freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves.\"\n\n\"Man-Pack and Wolf-Pack have cast me out,\" said Mowgli. \"Now I will hunt\nalone in the jungle.\"\n\n\"And we will hunt with thee,\" said the four cubs.\n\nSo Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from\nthat day on. But he was not always alone, because, years afterward, he\nbecame a man and married.\n\nBut that is a story for grown-ups.\n\n\n\n\nMowgli's Song\n\n     THAT HE SANG AT THE COUNCIL ROCK WHEN HE\n     DANCED ON SHERE KHAN'S HIDE\n\n     The Song of Mowgli--I, Mowgli, am singing.  Let the jungle\n        listen to the things I have done.\n\n     Shere Khan said he would kill--would kill!  At the gates in the\n        twilight he would kill Mowgli, the Frog!\n\n     He ate and he drank.  Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou\n        drink again?  Sleep and dream of the kill.\n\n     I am alone on the grazing-grounds.  Gray Brother, come to me!\n        Come to me, Lone Wolf, for there is big game afoot!\n\n     Bring up the great bull buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd bulls\n        with the angry eyes.  Drive them to and fro as I order.\n\n     Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan?  Wake, oh, wake!  Here come I,\n        and the bulls are behind.\n\n     Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with his foot.  Waters of\n        the Waingunga, whither went Shere Khan?\n\n     He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Peacock, that he should\n        fly.  He is not Mang the Bat, to hang in the branches.  Little\n        bamboos that creak together, tell me where he ran?\n\n     Ow!  He is there.  Ahoo!  He is there.  Under the feet of Rama\n        lies the Lame One!  Up, Shere Khan!\n\n     Up and kill!  Here is meat; break the necks of the bulls!\n\n     Hsh!  He is asleep.  We will not wake him, for his strength is\n        very great.  The kites have come down to see it.  The black\n        ants have come up to know it.  There is a great assembly in his\n        honor.\n\n     Alala!  I have no cloth to wrap me.  The kites will see that I am\n        naked.  I am ashamed to meet all these people.\n\n     Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan.  Lend me thy gay striped coat that I\n        may go to the Council Rock.\n\n     By the Bull that bought me I made a promise--a little promise.\n        Only thy coat is lacking before I keep my word.\n\n     With the knife, with the knife that men use, with the knife of the\n        hunter, I will stoop down for my gift.\n\n     Waters of the Waingunga, Shere Khan gives me his coat for the love\n        that he bears me.  Pull, Gray Brother!  Pull, Akela!  Heavy is\n        the hide of Shere Khan.\n\n     The Man Pack are angry.  They throw stones and talk child's talk.\n        My mouth is bleeding.  Let me run away.\n\n     Through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly with me, my\n        brothers.  We will leave the lights of the village and go to\n        the low moon.\n\n     Waters of the Waingunga, the Man-Pack have cast me out.  I did\n        them no harm, but they were afraid of me.  Why?\n\n     Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too.  The jungle is shut to me and\n        the village gates are shut.  Why?\n\n     As Mang flies between the beasts and birds, so fly I between the\n        village and the jungle.  Why?\n\n     I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my heart is very heavy.  My\n        mouth is cut and wounded with the stones from the village, but\n        my heart is very light, because I have come back to the jungle.\n        Why?\n\n     These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the\n        spring.  The water comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it\n        falls.  Why?\n\n     I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under my feet.\n\n     All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere Khan.  Look--look\n        well, O Wolves!\n\n     Ahae!  My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand.\n\n\n\n\nThe White Seal\n\n     Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,\n        And black are the waters that sparkled so green.\n     The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us\n        At rest in the hollows that rustle between.\n     Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,\n        Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!\n     The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,\n        Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!\n\n                                              Seal Lullaby\n\n\nAll these things happened several years ago at a place called\nNovastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away and\naway in the Bering Sea. Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale\nwhen he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to Japan, and I\ntook him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of days\ntill he was fit to fly back to St. Paul's again. Limmershin is a very\nquaint little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth.\n\nNobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only people\nwho have regular business there are the seals. They come in the summer\nmonths by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea.\nFor Novastoshnah Beach has the finest accommodation for seals of any\nplace in all the world.\n\nSea Catch knew that, and every spring would swim from whatever place\nhe happened to be in--would swim like a torpedo-boat straight for\nNovastoshnah and spend a month fighting with his companions for a good\nplace on the rocks, as close to the sea as possible. Sea Catch was\nfifteen years old, a huge gray fur seal with almost a mane on his\nshoulders, and long, wicked dog teeth. When he heaved himself up on his\nfront flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and his\nweight, if anyone had been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly seven\nhundred pounds. He was scarred all over with the marks of savage fights,\nbut he was always ready for just one fight more. He would put his head\non one side, as though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face;\nthen he would shoot it out like lightning, and when the big teeth were\nfirmly fixed on the other seal's neck, the other seal might get away if\nhe could, but Sea Catch would not help him.\n\nYet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the Rules\nof the Beach. He only wanted room by the sea for his nursery. But as\nthere were forty or fifty thousand other seals hunting for the same\nthing each spring, the whistling, bellowing, roaring, and blowing on the\nbeach was something frightful.\n\nFrom a little hill called Hutchinson's Hill, you could look over three\nand a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was\ndotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their\nshare of the fighting. They fought in the breakers, they fought in the\nsand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries,\nfor they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men. Their wives\nnever came to the island until late in May or early in June, for they\ndid not care to be torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, and\nfour-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping went inland about\nhalf a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played about on the\nsand dunes in droves and legions, and rubbed off every single green\nthing that grew. They were called the holluschickie--the bachelors--and\nthere were perhaps two or three hundred thousand of them at Novastoshnah\nalone.\n\nSea Catch had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring when\nMatkah, his soft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife, came up out of the sea,\nand he caught her by the scruff of the neck and dumped her down on his\nreservation, saying gruffly: \"Late as usual. Where have you been?\"\n\nIt was not the fashion for Sea Catch to eat anything during the four\nmonths he stayed on the beaches, and so his temper was generally bad.\nMatkah knew better than to answer back. She looked round and cooed: \"How\nthoughtful of you. You've taken the old place again.\"\n\n\"I should think I had,\" said Sea Catch. \"Look at me!\"\n\nHe was scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was almost out,\nand his sides were torn to ribbons.\n\n\"Oh, you men, you men!\" Matkah said, fanning herself with her hind\nflipper. \"Why can't you be sensible and settle your places quietly? You\nlook as though you had been fighting with the Killer Whale.\"\n\n\"I haven't been doing anything but fight since the middle of May. The\nbeach is disgracefully crowded this season. I've met at least a hundred\nseals from Lukannon Beach, house hunting. Why can't people stay where\nthey belong?\"\n\n\"I've often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at Otter\nIsland instead of this crowded place,\" said Matkah.\n\n\"Bah! Only the holluschickie go to Otter Island. If we went there they\nwould say we were afraid. We must preserve appearances, my dear.\"\n\nSea Catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and pretended\nto go to sleep for a few minutes, but all the time he was keeping a\nsharp lookout for a fight. Now that all the seals and their wives were\non the land, you could hear their clamor miles out to sea above the\nloudest gales. At the lowest counting there were over a million seals\non the beach--old seals, mother seals, tiny babies, and holluschickie,\nfighting, scuffling, bleating, crawling, and playing together--going\ndown to the sea and coming up from it in gangs and regiments, lying\nover every foot of ground as far as the eye could reach, and skirmishing\nabout in brigades through the fog. It is nearly always foggy at\nNovastoshnah, except when the sun comes out and makes everything look\nall pearly and rainbow-colored for a little while.\n\nKotick, Matkah's baby, was born in the middle of that confusion, and he\nwas all head and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny seals\nmust be, but there was something about his coat that made his mother\nlook at him very closely.\n\n\"Sea Catch,\" she said, at last, \"our baby's going to be white!\"\n\n\"Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!\" snorted Sea Catch. \"There never has\nbeen such a thing in the world as a white seal.\"\n\n\"I can't help that,\" said Matkah; \"there's going to be now.\" And she\nsang the low, crooning seal song that all the mother seals sing to their\nbabies:\n\n     You mustn't swim till you're six weeks old,\n        Or your head will be sunk by your heels;\n     And summer gales and Killer Whales\n        Are bad for baby seals.\n\n     Are bad for baby seals, dear rat,\n        As bad as bad can be;\n     But splash and grow strong,\n     And you can't be wrong.\n        Child of the Open Sea!\n\nOf course the little fellow did not understand the words at first. He\npaddled and scrambled about by his mother's side, and learned to scuffle\nout of the way when his father was fighting with another seal, and the\ntwo rolled and roared up and down the slippery rocks. Matkah used to go\nto sea to get things to eat, and the baby was fed only once in two days,\nbut then he ate all he could and throve upon it.\n\nThe first thing he did was to crawl inland, and there he met tens\nof thousands of babies of his own age, and they played together like\npuppies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and played again. The old\npeople in the nurseries took no notice of them, and the holluschickie\nkept to their own grounds, and the babies had a beautiful playtime.\n\nWhen Matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight\nto their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until\nshe heard Kotick bleat. Then she would take the straightest of straight\nlines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking\nthe youngsters head over heels right and left. There were always a few\nhundred mothers hunting for their children through the playgrounds, and\nthe babies were kept lively. But, as Matkah told Kotick, \"So long as you\ndon't lie in muddy water and get mange, or rub the hard sand into a cut\nor scratch, and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavy\nsea, nothing will hurt you here.\"\n\nLittle seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappy\ntill they learn. The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wave\ncarried him out beyond his depth, and his big head sank and his little\nhind flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him in the song,\nand if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would have\ndrowned.\n\nAfter that, he learned to lie in a beach pool and let the wash of the\nwaves just cover him and lift him up while he paddled, but he always\nkept his eye open for big waves that might hurt. He was two weeks\nlearning to use his flippers; and all that while he floundered in and\nout of the water, and coughed and grunted and crawled up the beach and\ntook catnaps on the sand, and went back again, until at last he found\nthat he truly belonged to the water.\n\nThen you can imagine the times that he had with his companions, ducking\nunder the rollers; or coming in on top of a comber and landing with a\nswash and a splutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or\nstanding up on his tail and scratching his head as the old people did;\nor playing \"I'm the King of the Castle\" on slippery, weedy rocks that\njust stuck out of the wash. Now and then he would see a thin fin, like\na big shark's fin, drifting along close to shore, and he knew that that\nwas the Killer Whale, the Grampus, who eats young seals when he can get\nthem; and Kotick would head for the beach like an arrow, and the fin\nwould jig off slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at all.\n\nLate in October the seals began to leave St. Paul's for the deep sea, by\nfamilies and tribes, and there was no more fighting over the nurseries,\nand the holluschickie played anywhere they liked. \"Next year,\" said\nMatkah to Kotick, \"you will be a holluschickie; but this year you must\nlearn how to catch fish.\"\n\nThey set out together across the Pacific, and Matkah showed Kotick how\nto sleep on his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and his\nlittle nose just out of the water. No cradle is so comfortable as the\nlong, rocking swell of the Pacific. When Kotick felt his skin tingle all\nover, Matkah told him he was learning the \"feel of the water,\" and that\ntingly, prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he must swim hard\nand get away.\n\n\"In a little time,\" she said, \"you'll know where to swim to, but just\nnow we'll follow Sea Pig, the Porpoise, for he is very wise.\" A school\nof porpoises were ducking and tearing through the water, and little\nKotick followed them as fast as he could. \"How do you know where to go\nto?\" he panted. The leader of the school rolled his white eye and ducked\nunder. \"My tail tingles, youngster,\" he said. \"That means there's a gale\nbehind me. Come along! When you're south of the Sticky Water [he meant\nthe Equator] and your tail tingles, that means there's a gale in front\nof you and you must head north. Come along! The water feels bad here.\"\n\nThis was one of very many things that Kotick learned, and he was always\nlearning. Matkah taught him to follow the cod and the halibut along the\nunder-sea banks and wrench the rockling out of his hole among the weeds;\nhow to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water and dart\nlike a rifle bullet in at one porthole and out at another as the fishes\nran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the lightning was racing\nall over the sky, and wave his flipper politely to the stumpy-tailed\nAlbatross and the Man-of-war Hawk as they went down the wind; how to\njump three or four feet clear of the water like a dolphin, flippers\nclose to the side and tail curved; to leave the flying fish alone\nbecause they are all bony; to take the shoulder-piece out of a cod at\nfull speed ten fathoms deep, and never to stop and look at a boat or a\nship, but particularly a row-boat. At the end of six months what Kotick\ndid not know about deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing. And all\nthat time he never set flipper on dry ground.\n\nOne day, however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm water\nsomewhere off the Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint and lazy all\nover, just as human people do when the spring is in their legs, and he\nremembered the good firm beaches of Novastoshnah seven thousand miles\naway, the games his companions played, the smell of the seaweed, the\nseal roar, and the fighting. That very minute he turned north, swimming\nsteadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for\nthe same place, and they said: \"Greeting, Kotick! This year we are\nall holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakers off\nLukannon and play on the new grass. But where did you get that coat?\"\n\nKotick's fur was almost pure white now, and though he felt very proud of\nit, he only said, \"Swim quickly! My bones are aching for the land.\" And\nso they all came to the beaches where they had been born, and heard the\nold seals, their fathers, fighting in the rolling mist.\n\nThat night Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the yearling seals. The sea\nis full of fire on summer nights all the way down from Novastoshnah to\nLukannon, and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him and a\nflaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescent\nstreaks and swirls. Then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds\nand rolled up and down in the new wild wheat and told stories of what\nthey had done while they had been at sea. They talked about the Pacific\nas boys would talk about a wood that they had been nutting in, and if\nanyone had understood them he could have gone away and made such a chart\nof that ocean as never was. The three- and four-year-old holluschickie\nromped down from Hutchinson's Hill crying: \"Out of the way, youngsters!\nThe sea is deep and you don't know all that's in it yet. Wait till\nyou've rounded the Horn. Hi, you yearling, where did you get that white\ncoat?\"\n\n\"I didn't get it,\" said Kotick. \"It grew.\" And just as he was going to\nroll the speaker over, a couple of black-haired men with flat red faces\ncame from behind a sand dune, and Kotick, who had never seen a man\nbefore, coughed and lowered his head. The holluschickie just bundled off\na few yards and sat staring stupidly. The men were no less than Kerick\nBooterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the island, and Patalamon,\nhis son. They came from the little village not half a mile from the sea\nnurseries, and they were deciding what seals they would drive up to the\nkilling pens--for the seals were driven just like sheep--to be turned\ninto seal-skin jackets later on.\n\n\"Ho!\" said Patalamon. \"Look! There's a white seal!\"\n\nKerick Booterin turned nearly white under his oil and smoke, for he was\nan Aleut, and Aleuts are not clean people. Then he began to mutter a\nprayer. \"Don't touch him, Patalamon. There has never been a white seal\nsince--since I was born. Perhaps it is old Zaharrof's ghost. He was lost\nlast year in the big gale.\"\n\n\"I'm not going near him,\" said Patalamon. \"He's unlucky. Do you really\nthink he is old Zaharrof come back? I owe him for some gulls' eggs.\"\n\n\"Don't look at him,\" said Kerick. \"Head off that drove of\nfour-year-olds. The men ought to skin two hundred to-day, but it's the\nbeginning of the season and they are new to the work. A hundred will do.\nQuick!\"\n\nPatalamon rattled a pair of seal's shoulder bones in front of a herd\nof holluschickie and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing. Then he\nstepped near and the seals began to move, and Kerick headed them inland,\nand they never tried to get back to their companions. Hundreds and\nhundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but they went\non playing just the same. Kotick was the only one who asked questions,\nand none of his companions could tell him anything, except that the\nmen always drove seals in that way for six weeks or two months of every\nyear.\n\n\"I am going to follow,\" he said, and his eyes nearly popped out of his\nhead as he shuffled along in the wake of the herd.\n\n\"The white seal is coming after us,\" cried Patalamon. \"That's the first\ntime a seal has ever come to the killing-grounds alone.\"\n\n\"Hsh! Don't look behind you,\" said Kerick. \"It is Zaharrof's ghost! I\nmust speak to the priest about this.\"\n\nThe distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took an\nhour to cover, because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that they\nwould get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when they\nwere skinned. So they went on very slowly, past Sea Lion's Neck, past\nWebster House, till they came to the Salt House just beyond the sight\nof the seals on the beach. Kotick followed, panting and wondering.\nHe thought that he was at the world's end, but the roar of the seal\nnurseries behind him sounded as loud as the roar of a train in a tunnel.\nThen Kerick sat down on the moss and pulled out a heavy pewter watch\nand let the drove cool off for thirty minutes, and Kotick could hear the\nfog-dew dripping off the brim of his cap. Then ten or twelve men, each\nwith an iron-bound club three or four feet long, came up, and Kerick\npointed out one or two of the drove that were bitten by their companions\nor too hot, and the men kicked those aside with their heavy boots made\nof the skin of a walrus's throat, and then Kerick said, \"Let go!\" and\nthen the men clubbed the seals on the head as fast as they could.\n\nTen minutes later little Kotick did not recognize his friends any more,\nfor their skins were ripped off from the nose to the hind flippers,\nwhipped off and thrown down on the ground in a pile. That was enough\nfor Kotick. He turned and galloped (a seal can gallop very swiftly for\na short time) back to the sea; his little new mustache bristling with\nhorror. At Sea Lion's Neck, where the great sea lions sit on the edge\nof the surf, he flung himself flipper-overhead into the cool water and\nrocked there, gasping miserably. \"What's here?\" said a sea lion gruffly,\nfor as a rule the sea lions keep themselves to themselves.\n\n\"Scoochnie! Ochen scoochnie!\" (\"I'm lonesome, very lonesome!\") said\nKotick. \"They're killing all the holluschickie on all the beaches!\"\n\nThe Sea Lion turned his head inshore. \"Nonsense!\" he said. \"Your\nfriends are making as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Kerick\npolishing off a drove. He's done that for thirty years.\"\n\n\"It's horrible,\" said Kotick, backing water as a wave went over him, and\nsteadying himself with a screw stroke of his flippers that brought him\nall standing within three inches of a jagged edge of rock.\n\n\"Well done for a yearling!\" said the Sea Lion, who could appreciate good\nswimming. \"I suppose it is rather awful from your way of looking at it,\nbut if you seals will come here year after year, of course the men get\nto know of it, and unless you can find an island where no men ever come\nyou will always be driven.\"\n\n\"Isn't there any such island?\" began Kotick.\n\n\"I've followed the poltoos [the halibut] for twenty years, and I can't\nsay I've found it yet. But look here--you seem to have a fondness for\ntalking to your betters--suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to\nSea Vitch. He may know something. Don't flounce off like that. It's a\nsix-mile swim, and if I were you I should haul out and take a nap first,\nlittle one.\"\n\nKotick thought that that was good advice, so he swam round to his own\nbeach, hauled out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all over, as\nseals will. Then he headed straight for Walrus Islet, a little low sheet\nof rocky island almost due northeast from Novastoshnah, all ledges and\nrock and gulls' nests, where the walrus herded by themselves.\n\nHe landed close to old Sea Vitch--the big, ugly, bloated, pimpled,\nfat-necked, long-tusked walrus of the North Pacific, who has no manners\nexcept when he is asleep--as he was then, with his hind flippers half in\nand half out of the surf.\n\n\"Wake up!\" barked Kotick, for the gulls were making a great noise.\n\n\"Hah! Ho! Hmph! What's that?\" said Sea Vitch, and he struck the next\nwalrus a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck the\nnext, and so on till they were all awake and staring in every direction\nbut the right one.\n\n\"Hi! It's me,\" said Kotick, bobbing in the surf and looking like a\nlittle white slug.\n\n\"Well! May I be--skinned!\" said Sea Vitch, and they all looked at Kotick\nas you can fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen would look at a\nlittle boy. Kotick did not care to hear any more about skinning just\nthen; he had seen enough of it. So he called out: \"Isn't there any place\nfor seals to go where men don't ever come?\"\n\n\"Go and find out,\" said Sea Vitch, shutting his eyes. \"Run away. We're\nbusy here.\"\n\nKotick made his dolphin-jump in the air and shouted as loud as he could:\n\"Clam-eater! Clam-eater!\" He knew that Sea Vitch never caught a fish in\nhis life but always rooted for clams and seaweed; though he pretended to\nbe a very terrible person. Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies\nand the Epatkas--the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the\nPuffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude, took up the\ncry, and--so Limmershin told me--for nearly five minutes you could not\nhave heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet. All the population was yelling\nand screaming \"Clam-eater! Stareek [old man]!\" while Sea Vitch rolled\nfrom side to side grunting and coughing.\n\n\"Now will you tell?\" said Kotick, all out of breath.\n\n\"Go and ask Sea Cow,\" said Sea Vitch. \"If he is living still, he'll be\nable to tell you.\"\n\n\"How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?\" said Kotick, sheering off.\n\n\"He's the only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch,\" screamed a\nBurgomaster gull, wheeling under Sea Vitch's nose. \"Uglier, and with\nworse manners! Stareek!\"\n\nKotick swam back to Novastoshnah, leaving the gulls to scream. There he\nfound that no one sympathized with him in his little attempt to discover\na quiet place for the seals. They told him that men had always driven\nthe holluschickie--it was part of the day's work--and that if he did not\nlike to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds.\nBut none of the other seals had seen the killing, and that made the\ndifference between him and his friends. Besides, Kotick was a white\nseal.\n\n\"What you must do,\" said old Sea Catch, after he had heard his son's\nadventures, \"is to grow up and be a big seal like your father, and have\na nursery on the beach, and then they will leave you alone. In another\nfive years you ought to be able to fight for yourself.\" Even gentle\nMatkah, his mother, said: \"You will never be able to stop the killing.\nGo and play in the sea, Kotick.\" And Kotick went off and danced the\nFire-dance with a very heavy little heart.\n\nThat autumn he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off alone\nbecause of a notion in his bullet-head. He was going to find Sea Cow,\nif there was such a person in the sea, and he was going to find a quiet\nisland with good firm beaches for seals to live on, where men could not\nget at them. So he explored and explored by himself from the North to\nthe South Pacific, swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day\nand a night. He met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowly\nescaped being caught by the Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, and\nthe Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up\nand down the seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarlet spotted\nscallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and grow\nvery proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he never found an island\nthat he could fancy.\n\nIf the beach was good and hard, with a slope behind it for seals to play\non, there was always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon, boiling down\nblubber, and Kotick knew what that meant. Or else he could see that\nseals had once visited the island and been killed off, and Kotick knew\nthat where men had come once they would come again.\n\nHe picked up with an old stumpy-tailed albatross, who told him that\nKerguelen Island was the very place for peace and quiet, and when Kotick\nwent down there he was all but smashed to pieces against some wicked\nblack cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with lightning and thunder. Yet as\nhe pulled out against the gale he could see that even there had once\nbeen a seal nursery. And it was so in all the other islands that he\nvisited.\n\nLimmershin gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick spent five\nseasons exploring, with a four months' rest each year at Novastoshnah,\nwhen the holluschickie used to make fun of him and his imaginary\nislands. He went to the Gallapagos, a horrid dry place on the Equator,\nwhere he was nearly baked to death; he went to the Georgia Islands,\nthe Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale Island, Gough's Island,\nBouvet's Island, the Crossets, and even to a little speck of an island\nsouth of the Cape of Good Hope. But everywhere the People of the Sea\ntold him the same things. Seals had come to those islands once upon a\ntime, but men had killed them all off. Even when he swam thousands of\nmiles out of the Pacific and got to a place called Cape Corrientes (that\nwas when he was coming back from Gough's Island), he found a few hundred\nmangy seals on a rock and they told him that men came there too.\n\nThat nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn back to his\nown beaches; and on his way north he hauled out on an island full of\ngreen trees, where he found an old, old seal who was dying, and Kotick\ncaught fish for him and told him all his sorrows. \"Now,\" said Kotick,\n\"I am going back to Novastoshnah, and if I am driven to the killing-pens\nwith the holluschickie I shall not care.\"\n\nThe old seal said, \"Try once more. I am the last of the Lost Rookery of\nMasafuera, and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousand\nthere was a story on the beaches that some day a white seal would come\nout of the North and lead the seal people to a quiet place. I am old,\nand I shall never live to see that day, but others will. Try once more.\"\n\nAnd Kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty) and said, \"I am the\nonly white seal that has ever been born on the beaches, and I am the\nonly seal, black or white, who ever thought of looking for new islands.\"\n\nThis cheered him immensely; and when he came back to Novastoshnah that\nsummer, Matkah, his mother, begged him to marry and settle down, for\nhe was no longer a holluschick but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly\nwhite mane on his shoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his\nfather. \"Give me another season,\" he said. \"Remember, Mother, it is\nalways the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach.\"\n\nCuriously enough, there was another seal who thought that she would put\noff marrying till the next year, and Kotick danced the Fire-dance with\nher all down Lukannon Beach the night before he set off on his last\nexploration. This time he went westward, because he had fallen on the\ntrail of a great shoal of halibut, and he needed at least one hundred\npounds of fish a day to keep him in good condition. He chased them till\nhe was tired, and then he curled himself up and went to sleep on the\nhollows of the ground swell that sets in to Copper Island. He knew the\ncoast perfectly well, so about midnight, when he felt himself gently\nbumped on a weed-bed, he said, \"Hm, tide's running strong tonight,\" and\nturning over under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched. Then\nhe jumped like a cat, for he saw huge things nosing about in the shoal\nwater and browsing on the heavy fringes of the weeds.\n\n\"By the Great Combers of Magellan!\" he said, beneath his mustache. \"Who\nin the Deep Sea are these people?\"\n\nThey were like no walrus, sea lion, seal, bear, whale, shark, fish,\nsquid, or scallop that Kotick had ever seen before. They were between\ntwenty and thirty feet long, and they had no hind flippers, but a\nshovel-like tail that looked as if it had been whittled out of wet\nleather. Their heads were the most foolish-looking things you ever saw,\nand they balanced on the ends of their tails in deep water when they\nweren't grazing, bowing solemnly to each other and waving their front\nflippers as a fat man waves his arm.\n\n\"Ahem!\" said Kotick. \"Good sport, gentlemen?\" The big things answered by\nbowing and waving their flippers like the Frog Footman. When they began\nfeeding again Kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces\nthat they could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again with\na whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff into\ntheir mouths and chumped solemnly.\n\n\"Messy style of feeding, that,\" said Kotick. They bowed again, and\nKotick began to lose his temper. \"Very good,\" he said. \"If you do happen\nto have an extra joint in your front flipper you needn't show off so. I\nsee you bow gracefully, but I should like to know your names.\" The split\nlips moved and twitched; and the glassy green eyes stared, but they did\nnot speak.\n\n\"Well!\" said Kotick. \"You're the only people I've ever met uglier than\nSea Vitch--and with worse manners.\"\n\nThen he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster gull had screamed\nto him when he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet, and he tumbled\nbackward in the water, for he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.\n\nThe sea cows went on schlooping and grazing and chumping in the weed,\nand Kotick asked them questions in every language that he had picked\nup in his travels; and the Sea People talk nearly as many languages as\nhuman beings. But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot\ntalk. He has only six bones in his neck where he ought to have seven,\nand they say under the sea that that prevents him from speaking even\nto his companions. But, as you know, he has an extra joint in his\nforeflipper, and by waving it up and down and about he makes what\nanswers to a sort of clumsy telegraphic code.\n\nBy daylight Kotick's mane was standing on end and his temper was gone\nwhere the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began to travel northward very\nslowly, stopping to hold absurd bowing councils from time to time, and\nKotick followed them, saying to himself, \"People who are such idiots as\nthese are would have been killed long ago if they hadn't found out some\nsafe island. And what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good enough for\nthe Sea Catch. All the same, I wish they'd hurry.\"\n\nIt was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more than forty or\nfifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept close to the\nshore all the time; while Kotick swam round them, and over them, and\nunder them, but he could not hurry them up one-half mile. As they went\nfarther north they held a bowing council every few hours, and Kotick\nnearly bit off his mustache with impatience till he saw that they were\nfollowing up a warm current of water, and then he respected them more.\n\nOne night they sank through the shiny water--sank like stones--and for\nthe first time since he had known them began to swim quickly. Kotick\nfollowed, and the pace astonished him, for he never dreamed that Sea Cow\nwas anything of a swimmer. They headed for a cliff by the shore--a cliff\nthat ran down into deep water, and plunged into a dark hole at the\nfoot of it, twenty fathoms under the sea. It was a long, long swim, and\nKotick badly wanted fresh air before he was out of the dark tunnel they\nled him through.\n\n\"My wig!\" he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into open water at\nthe farther end. \"It was a long dive, but it was worth it.\"\n\nThe sea cows had separated and were browsing lazily along the edges of\nthe finest beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There were long\nstretches of smooth-worn rock running for miles, exactly fitted to make\nseal-nurseries, and there were play-grounds of hard sand sloping inland\nbehind them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and long\ngrass to roll in, and sand dunes to climb up and down, and, best of all,\nKotick knew by the feel of the water, which never deceives a true sea\ncatch, that no men had ever come there.\n\nThe first thing he did was to assure himself that the fishing was good,\nand then he swam along the beaches and counted up the delightful low\nsandy islands half hidden in the beautiful rolling fog. Away to the\nnorthward, out to sea, ran a line of bars and shoals and rocks that\nwould never let a ship come within six miles of the beach, and between\nthe islands and the mainland was a stretch of deep water that ran up to\nthe perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the cliffs was the mouth\nof the tunnel.\n\n\"It's Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better,\" said Kotick. \"Sea\nCow must be wiser than I thought. Men can't come down the cliffs, even\nif there were any men; and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship to\nsplinters. If any place in the sea is safe, this is it.\"\n\nHe began to think of the seal he had left behind him, but though he was\nin a hurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he thoroughly explored the new\ncountry, so that he would be able to answer all questions.\n\nThen he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and raced\nthrough to the southward. No one but a sea cow or a seal would have\ndreamed of there being such a place, and when he looked back at the\ncliffs even Kotick could hardly believe that he had been under them.\n\nHe was six days going home, though he was not swimming slowly; and when\nhe hauled out just above Sea Lion's Neck the first person he met was the\nseal who had been waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyes\nthat he had found his island at last.\n\nBut the holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all the other seals\nlaughed at him when he told them what he had discovered, and a young\nseal about his own age said, \"This is all very well, Kotick, but you\ncan't come from no one knows where and order us off like this. Remember\nwe've been fighting for our nurseries, and that's a thing you never did.\nYou preferred prowling about in the sea.\"\n\nThe other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began twisting his\nhead from side to side. He had just married that year, and was making a\ngreat fuss about it.\n\n\"I've no nursery to fight for,\" said Kotick. \"I only want to show you\nall a place where you will be safe. What's the use of fighting?\"\n\n\"Oh, if you're trying to back out, of course I've no more to say,\" said\nthe young seal with an ugly chuckle.\n\n\"Will you come with me if I win?\" said Kotick. And a green light came\ninto his eye, for he was very angry at having to fight at all.\n\n\"Very good,\" said the young seal carelessly. \"If you win, I'll come.\"\n\nHe had no time to change his mind, for Kotick's head was out and his\nteeth sunk in the blubber of the young seal's neck. Then he threw\nhimself back on his haunches and hauled his enemy down the beach, shook\nhim, and knocked him over. Then Kotick roared to the seals: \"I've done\nmy best for you these five seasons past. I've found you the island where\nyou'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks\nyou won't believe. I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves!\"\n\nLimmershin told me that never in his life--and Limmershin sees ten\nthousand big seals fighting every year--never in all his little life\ndid he see anything like Kotick's charge into the nurseries. He flung\nhimself at the biggest sea catch he could find, caught him by the\nthroat, choked him and bumped him and banged him till he grunted for\nmercy, and then threw him aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotick\nhad never fasted for four months as the big seals did every year, and\nhis deep-sea swimming trips kept him in perfect condition, and, best\nof all, he had never fought before. His curly white mane stood up with\nrage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dog teeth glistened, and he was\nsplendid to look at. Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing past,\nhauling the grizzled old seals about as though they had been halibut,\nand upsetting the young bachelors in all directions; and Sea Catch gave\na roar and shouted: \"He may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the\nbeaches! Don't tackle your father, my son! He's with you!\"\n\nKotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in with his mustache\non end, blowing like a locomotive, while Matkah and the seal that was\ngoing to marry Kotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. It was\na gorgeous fight, for the two fought as long as there was a seal that\ndared lift up his head, and when there were none they paraded grandly up\nand down the beach side by side, bellowing.\n\nAt night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and flashing through\nthe fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scattered\nnurseries and the torn and bleeding seals. \"Now,\" he said, \"I've taught\nyou your lesson.\"\n\n\"My wig!\" said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for he was\nfearfully mauled. \"The Killer Whale himself could not have cut them up\nworse. Son, I'm proud of you, and what's more, I'll come with you to\nyour island--if there is such a place.\"\n\n\"Hear you, fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to the Sea Cow's\ntunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again,\" roared Kotick.\n\nThere was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down the\nbeaches. \"We will come,\" said thousands of tired voices. \"We will follow\nKotick, the White Seal.\"\n\nThen Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyes\nproudly. He was not a white seal any more, but red from head to tail.\nAll the same he would have scorned to look at or touch one of his\nwounds.\n\nA week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie and old\nseals) went away north to the Sea Cow's tunnel, Kotick leading them,\nand the seals that stayed at Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next\nspring, when they all met off the fishing banks of the Pacific, Kotick's\nseals told such tales of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow's tunnel that\nmore and more seals left Novastoshnah. Of course it was not all done at\nonce, for the seals are not very clever, and they need a long time to\nturn things over in their minds, but year after year more seals went\naway from Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other nurseries, to the\nquiet, sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all the summer through,\ngetting bigger and fatter and stronger each year, while the\nholluschickie play around him, in that sea where no man comes.\n\n\n\n\nLukannon\n\nThis is the great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals sing when\nthey are heading back to their beaches in the summer. It is a sort of\nvery sad seal National Anthem.\n\n     I met my mates in the morning (and, oh, but I am old!)\n     Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;\n     I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers' song--\n     The Beaches of Lukannon--two million voices strong.\n\n     The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,\n     The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,\n     The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame--\n     The Beaches of Lukannon--before the sealers came!\n\n     I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!);\n     They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.\n     And o'er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach\n     We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.\n\n     The Beaches of Lukannon--the winter wheat so tall--\n     The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!\n     The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!\n     The Beaches of Lukannon--the home where we were born!\n\n     I met my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.\n     Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;\n     Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,\n     And still we sing Lukannon--before the sealers came.\n\n     Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska, go!\n     And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe;\n     Ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore,\n     The Beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!\n\n\n\n\n\"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi\"\n\n     At the hole where he went in\n     Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.\n     Hear what little Red-Eye saith:\n     \"Nag, come up and dance with death!\"\n\n     Eye to eye and head to head,\n        (Keep the measure, Nag.)\n     This shall end when one is dead;\n        (At thy pleasure, Nag.)\n     Turn for turn and twist for twist--\n        (Run and hide thee, Nag.)\n     Hah!  The hooded Death has missed!\n        (Woe betide thee, Nag!)\n\nThis is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought\nsingle-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee\ncantonment. Darzee, the Tailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the\nmusk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always\ncreeps round by the wall, gave him advice, but Rikki-tikki did the real\nfighting.\n\nHe was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but\nquite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end\nof his restless nose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he\npleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use. He could\nfluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle brush, and his war cry as\nhe scuttled through the long grass was: \"Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!\"\n\nOne day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived\nwith his father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down\na roadside ditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and\nclung to it till he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in\nthe hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a\nsmall boy was saying, \"Here's a dead mongoose. Let's have a funeral.\"\n\n\"No,\" said his mother, \"let's take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn't\nreally dead.\"\n\nThey took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his\nfinger and thumb and said he was not dead but half choked. So they\nwrapped him in cotton wool, and warmed him over a little fire, and he\nopened his eyes and sneezed.\n\n\"Now,\" said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into\nthe bungalow), \"don't frighten him, and we'll see what he'll do.\"\n\nIt is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because\nhe is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all\nthe mongoose family is \"Run and find out,\" and Rikki-tikki was a true\nmongoose. He looked at the cotton wool, decided that it was not good to\neat, ran all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched\nhimself, and jumped on the small boy's shoulder.\n\n\"Don't be frightened, Teddy,\" said his father. \"That's his way of making\nfriends.\"\n\n\"Ouch! He's tickling under my chin,\" said Teddy.\n\nRikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck, snuffed at\nhis ear, and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose.\n\n\"Good gracious,\" said Teddy's mother, \"and that's a wild creature! I\nsuppose he's so tame because we've been kind to him.\"\n\n\"All mongooses are like that,\" said her husband. \"If Teddy doesn't pick\nhim up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he'll run in and out of\nthe house all day long. Let's give him something to eat.\"\n\nThey gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it\nimmensely, and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat\nin the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then\nhe felt better.\n\n\"There are more things to find out about in this house,\" he said to\nhimself, \"than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall\ncertainly stay and find out.\"\n\nHe spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself\nin the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing table, and\nburned it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the\nbig man's lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into\nTeddy's nursery to watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy\nwent to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too. But he was a restless companion,\nbecause he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the\nnight, and find out what made it. Teddy's mother and father came in,\nthe last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on\nthe pillow. \"I don't like that,\" said Teddy's mother. \"He may bite the\nchild.\" \"He'll do no such thing,\" said the father. \"Teddy's safer with\nthat little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake\ncame into the nursery now--\"\n\nBut Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.\n\nEarly in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda\nriding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled\negg. He sat on all their laps one after the other, because every\nwell-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house mongoose some day\nand have rooms to run about in; and Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to\nlive in the general's house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what\nto do if ever he came across white men.\n\nThen Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen.\nIt was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes, as big as\nsummer-houses, of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of\nbamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. \"This\nis a splendid hunting-ground,\" he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy\nat the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing\nhere and there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush.\n\nIt was Darzee, the Tailorbird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful\nnest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges\nwith fibers, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The\nnest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.\n\n\"What is the matter?\" asked Rikki-tikki.\n\n\"We are very miserable,\" said Darzee. \"One of our babies fell out of the\nnest yesterday and Nag ate him.\"\n\n\"H'm!\" said Rikki-tikki, \"that is very sad--but I am a stranger here.\nWho is Nag?\"\n\nDarzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for\nfrom the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss--a\nhorrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then\ninch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag,\nthe big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail.\nWhen he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed\nbalancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion tuft balances in the wind,\nand he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never\nchange their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.\n\n\"Who is Nag?\" said he. \"I am Nag. The great God Brahm put his mark upon\nall our people, when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off\nBrahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!\"\n\nHe spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the\nspectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part\nof a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute, but it is\nimpossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and\nthough Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed\nhim on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in\nlife was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too and, at the bottom\nof his cold heart, he was afraid.\n\n\"Well,\" said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, \"marks\nor no marks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a\nnest?\"\n\nNag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in\nthe grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in the garden\nmeant death sooner or later for him and his family, but he wanted to get\nRikki-tikki off his guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it\non one side.\n\n\"Let us talk,\" he said. \"You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?\"\n\n\"Behind you! Look behind you!\" sang Darzee.\n\nRikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in\nthe air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head\nof Nagaina, Nag's wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was\ntalking, to make an end of him. He heard her savage hiss as the stroke\nmissed. He came down almost across her back, and if he had been an old\nmongoose he would have known that then was the time to break her back\nwith one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return stroke\nof the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough, and he\njumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and angry.\n\n\"Wicked, wicked Darzee!\" said Nag, lashing up as high as he could reach\ntoward the nest in the thorn-bush. But Darzee had built it out of reach\nof snakes, and it only swayed to and fro.\n\nRikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes\ngrow red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a\nlittle kangaroo, and looked all round him, and chattered with rage. But\nNag and Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its\nstroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do\nnext. Rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure\nthat he could manage two snakes at once. So he trotted off to the gravel\npath near the house, and sat down to think. It was a serious matter for\nhim.\n\nIf you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say\nthat when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten,\nhe runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true.\nThe victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of\nfoot--snake's blow against mongoose's jump--and as no eye can follow the\nmotion of a snake's head when it strikes, this makes things much more\nwonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose,\nand it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed to\nescape a blow from behind. It gave him confidence in himself, and when\nTeddy came running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.\n\nBut just as Teddy was stooping, something wriggled a little in the dust,\nand a tiny voice said: \"Be careful. I am Death!\" It was Karait, the\ndusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his\nbite is as dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so small that nobody\nthinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people.\n\nRikki-tikki's eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the\npeculiar rocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from his family.\nIt looks very funny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can\nfly off from it at any angle you please, and in dealing with snakes this\nis an advantage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much more\ndangerous thing than fighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can turn\nso quickly, that unless Rikki bit him close to the back of the head,\nhe would get the return stroke in his eye or his lip. But Rikki did not\nknow. His eyes were all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for\na good place to hold. Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and\ntried to run in, but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed within a\nfraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head\nfollowed his heels close.\n\nTeddy shouted to the house: \"Oh, look here! Our mongoose is killing a\nsnake.\" And Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy's mother. His father\nran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out\nonce too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake's back,\ndropped his head far between his forelegs, bitten as high up the back\nas he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralyzed Karait, and\nRikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom\nof his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a\nslow mongoose, and if he wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he\nmust keep himself thin.\n\nHe went away for a dust bath under the castor-oil bushes, while\nTeddy's father beat the dead Karait. \"What is the use of that?\" thought\nRikki-tikki. \"I have settled it all;\" and then Teddy's mother picked\nhim up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy\nfrom death, and Teddy's father said that he was a providence, and Teddy\nlooked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the\nfuss, which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy's mother might just\nas well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly\nenjoying himself.\n\nThat night at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the\ntable, he might have stuffed himself three times over with nice things.\nBut he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be\npatted and petted by Teddy's mother, and to sit on Teddy's shoulder, his\neyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long\nwar cry of \"Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!\"\n\nTeddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under\nhis chin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon\nas Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house,\nand in the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the musk-rat, creeping\naround by the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. He\nwhimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run\ninto the middle of the room. But he never gets there.\n\n\"Don't kill me,\" said Chuchundra, almost weeping. \"Rikki-tikki, don't\nkill me!\"\n\n\"Do you think a snake-killer kills muskrats?\" said Rikki-tikki\nscornfully.\n\n\"Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,\" said Chuchundra, more\nsorrowfully than ever. \"And how am I to be sure that Nag won't mistake\nme for you some dark night?\"\n\n\"There's not the least danger,\" said Rikki-tikki. \"But Nag is in the\ngarden, and I know you don't go there.\"\n\n\"My cousin Chua, the rat, told me--\" said Chuchundra, and then he\nstopped.\n\n\"Told you what?\"\n\n\"H'sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua in\nthe garden.\"\n\n\"I didn't--so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I'll bite you!\"\n\nChuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers.\n\"I am a very poor man,\" he sobbed. \"I never had spirit enough to run out\ninto the middle of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything. Can't\nyou hear, Rikki-tikki?\"\n\nRikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he\ncould just catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world--a noise as\nfaint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane--the dry scratch of a\nsnake's scales on brick-work.\n\n\"That's Nag or Nagaina,\" he said to himself, \"and he is crawling into\nthe bath-room sluice. You're right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to\nChua.\"\n\nHe stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then\nto Teddy's mother's bathroom. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall\nthere was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as\nRikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard\nNag and Nagaina whispering together outside in the moonlight.\n\n\"When the house is emptied of people,\" said Nagaina to her husband, \"he\nwill have to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. Go in\nquietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait is the first\none to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki\ntogether.\"\n\n\"But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the\npeople?\" said Nag.\n\n\"Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any\nmongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king\nand queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the\nmelon bed hatch (as they may tomorrow), our children will need room and\nquiet.\"\n\n\"I had not thought of that,\" said Nag. \"I will go, but there is no need\nthat we should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I will kill the big man\nand his wife, and the child if I can, and come away quietly. Then the\nbungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go.\"\n\nRikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then\nNag's head came through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body\nfollowed it. Angry as he was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw\nthe size of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised his head,\nand looked into the bathroom in the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes\nglitter.\n\n\"Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on\nthe open floor, the odds are in his favor. What am I to do?\" said\nRikki-tikki-tavi.\n\nNag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the\nbiggest water-jar that was used to fill the bath. \"That is good,\" said\nthe snake. \"Now, when Karait was killed, the big man had a stick. He may\nhave that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he\nwill not have a stick. I shall wait here till he comes. Nagaina--do you\nhear me?--I shall wait here in the cool till daytime.\"\n\nThere was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone\naway. Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the\nbottom of the water jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an\nhour he began to move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag was asleep,\nand Rikki-tikki looked at his big back, wondering which would be the\nbest place for a good hold. \"If I don't break his back at the first\njump,\" said Rikki, \"he can still fight. And if he fights--O Rikki!\" He\nlooked at the thickness of the neck below the hood, but that was too\nmuch for him; and a bite near the tail would only make Nag savage.\n\n\"It must be the head\"' he said at last; \"the head above the hood. And,\nwhen I am once there, I must not let go.\"\n\nThen he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water jar,\nunder the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back\nagainst the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. This\ngave him just one second's purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he\nwas battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog--to and fro on the\nfloor, up and down, and around in great circles, but his eyes were red\nand he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the\ntin dipper and the soap dish and the flesh brush, and banged against the\ntin side of the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter,\nfor he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honor of his\nfamily, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy,\naching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a\nthunderclap just behind him. A hot wind knocked him senseless and red\nfire singed his fur. The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had\nfired both barrels of a shotgun into Nag just behind the hood.\n\nRikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite sure he was\ndead. But the head did not move, and the big man picked him up and said,\n\"It's the mongoose again, Alice. The little chap has saved our lives\nnow.\"\n\nThen Teddy's mother came in with a very white face, and saw what was\nleft of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself to Teddy's bedroom and\nspent half the rest of the night shaking himself tenderly to find out\nwhether he really was broken into forty pieces, as he fancied.\n\nWhen morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his doings.\n\"Now I have Nagaina to settle with, and she will be worse than five\nNags, and there's no knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch.\nGoodness! I must go and see Darzee,\" he said.\n\nWithout waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the thornbush where\nDarzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. The news\nof Nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the\nbody on the rubbish-heap.\n\n\"Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!\" said Rikki-tikki angrily. \"Is this\nthe time to sing?\"\n\n\"Nag is dead--is dead--is dead!\" sang Darzee. \"The valiant Rikki-tikki\ncaught him by the head and held fast. The big man brought the\nbang-stick, and Nag fell in two pieces! He will never eat my babies\nagain.\"\n\n\"All that's true enough. But where's Nagaina?\" said Rikki-tikki, looking\ncarefully round him.\n\n\"Nagaina came to the bathroom sluice and called for Nag,\" Darzee went\non, \"and Nag came out on the end of a stick--the sweeper picked him up\non the end of a stick and threw him upon the rubbish heap. Let us sing\nabout the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki!\" And Darzee filled his throat\nand sang.\n\n\"If I could get up to your nest, I'd roll your babies out!\" said\nRikki-tikki. \"You don't know when to do the right thing at the right\ntime. You're safe enough in your nest there, but it's war for me down\nhere. Stop singing a minute, Darzee.\"\n\n\"For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki's sake I will stop,\" said\nDarzee. \"What is it, O Killer of the terrible Nag?\"\n\n\"Where is Nagaina, for the third time?\"\n\n\"On the rubbish heap by the stables, mourning for Nag. Great is\nRikki-tikki with the white teeth.\"\n\n\"Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?\"\n\n\"In the melon bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes\nnearly all day. She hid them there weeks ago.\"\n\n\"And you never thought it worth while to tell me? The end nearest the\nwall, you said?\"\n\n\"Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?\"\n\n\"Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly\noff to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let Nagaina\nchase you away to this bush. I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went\nthere now she'd see me.\"\n\nDarzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more\nthan one idea at a time in his head. And just because he knew that\nNagaina's children were born in eggs like his own, he didn't think at\nfirst that it was fair to kill them. But his wife was a sensible bird,\nand she knew that cobra's eggs meant young cobras later on. So she flew\noff from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue\nhis song about the death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some\nways.\n\nShe fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap and cried out,\n\"Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and\nbroke it.\" Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.\n\nNagaina lifted up her head and hissed, \"You warned Rikki-tikki when I\nwould have killed him. Indeed and truly, you've chosen a bad place to\nbe lame in.\" And she moved toward Darzee's wife, slipping along over the\ndust.\n\n\"The boy broke it with a stone!\" shrieked Darzee's wife.\n\n\"Well! It may be some consolation to you when you're dead to know that I\nshall settle accounts with the boy. My husband lies on the rubbish heap\nthis morning, but before night the boy in the house will lie very still.\nWhat is the use of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool,\nlook at me!\"\n\nDarzee's wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a\nsnake's eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. Darzee's wife\nfluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and\nNagaina quickened her pace.\n\nRikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced\nfor the end of the melon patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter\nabove the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs,\nabout the size of a bantam's eggs, but with whitish skin instead of\nshell.\n\n\"I was not a day too soon,\" he said, for he could see the baby cobras\ncurled up inside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched\nthey could each kill a man or a mongoose. He bit off the tops of the\neggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and\nturned over the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed\nany. At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki began to\nchuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee's wife screaming:\n\n\"Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into the\nveranda, and--oh, come quickly--she means killing!\"\n\nRikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed\nwith the third egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the veranda as hard as\nhe could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were\nthere at early breakfast, but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating\nanything. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white. Nagaina was\ncoiled up on the matting by Teddy's chair, within easy striking distance\nof Teddy's bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro, singing a song of\ntriumph.\n\n\"Son of the big man that killed Nag,\" she hissed, \"stay still. I am not\nready yet. Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three! If you move I\nstrike, and if you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed\nmy Nag!\"\n\nTeddy's eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was\nto whisper, \"Sit still, Teddy. You mustn't move. Teddy, keep still.\"\n\nThen Rikki-tikki came up and cried, \"Turn round, Nagaina. Turn and\nfight!\"\n\n\"All in good time,\" said she, without moving her eyes. \"I will settle my\naccount with you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are\nstill and white. They are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a\nstep nearer I strike.\"\n\n\"Look at your eggs,\" said Rikki-tikki, \"in the melon bed near the wall.\nGo and look, Nagaina!\"\n\nThe big snake turned half around, and saw the egg on the veranda. \"Ah-h!\nGive it to me,\" she said.\n\nRikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes were\nblood-red. \"What price for a snake's egg? For a young cobra? For a\nyoung king cobra? For the last--the very last of the brood? The ants are\neating all the others down by the melon bed.\"\n\nNagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the sake of the one\negg. Rikki-tikki saw Teddy's father shoot out a big hand, catch Teddy\nby the shoulder, and drag him across the little table with the tea-cups,\nsafe and out of reach of Nagaina.\n\n\"Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tck-tck!\" chuckled Rikki-tikki. \"The\nboy is safe, and it was I--I--I that caught Nag by the hood last night\nin the bathroom.\" Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet\ntogether, his head close to the floor. \"He threw me to and fro, but he\ncould not shake me off. He was dead before the big man blew him in two.\nI did it! Rikki-tikki-tck-tck! Come then, Nagaina. Come and fight with\nme. You shall not be a widow long.\"\n\nNagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and the egg\nlay between Rikki-tikki's paws. \"Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me\nthe last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back,\" she said,\nlowering her hood.\n\n\"Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back. For you will go\nto the rubbish heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his\ngun! Fight!\"\n\nRikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach\nof her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals. Nagaina gathered herself\ntogether and flung out at him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again\nand again and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack\non the matting of the veranda and she gathered herself together like a\nwatch spring. Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her, and\nNagaina spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of\nher tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.\n\nHe had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and Nagaina came\nnearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing\nbreath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and\nflew like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When\nthe cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked across a\nhorse's neck.\n\nRikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin\nagain. She headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as\nhe was running Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little\nsong of triumph. But Darzee's wife was wiser. She flew off her nest\nas Nagaina came along, and flapped her wings about Nagaina's head. If\nDarzee had helped they might have turned her, but Nagaina only lowered\nher hood and went on. Still, the instant's delay brought Rikki-tikki up\nto her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to\nlive, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down\nwith her--and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be,\ncare to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and\nRikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to\nturn and strike at him. He held on savagely, and stuck out his feet to\nact as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth.\n\nThen the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said,\n\"It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We must sing his death song. Valiant\nRikki-tikki is dead! For Nagaina will surely kill him underground.\"\n\nSo he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the\nminute, and just as he got to the most touching part, the grass quivered\nagain, and Rikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the\nhole leg by leg, licking his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little\nshout. Rikki-tikki shook some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed.\n\"It is all over,\" he said. \"The widow will never come out again.\" And\nthe red ants that live between the grass stems heard him, and began to\ntroop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth.\n\nRikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was--slept\nand slept till it was late in the afternoon, for he had done a hard\nday's work.\n\n\"Now,\" he said, when he awoke, \"I will go back to the house. Tell the\nCoppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that Nagaina is dead.\"\n\nThe Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of\na little hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it\nis because he is the town crier to every Indian garden, and tells all\nthe news to everybody who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the\npath, he heard his \"attention\" notes like a tiny dinner gong, and\nthen the steady \"Ding-dong-tock! Nag is dead--dong! Nagaina is dead!\nDing-dong-tock!\" That set all the birds in the garden singing, and the\nfrogs croaking, for Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as well as little\nbirds.\n\nWhen Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy's mother (she looked very\nwhite still, for she had been fainting) and Teddy's father came out and\nalmost cried over him; and that night he ate all that was given him till\nhe could eat no more, and went to bed on Teddy's shoulder, where Teddy's\nmother saw him when she came to look late at night.\n\n\"He saved our lives and Teddy's life,\" she said to her husband. \"Just\nthink, he saved all our lives.\"\n\nRikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are light sleepers.\n\n\"Oh, it's you,\" said he. \"What are you bothering for? All the cobras are\ndead. And if they weren't, I'm here.\"\n\nRikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself. But he did not grow too\nproud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth\nand jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head\ninside the walls.\n\n\n\n\nDarzee's Chant\n\n     (Sung in honor of Rikki-tikki-tavi)\n\n     Singer and tailor am I--\n        Doubled the joys that I know--\n     Proud of my lilt to the sky,\n        Proud of the house that I sew--\n     Over and under, so weave I my music--so weave I the house that I\n        sew.\n\n     Sing to your fledglings again,\n        Mother, oh lift up your head!\n     Evil that plagued us is slain,\n        Death in the garden lies dead.\n     Terror that hid in the roses is impotent--flung on the dung-hill\n     and dead!\n\n     Who has delivered us, who?\n        Tell me his nest and his name.\n     Rikki, the valiant, the true,\n        Tikki, with eyeballs of flame,\n     Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of\n     flame!\n\n     Give him the Thanks of the Birds,\n        Bowing with tail feathers spread!\n     Praise him with nightingale words--\n        Nay, I will praise him instead.\n     Hear!  I will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed Rikki, with\n     eyeballs of red!\n\n     (Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is\n     lost.)\n\n\n\n\nToomai of the Elephants\n\n     I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain--\n        I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.\n     I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane:\n        I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.\n\n     I will go out until the day, until the morning break--\n        Out to the wind's untainted kiss, the water's clean caress;\n     I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.\n        I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!\n\nKala Nag, which means Black Snake, had served the Indian Government in\nevery way that an elephant could serve it for forty-seven years, and as\nhe was fully twenty years old when he was caught, that makes him nearly\nseventy--a ripe age for an elephant. He remembered pushing, with a big\nleather pad on his forehead, at a gun stuck in deep mud, and that was\nbefore the Afghan War of 1842, and he had not then come to his full\nstrength.\n\nHis mother Radha Pyari,--Radha the darling,--who had been caught in the\nsame drive with Kala Nag, told him, before his little milk tusks had\ndropped out, that elephants who were afraid always got hurt. Kala Nag\nknew that that advice was good, for the first time that he saw a shell\nburst he backed, screaming, into a stand of piled rifles, and the\nbayonets pricked him in all his softest places. So, before he was\ntwenty-five, he gave up being afraid, and so he was the best-loved\nand the best-looked-after elephant in the service of the Government of\nIndia. He had carried tents, twelve hundred pounds' weight of tents, on\nthe march in Upper India. He had been hoisted into a ship at the end of\na steam crane and taken for days across the water, and made to carry a\nmortar on his back in a strange and rocky country very far from India,\nand had seen the Emperor Theodore lying dead in Magdala, and had\ncome back again in the steamer entitled, so the soldiers said, to the\nAbyssinian War medal. He had seen his fellow elephants die of cold and\nepilepsy and starvation and sunstroke up at a place called Ali Musjid,\nten years later; and afterward he had been sent down thousands of miles\nsouth to haul and pile big balks of teak in the timberyards at Moulmein.\nThere he had half killed an insubordinate young elephant who was\nshirking his fair share of work.\n\nAfter that he was taken off timber-hauling, and employed, with a few\nscore other elephants who were trained to the business, in helping to\ncatch wild elephants among the Garo hills. Elephants are very strictly\npreserved by the Indian Government. There is one whole department which\ndoes nothing else but hunt them, and catch them, and break them in, and\nsend them up and down the country as they are needed for work.\n\nKala Nag stood ten fair feet at the shoulders, and his tusks had been\ncut off short at five feet, and bound round the ends, to prevent them\nsplitting, with bands of copper; but he could do more with those stumps\nthan any untrained elephant could do with the real sharpened ones. When,\nafter weeks and weeks of cautious driving of scattered elephants across\nthe hills, the forty or fifty wild monsters were driven into the last\nstockade, and the big drop gate, made of tree trunks lashed together,\njarred down behind them, Kala Nag, at the word of command, would go\ninto that flaring, trumpeting pandemonium (generally at night, when\nthe flicker of the torches made it difficult to judge distances), and,\npicking out the biggest and wildest tusker of the mob, would hammer\nhim and hustle him into quiet while the men on the backs of the other\nelephants roped and tied the smaller ones.\n\nThere was nothing in the way of fighting that Kala Nag, the old wise\nBlack Snake, did not know, for he had stood up more than once in his\ntime to the charge of the wounded tiger, and, curling up his soft trunk\nto be out of harm's way, had knocked the springing brute sideways in\nmid-air with a quick sickle cut of his head, that he had invented all by\nhimself; had knocked him over, and kneeled upon him with his huge knees\ntill the life went out with a gasp and a howl, and there was only a\nfluffy striped thing on the ground for Kala Nag to pull by the tail.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Big Toomai, his driver, the son of Black Toomai who had\ntaken him to Abyssinia, and grandson of Toomai of the Elephants who had\nseen him caught, \"there is nothing that the Black Snake fears except me.\nHe has seen three generations of us feed him and groom him, and he will\nlive to see four.\"\n\n\"He is afraid of me also,\" said Little Toomai, standing up to his full\nheight of four feet, with only one rag upon him. He was ten years old,\nthe eldest son of Big Toomai, and, according to custom, he would take\nhis father's place on Kala Nag's neck when he grew up, and would handle\nthe heavy iron ankus, the elephant goad, that had been worn smooth by\nhis father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.\n\nHe knew what he was talking of; for he had been born under Kala Nag's\nshadow, had played with the end of his trunk before he could walk, had\ntaken him down to water as soon as he could walk, and Kala Nag would no\nmore have dreamed of disobeying his shrill little orders than he would\nhave dreamed of killing him on that day when Big Toomai carried the\nlittle brown baby under Kala Nag's tusks, and told him to salute his\nmaster that was to be.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Little Toomai, \"he is afraid of me,\" and he took long\nstrides up to Kala Nag, called him a fat old pig, and made him lift up\nhis feet one after the other.\n\n\"Wah!\" said Little Toomai, \"thou art a big elephant,\" and he wagged his\nfluffy head, quoting his father. \"The Government may pay for elephants,\nbut they belong to us mahouts. When thou art old, Kala Nag, there will\ncome some rich rajah, and he will buy thee from the Government, on\naccount of thy size and thy manners, and then thou wilt have nothing\nto do but to carry gold earrings in thy ears, and a gold howdah on thy\nback, and a red cloth covered with gold on thy sides, and walk at the\nhead of the processions of the King. Then I shall sit on thy neck, O\nKala Nag, with a silver ankus, and men will run before us with golden\nsticks, crying, `Room for the King's elephant!' That will be good, Kala\nNag, but not so good as this hunting in the jungles.\"\n\n\"Umph!\" said Big Toomai. \"Thou art a boy, and as wild as a buffalo-calf.\nThis running up and down among the hills is not the best Government\nservice. I am getting old, and I do not love wild elephants. Give me\nbrick elephant lines, one stall to each elephant, and big stumps to tie\nthem to safely, and flat, broad roads to exercise upon, instead of this\ncome-and-go camping. Aha, the Cawnpore barracks were good. There was a\nbazaar close by, and only three hours' work a day.\"\n\nLittle Toomai remembered the Cawnpore elephant-lines and said nothing.\nHe very much preferred the camp life, and hated those broad, flat roads,\nwith the daily grubbing for grass in the forage reserve, and the long\nhours when there was nothing to do except to watch Kala Nag fidgeting in\nhis pickets.\n\nWhat Little Toomai liked was to scramble up bridle paths that only an\nelephant could take; the dip into the valley below; the glimpses of the\nwild elephants browsing miles away; the rush of the frightened pig and\npeacock under Kala Nag's feet; the blinding warm rains, when all the\nhills and valleys smoked; the beautiful misty mornings when nobody knew\nwhere they would camp that night; the steady, cautious drive of the wild\nelephants, and the mad rush and blaze and hullabaloo of the last night's\ndrive, when the elephants poured into the stockade like boulders in a\nlandslide, found that they could not get out, and flung themselves at\nthe heavy posts only to be driven back by yells and flaring torches and\nvolleys of blank cartridge.\n\nEven a little boy could be of use there, and Toomai was as useful as\nthree boys. He would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the\nbest. But the really good time came when the driving out began, and the\nKeddah--that is, the stockade--looked like a picture of the end of the\nworld, and men had to make signs to one another, because they could not\nhear themselves speak. Then Little Toomai would climb up to the top of\none of the quivering stockade posts, his sun-bleached brown hair flying\nloose all over his shoulders, and he looking like a goblin in the\ntorch-light. And as soon as there was a lull you could hear his\nhigh-pitched yells of encouragement to Kala Nag, above the trumpeting\nand crashing, and snapping of ropes, and groans of the tethered\nelephants. \"Mael, mael, Kala Nag! (Go on, go on, Black Snake!) Dant do!\n(Give him the tusk!) Somalo! Somalo! (Careful, careful!) Maro! Mar! (Hit\nhim, hit him!) Mind the post! Arre! Arre! Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah!\" he would\nshout, and the big fight between Kala Nag and the wild elephant would\nsway to and fro across the Keddah, and the old elephant catchers would\nwipe the sweat out of their eyes, and find time to nod to Little Toomai\nwriggling with joy on the top of the posts.\n\nHe did more than wriggle. One night he slid down from the post and\nslipped in between the elephants and threw up the loose end of a rope,\nwhich had dropped, to a driver who was trying to get a purchase on\nthe leg of a kicking young calf (calves always give more trouble than\nfull-grown animals). Kala Nag saw him, caught him in his trunk, and\nhanded him up to Big Toomai, who slapped him then and there, and put him\nback on the post.\n\nNext morning he gave him a scolding and said, \"Are not good brick\nelephant lines and a little tent carrying enough, that thou must needs\ngo elephant catching on thy own account, little worthless? Now those\nfoolish hunters, whose pay is less than my pay, have spoken to Petersen\nSahib of the matter.\" Little Toomai was frightened. He did not know much\nof white men, but Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the world\nto him. He was the head of all the Keddah operations--the man who caught\nall the elephants for the Government of India, and who knew more about\nthe ways of elephants than any living man.\n\n\"What--what will happen?\" said Little Toomai.\n\n\"Happen! The worst that can happen. Petersen Sahib is a madman. Else why\nshould he go hunting these wild devils? He may even require thee to be\nan elephant catcher, to sleep anywhere in these fever-filled jungles,\nand at last to be trampled to death in the Keddah. It is well that this\nnonsense ends safely. Next week the catching is over, and we of the\nplains are sent back to our stations. Then we will march on smooth\nroads, and forget all this hunting. But, son, I am angry that thou\nshouldst meddle in the business that belongs to these dirty Assamese\njungle folk. Kala Nag will obey none but me, so I must go with him into\nthe Keddah, but he is only a fighting elephant, and he does not help\nto rope them. So I sit at my ease, as befits a mahout,--not a mere\nhunter,--a mahout, I say, and a man who gets a pension at the end of\nhis service. Is the family of Toomai of the Elephants to be trodden\nunderfoot in the dirt of a Keddah? Bad one! Wicked one! Worthless son!\nGo and wash Kala Nag and attend to his ears, and see that there are no\nthorns in his feet. Or else Petersen Sahib will surely catch thee and\nmake thee a wild hunter--a follower of elephant's foot tracks, a jungle\nbear. Bah! Shame! Go!\"\n\nLittle Toomai went off without saying a word, but he told Kala Nag all\nhis grievances while he was examining his feet. \"No matter,\" said Little\nToomai, turning up the fringe of Kala Nag's huge right ear. \"They\nhave said my name to Petersen Sahib, and perhaps--and perhaps--and\nperhaps--who knows? Hai! That is a big thorn that I have pulled out!\"\n\nThe next few days were spent in getting the elephants together, in\nwalking the newly caught wild elephants up and down between a couple of\ntame ones to prevent them giving too much trouble on the downward march\nto the plains, and in taking stock of the blankets and ropes and things\nthat had been worn out or lost in the forest.\n\nPetersen Sahib came in on his clever she-elephant Pudmini; he had been\npaying off other camps among the hills, for the season was coming to an\nend, and there was a native clerk sitting at a table under a tree, to\npay the drivers their wages. As each man was paid he went back to his\nelephant, and joined the line that stood ready to start. The catchers,\nand hunters, and beaters, the men of the regular Keddah, who stayed in\nthe jungle year in and year out, sat on the backs of the elephants that\nbelonged to Petersen Sahib's permanent force, or leaned against the\ntrees with their guns across their arms, and made fun of the drivers who\nwere going away, and laughed when the newly caught elephants broke the\nline and ran about.\n\nBig Toomai went up to the clerk with Little Toomai behind him, and\nMachua Appa, the head tracker, said in an undertone to a friend of his,\n\"There goes one piece of good elephant stuff at least. 'Tis a pity to\nsend that young jungle-cock to molt in the plains.\"\n\nNow Petersen Sahib had ears all over him, as a man must have who listens\nto the most silent of all living things--the wild elephant. He turned\nwhere he was lying all along on Pudmini's back and said, \"What is that?\nI did not know of a man among the plains-drivers who had wit enough to\nrope even a dead elephant.\"\n\n\"This is not a man, but a boy. He went into the Keddah at the last\ndrive, and threw Barmao there the rope, when we were trying to get that\nyoung calf with the blotch on his shoulder away from his mother.\"\n\nMachua Appa pointed at Little Toomai, and Petersen Sahib looked, and\nLittle Toomai bowed to the earth.\n\n\"He throw a rope? He is smaller than a picket-pin. Little one, what is\nthy name?\" said Petersen Sahib.\n\nLittle Toomai was too frightened to speak, but Kala Nag was behind him,\nand Toomai made a sign with his hand, and the elephant caught him up in\nhis trunk and held him level with Pudmini's forehead, in front of the\ngreat Petersen Sahib. Then Little Toomai covered his face with his\nhands, for he was only a child, and except where elephants were\nconcerned, he was just as bashful as a child could be.\n\n\"Oho!\" said Petersen Sahib, smiling underneath his mustache, \"and why\ndidst thou teach thy elephant that trick? Was it to help thee steal\ngreen corn from the roofs of the houses when the ears are put out to\ndry?\"\n\n\"Not green corn, Protector of the Poor,--melons,\" said Little Toomai,\nand all the men sitting about broke into a roar of laughter. Most of\nthem had taught their elephants that trick when they were boys. Little\nToomai was hanging eight feet up in the air, and he wished very much\nthat he were eight feet underground.\n\n\"He is Toomai, my son, Sahib,\" said Big Toomai, scowling. \"He is a very\nbad boy, and he will end in a jail, Sahib.\"\n\n\"Of that I have my doubts,\" said Petersen Sahib. \"A boy who can face a\nfull Keddah at his age does not end in jails. See, little one, here are\nfour annas to spend in sweetmeats because thou hast a little head under\nthat great thatch of hair. In time thou mayest become a hunter too.\" Big\nToomai scowled more than ever. \"Remember, though, that Keddahs are not\ngood for children to play in,\" Petersen Sahib went on.\n\n\"Must I never go there, Sahib?\" asked Little Toomai with a big gasp.\n\n\"Yes.\" Petersen Sahib smiled again. \"When thou hast seen the elephants\ndance. That is the proper time. Come to me when thou hast seen the\nelephants dance, and then I will let thee go into all the Keddahs.\"\n\nThere was another roar of laughter, for that is an old joke among\nelephant-catchers, and it means just never. There are great cleared flat\nplaces hidden away in the forests that are called elephants' ball-rooms,\nbut even these are only found by accident, and no man has ever seen the\nelephants dance. When a driver boasts of his skill and bravery the other\ndrivers say, \"And when didst thou see the elephants dance?\"\n\nKala Nag put Little Toomai down, and he bowed to the earth again and\nwent away with his father, and gave the silver four-anna piece to his\nmother, who was nursing his baby brother, and they all were put up on\nKala Nag's back, and the line of grunting, squealing elephants rolled\ndown the hill path to the plains. It was a very lively march on account\nof the new elephants, who gave trouble at every ford, and needed coaxing\nor beating every other minute.\n\nBig Toomai prodded Kala Nag spitefully, for he was very angry, but\nLittle Toomai was too happy to speak. Petersen Sahib had noticed him,\nand given him money, so he felt as a private soldier would feel if he\nhad been called out of the ranks and praised by his commander-in-chief.\n\n\"What did Petersen Sahib mean by the elephant dance?\" he said, at last,\nsoftly to his mother.\n\nBig Toomai heard him and grunted. \"That thou shouldst never be one of\nthese hill buffaloes of trackers. That was what he meant. Oh, you in\nfront, what is blocking the way?\"\n\nAn Assamese driver, two or three elephants ahead, turned round angrily,\ncrying: \"Bring up Kala Nag, and knock this youngster of mine into good\nbehavior. Why should Petersen Sahib have chosen me to go down with you\ndonkeys of the rice fields? Lay your beast alongside, Toomai, and\nlet him prod with his tusks. By all the Gods of the Hills, these new\nelephants are possessed, or else they can smell their companions in the\njungle.\" Kala Nag hit the new elephant in the ribs and knocked the\nwind out of him, as Big Toomai said, \"We have swept the hills of wild\nelephants at the last catch. It is only your carelessness in driving.\nMust I keep order along the whole line?\"\n\n\"Hear him!\" said the other driver. \"We have swept the hills! Ho! Ho! You\nare very wise, you plains people. Anyone but a mud-head who never saw\nthe jungle would know that they know that the drives are ended for the\nseason. Therefore all the wild elephants to-night will--but why should I\nwaste wisdom on a river-turtle?\"\n\n\"What will they do?\" Little Toomai called out.\n\n\"Ohe, little one. Art thou there? Well, I will tell thee, for thou hast\na cool head. They will dance, and it behooves thy father, who has\nswept all the hills of all the elephants, to double-chain his pickets\nto-night.\"\n\n\"What talk is this?\" said Big Toomai. \"For forty years, father and son,\nwe have tended elephants, and we have never heard such moonshine about\ndances.\"\n\n\"Yes; but a plainsman who lives in a hut knows only the four walls\nof his hut. Well, leave thy elephants unshackled tonight and see what\ncomes. As for their dancing, I have seen the place where--Bapree-bap!\nHow many windings has the Dihang River? Here is another ford, and we\nmust swim the calves. Stop still, you behind there.\"\n\nAnd in this way, talking and wrangling and splashing through the rivers,\nthey made their first march to a sort of receiving camp for the new\nelephants. But they lost their tempers long before they got there.\n\nThen the elephants were chained by their hind legs to their big stumps\nof pickets, and extra ropes were fitted to the new elephants, and the\nfodder was piled before them, and the hill drivers went back to Petersen\nSahib through the afternoon light, telling the plains drivers to be\nextra careful that night, and laughing when the plains drivers asked the\nreason.\n\nLittle Toomai attended to Kala Nag's supper, and as evening fell,\nwandered through the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a tom-tom.\nWhen an Indian child's heart is full, he does not run about and make a\nnoise in an irregular fashion. He sits down to a sort of revel all by\nhimself. And Little Toomai had been spoken to by Petersen Sahib! If he\nhad not found what he wanted, I believe he would have been ill. But the\nsweetmeat seller in the camp lent him a little tom-tom--a drum beaten\nwith the flat of the hand--and he sat down, cross-legged, before Kala\nNag as the stars began to come out, the tom-tom in his lap, and he\nthumped and he thumped and he thumped, and the more he thought of the\ngreat honor that had been done to him, the more he thumped, all alone\namong the elephant fodder. There was no tune and no words, but the\nthumping made him happy.\n\nThe new elephants strained at their ropes, and squealed and trumpeted\nfrom time to time, and he could hear his mother in the camp hut putting\nhis small brother to sleep with an old, old song about the great God\nShiv, who once told all the animals what they should eat. It is a very\nsoothing lullaby, and the first verse says:\n\n     Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,\n     Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,\n     Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,\n     From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the gate.\n        All things made he--Shiva the Preserver.\n     Mahadeo!  Mahadeo!  He made all--\n     Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,\n     And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!\n\nLittle Toomai came in with a joyous tunk-a-tunk at the end of each\nverse, till he felt sleepy and stretched himself on the fodder at Kala\nNag's side. At last the elephants began to lie down one after another\nas is their custom, till only Kala Nag at the right of the line was\nleft standing up; and he rocked slowly from side to side, his ears put\nforward to listen to the night wind as it blew very slowly across the\nhills. The air was full of all the night noises that, taken together,\nmake one big silence--the click of one bamboo stem against the other,\nthe rustle of something alive in the undergrowth, the scratch and squawk\nof a half-waked bird (birds are awake in the night much more often than\nwe imagine), and the fall of water ever so far away. Little Toomai slept\nfor some time, and when he waked it was brilliant moonlight, and Kala\nNag was still standing up with his ears cocked. Little Toomai turned,\nrustling in the fodder, and watched the curve of his big back against\nhalf the stars in heaven, and while he watched he heard, so far away\nthat it sounded no more than a pinhole of noise pricked through the\nstillness, the \"hoot-toot\" of a wild elephant.\n\nAll the elephants in the lines jumped up as if they had been shot, and\ntheir grunts at last waked the sleeping mahouts, and they came out and\ndrove in the picket pegs with big mallets, and tightened this rope and\nknotted that till all was quiet. One new elephant had nearly grubbed up\nhis picket, and Big Toomai took off Kala Nag's leg chain and shackled\nthat elephant fore-foot to hind-foot, but slipped a loop of grass string\nround Kala Nag's leg, and told him to remember that he was tied fast. He\nknew that he and his father and his grandfather had done the very same\nthing hundreds of times before. Kala Nag did not answer to the order\nby gurgling, as he usually did. He stood still, looking out across the\nmoonlight, his head a little raised and his ears spread like fans, up to\nthe great folds of the Garo hills.\n\n\"Tend to him if he grows restless in the night,\" said Big Toomai to\nLittle Toomai, and he went into the hut and slept. Little Toomai was\njust going to sleep, too, when he heard the coir string snap with a\nlittle \"tang,\" and Kala Nag rolled out of his pickets as slowly and as\nsilently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a valley. Little Toomai\npattered after him, barefooted, down the road in the moonlight, calling\nunder his breath, \"Kala Nag! Kala Nag! Take me with you, O Kala Nag!\"\nThe elephant turned, without a sound, took three strides back to the\nboy in the moonlight, put down his trunk, swung him up to his neck,\nand almost before Little Toomai had settled his knees, slipped into the\nforest.\n\nThere was one blast of furious trumpeting from the lines, and then the\nsilence shut down on everything, and Kala Nag began to move. Sometimes\na tuft of high grass washed along his sides as a wave washes along the\nsides of a ship, and sometimes a cluster of wild-pepper vines would\nscrape along his back, or a bamboo would creak where his shoulder\ntouched it. But between those times he moved absolutely without any\nsound, drifting through the thick Garo forest as though it had been\nsmoke. He was going uphill, but though Little Toomai watched the stars\nin the rifts of the trees, he could not tell in what direction.\n\nThen Kala Nag reached the crest of the ascent and stopped for a minute,\nand Little Toomai could see the tops of the trees lying all speckled and\nfurry under the moonlight for miles and miles, and the blue-white mist\nover the river in the hollow. Toomai leaned forward and looked, and he\nfelt that the forest was awake below him--awake and alive and crowded.\nA big brown fruit-eating bat brushed past his ear; a porcupine's quills\nrattled in the thicket; and in the darkness between the tree stems he\nheard a hog-bear digging hard in the moist warm earth, and snuffing as\nit digged.\n\nThen the branches closed over his head again, and Kala Nag began to go\ndown into the valley--not quietly this time, but as a runaway gun goes\ndown a steep bank--in one rush. The huge limbs moved as steadily as\npistons, eight feet to each stride, and the wrinkled skin of the elbow\npoints rustled. The undergrowth on either side of him ripped with a\nnoise like torn canvas, and the saplings that he heaved away right and\nleft with his shoulders sprang back again and banged him on the flank,\nand great trails of creepers, all matted together, hung from his tusks\nas he threw his head from side to side and plowed out his pathway. Then\nLittle Toomai laid himself down close to the great neck lest a swinging\nbough should sweep him to the ground, and he wished that he were back in\nthe lines again.\n\nThe grass began to get squashy, and Kala Nag's feet sucked and squelched\nas he put them down, and the night mist at the bottom of the valley\nchilled Little Toomai. There was a splash and a trample, and the rush of\nrunning water, and Kala Nag strode through the bed of a river, feeling\nhis way at each step. Above the noise of the water, as it swirled round\nthe elephant's legs, Little Toomai could hear more splashing and some\ntrumpeting both upstream and down--great grunts and angry snortings, and\nall the mist about him seemed to be full of rolling, wavy shadows.\n\n\"Ai!\" he said, half aloud, his teeth chattering. \"The elephant-folk are\nout tonight. It is the dance, then!\"\n\nKala Nag swashed out of the water, blew his trunk clear, and began\nanother climb. But this time he was not alone, and he had not to make\nhis path. That was made already, six feet wide, in front of him, where\nthe bent jungle-grass was trying to recover itself and stand up. Many\nelephants must have gone that way only a few minutes before. Little\nToomai looked back, and behind him a great wild tusker with his little\npig's eyes glowing like hot coals was just lifting himself out of the\nmisty river. Then the trees closed up again, and they went on and up,\nwith trumpetings and crashings, and the sound of breaking branches on\nevery side of them.\n\nAt last Kala Nag stood still between two tree-trunks at the very top\nof the hill. They were part of a circle of trees that grew round an\nirregular space of some three or four acres, and in all that space, as\nLittle Toomai could see, the ground had been trampled down as hard as\na brick floor. Some trees grew in the center of the clearing, but their\nbark was rubbed away, and the white wood beneath showed all shiny and\npolished in the patches of moonlight. There were creepers hanging from\nthe upper branches, and the bells of the flowers of the creepers, great\nwaxy white things like convolvuluses, hung down fast asleep. But\nwithin the limits of the clearing there was not a single blade of\ngreen--nothing but the trampled earth.\n\nThe moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some elephants\nstood upon it, and their shadows were inky black. Little Toomai looked,\nholding his breath, with his eyes starting out of his head, and as he\nlooked, more and more and more elephants swung out into the open from\nbetween the tree trunks. Little Toomai could only count up to ten, and\nhe counted again and again on his fingers till he lost count of the\ntens, and his head began to swim. Outside the clearing he could hear\nthem crashing in the undergrowth as they worked their way up the\nhillside, but as soon as they were within the circle of the tree trunks\nthey moved like ghosts.\n\nThere were white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and\ntwigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears;\nfat, slow-footed she-elephants, with restless, little pinky black\ncalves only three or four feet high running under their stomachs; young\nelephants with their tusks just beginning to show, and very proud of\nthem; lanky, scraggy old-maid elephants, with their hollow anxious\nfaces, and trunks like rough bark; savage old bull elephants, scarred\nfrom shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of bygone fights,\nand the caked dirt of their solitary mud baths dropping from their\nshoulders; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of the\nfull-stroke, the terrible drawing scrape, of a tiger's claws on his\nside.\n\nThey were standing head to head, or walking to and fro across the ground\nin couples, or rocking and swaying all by themselves--scores and scores\nof elephants.\n\nToomai knew that so long as he lay still on Kala Nag's neck nothing\nwould happen to him, for even in the rush and scramble of a Keddah drive\na wild elephant does not reach up with his trunk and drag a man off the\nneck of a tame elephant. And these elephants were not thinking of men\nthat night. Once they started and put their ears forward when they heard\nthe chinking of a leg iron in the forest, but it was Pudmini, Petersen\nSahib's pet elephant, her chain snapped short off, grunting, snuffling\nup the hillside. She must have broken her pickets and come straight from\nPetersen Sahib's camp; and Little Toomai saw another elephant, one that\nhe did not know, with deep rope galls on his back and breast. He, too,\nmust have run away from some camp in the hills about.\n\nAt last there was no sound of any more elephants moving in the forest,\nand Kala Nag rolled out from his station between the trees and went into\nthe middle of the crowd, clucking and gurgling, and all the elephants\nbegan to talk in their own tongue, and to move about.\n\nStill lying down, Little Toomai looked down upon scores and scores of\nbroad backs, and wagging ears, and tossing trunks, and little rolling\neyes. He heard the click of tusks as they crossed other tusks by\naccident, and the dry rustle of trunks twined together, and the chafing\nof enormous sides and shoulders in the crowd, and the incessant flick\nand hissh of the great tails. Then a cloud came over the moon, and he\nsat in black darkness. But the quiet, steady hustling and pushing and\ngurgling went on just the same. He knew that there were elephants all\nround Kala Nag, and that there was no chance of backing him out of the\nassembly; so he set his teeth and shivered. In a Keddah at least there\nwas torchlight and shouting, but here he was all alone in the dark, and\nonce a trunk came up and touched him on the knee.\n\nThen an elephant trumpeted, and they all took it up for five or ten\nterrible seconds. The dew from the trees above spattered down like rain\non the unseen backs, and a dull booming noise began, not very loud at\nfirst, and Little Toomai could not tell what it was. But it grew and\ngrew, and Kala Nag lifted up one forefoot and then the other, and\nbrought them down on the ground--one-two, one-two, as steadily as\ntrip-hammers. The elephants were stamping all together now, and it\nsounded like a war drum beaten at the mouth of a cave. The dew fell from\nthe trees till there was no more left to fall, and the booming went on,\nand the ground rocked and shivered, and Little Toomai put his hands up\nto his ears to shut out the sound. But it was all one gigantic jar that\nran through him--this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet on the raw earth.\nOnce or twice he could feel Kala Nag and all the others surge forward\na few strides, and the thumping would change to the crushing sound of\njuicy green things being bruised, but in a minute or two the boom\nof feet on hard earth began again. A tree was creaking and groaning\nsomewhere near him. He put out his arm and felt the bark, but Kala Nag\nmoved forward, still tramping, and he could not tell where he was in the\nclearing. There was no sound from the elephants, except once, when two\nor three little calves squeaked together. Then he heard a thump and a\nshuffle, and the booming went on. It must have lasted fully two hours,\nand Little Toomai ached in every nerve, but he knew by the smell of the\nnight air that the dawn was coming.\n\nThe morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green hills,\nand the booming stopped with the first ray, as though the light had\nbeen an order. Before Little Toomai had got the ringing out of his head,\nbefore even he had shifted his position, there was not an elephant in\nsight except Kala Nag, Pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls,\nand there was neither sign nor rustle nor whisper down the hillsides to\nshow where the others had gone.\n\nLittle Toomai stared again and again. The clearing, as he remembered it,\nhad grown in the night. More trees stood in the middle of it, but the\nundergrowth and the jungle grass at the sides had been rolled back.\nLittle Toomai stared once more. Now he understood the trampling. The\nelephants had stamped out more room--had stamped the thick grass and\njuicy cane to trash, the trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny\nfibers, and the fibers into hard earth.\n\n\"Wah!\" said Little Toomai, and his eyes were very heavy. \"Kala Nag, my\nlord, let us keep by Pudmini and go to Petersen Sahib's camp, or I shall\ndrop from thy neck.\"\n\nThe third elephant watched the two go away, snorted, wheeled round, and\ntook his own path. He may have belonged to some little native king's\nestablishment, fifty or sixty or a hundred miles away.\n\nTwo hours later, as Petersen Sahib was eating early breakfast, his\nelephants, who had been double chained that night, began to trumpet, and\nPudmini, mired to the shoulders, with Kala Nag, very footsore, shambled\ninto the camp. Little Toomai's face was gray and pinched, and his\nhair was full of leaves and drenched with dew, but he tried to salute\nPetersen Sahib, and cried faintly: \"The dance--the elephant dance! I\nhave seen it, and--I die!\" As Kala Nag sat down, he slid off his neck in\na dead faint.\n\nBut, since native children have no nerves worth speaking of, in two\nhours he was lying very contentedly in Petersen Sahib's hammock with\nPetersen Sahib's shooting-coat under his head, and a glass of warm milk,\na little brandy, with a dash of quinine, inside of him, and while the\nold hairy, scarred hunters of the jungles sat three deep before him,\nlooking at him as though he were a spirit, he told his tale in short\nwords, as a child will, and wound up with:\n\n\"Now, if I lie in one word, send men to see, and they will find that the\nelephant folk have trampled down more room in their dance-room, and\nthey will find ten and ten, and many times ten, tracks leading to that\ndance-room. They made more room with their feet. I have seen it. Kala\nNag took me, and I saw. Also Kala Nag is very leg-weary!\"\n\nLittle Toomai lay back and slept all through the long afternoon and into\nthe twilight, and while he slept Petersen Sahib and Machua Appa followed\nthe track of the two elephants for fifteen miles across the hills.\nPetersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he\nhad only once before found such a dance-place. Machua Appa had no need\nto look twice at the clearing to see what had been done there, or to\nscratch with his toe in the packed, rammed earth.\n\n\"The child speaks truth,\" said he. \"All this was done last night, and\nI have counted seventy tracks crossing the river. See, Sahib, where\nPudmini's leg-iron cut the bark of that tree! Yes; she was there too.\"\n\nThey looked at one another and up and down, and they wondered. For the\nways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to\nfathom.\n\n\"Forty years and five,\" said Machua Appa, \"have I followed my lord, the\nelephant, but never have I heard that any child of man had seen what\nthis child has seen. By all the Gods of the Hills, it is--what can we\nsay?\" and he shook his head.\n\nWhen they got back to camp it was time for the evening meal. Petersen\nSahib ate alone in his tent, but he gave orders that the camp should\nhave two sheep and some fowls, as well as a double ration of flour and\nrice and salt, for he knew that there would be a feast.\n\nBig Toomai had come up hotfoot from the camp in the plains to search for\nhis son and his elephant, and now that he had found them he looked at\nthem as though he were afraid of them both. And there was a feast by\nthe blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants,\nand Little Toomai was the hero of it all. And the big brown elephant\ncatchers, the trackers and drivers and ropers, and the men who know all\nthe secrets of breaking the wildest elephants, passed him from one to\nthe other, and they marked his forehead with blood from the breast of a\nnewly killed jungle-cock, to show that he was a forester, initiated and\nfree of all the jungles.\n\nAnd at last, when the flames died down, and the red light of the logs\nmade the elephants look as though they had been dipped in blood too,\nMachua Appa, the head of all the drivers of all the Keddahs--Machua\nAppa, Petersen Sahib's other self, who had never seen a made road in\nforty years: Machua Appa, who was so great that he had no other name\nthan Machua Appa,--leaped to his feet, with Little Toomai held high in\nthe air above his head, and shouted: \"Listen, my brothers. Listen, too,\nyou my lords in the lines there, for I, Machua Appa, am speaking! This\nlittle one shall no more be called Little Toomai, but Toomai of the\nElephants, as his great-grandfather was called before him. What never\nman has seen he has seen through the long night, and the favor of the\nelephant-folk and of the Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall\nbecome a great tracker. He shall become greater than I, even I, Machua\nAppa! He shall follow the new trail, and the stale trail, and the mixed\ntrail, with a clear eye! He shall take no harm in the Keddah when he\nruns under their bellies to rope the wild tuskers; and if he slips\nbefore the feet of the charging bull elephant, the bull elephant\nshall know who he is and shall not crush him. Aihai! my lords in the\nchains,\"--he whirled up the line of pickets--\"here is the little one\nthat has seen your dances in your hidden places,--the sight that never\nman saw! Give him honor, my lords! Salaam karo, my children. Make your\nsalute to Toomai of the Elephants! Gunga Pershad, ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi\nGuj, Kuttar Guj, ahaa! Pudmini,--thou hast seen him at the dance, and\nthou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among elephants!--ahaa! Together! To Toomai\nof the Elephants. Barrao!\"\n\nAnd at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the\ntips touched their foreheads, and broke out into the full salute--the\ncrashing trumpet-peal that only the Viceroy of India hears, the Salaamut\nof the Keddah.\n\nBut it was all for the sake of Little Toomai, who had seen what never\nman had seen before--the dance of the elephants at night and alone in\nthe heart of the Garo hills!\n\n\n\n\nShiv and the Grasshopper\n\n     (The song that Toomai's mother sang to the baby)\n\n     Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,\n     Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,\n     Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,\n     From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the gate.\n        All things made he--Shiva the Preserver.\n        Mahadeo!  Mahadeo!  He made all,--\n        Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,\n        And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!\n\n\n     Wheat he gave to rich folk, millet to the poor,\n     Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door;\n     Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite,\n     And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night.\n     Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low--\n     Parbati beside him watched them come and go;\n     Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest--\n     Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast.\n        So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver.\n        Mahadeo!  Mahadeo!  Turn and see.\n        Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine,\n        But this was Least of Little Things, O little son of mine!\n\n     When the dole was ended, laughingly she said,\n     \"Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?\"\n     Laughing, Shiv made answer, \"All have had their part,\n     Even he, the little one, hidden 'neath thy heart.\"\n     From her breast she plucked it, Parbati the thief,\n     Saw the Least of Little Things gnawed a new-grown leaf!\n     Saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to Shiv,\n     Who hath surely given meat to all that live.\n        All things made he--Shiva the Preserver.\n        Mahadeo!  Mahadeo!  He made all,--\n        Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,\n        And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!\n\n\n\n\nHer Majesty's Servants\n\n     You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three,\n     But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee.\n     You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop,\n     But the way of Pilly Winky's not the way of Winkie Pop!\n\nIt had been raining heavily for one whole month--raining on a camp\nof thirty thousand men and thousands of camels, elephants, horses,\nbullocks, and mules all gathered together at a place called Rawal Pindi,\nto be reviewed by the Viceroy of India. He was receiving a visit from\nthe Amir of Afghanistan--a wild king of a very wild country. The Amir\nhad brought with him for a bodyguard eight hundred men and horses who\nhad never seen a camp or a locomotive before in their lives--savage\nmen and savage horses from somewhere at the back of Central Asia. Every\nnight a mob of these horses would be sure to break their heel ropes and\nstampede up and down the camp through the mud in the dark, or the camels\nwould break loose and run about and fall over the ropes of the tents,\nand you can imagine how pleasant that was for men trying to go to sleep.\nMy tent lay far away from the camel lines, and I thought it was safe.\nBut one night a man popped his head in and shouted, \"Get out, quick!\nThey're coming! My tent's gone!\"\n\nI knew who \"they\" were, so I put on my boots and waterproof and scuttled\nout into the slush. Little Vixen, my fox terrier, went out through the\nother side; and then there was a roaring and a grunting and bubbling,\nand I saw the tent cave in, as the pole snapped, and begin to dance\nabout like a mad ghost. A camel had blundered into it, and wet and angry\nas I was, I could not help laughing. Then I ran on, because I did not\nknow how many camels might have got loose, and before long I was out of\nsight of the camp, plowing my way through the mud.\n\nAt last I fell over the tail-end of a gun, and by that knew I was\nsomewhere near the artillery lines where the cannon were stacked at\nnight. As I did not want to plowter about any more in the drizzle and\nthe dark, I put my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun, and made a\nsort of wigwam with two or three rammers that I found, and lay along the\ntail of another gun, wondering where Vixen had got to, and where I might\nbe.\n\nJust as I was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle of harness\nand a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking his wet ears. He belonged to\na screw-gun battery, for I could hear the rattle of the straps and rings\nand chains and things on his saddle pad. The screw-guns are tiny little\ncannon made in two pieces, that are screwed together when the time comes\nto use them. They are taken up mountains, anywhere that a mule can find\na road, and they are very useful for fighting in rocky country.\n\nBehind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet squelching\nand slipping in the mud, and his neck bobbing to and fro like a\nstrayed hen's. Luckily, I knew enough of beast language--not wild-beast\nlanguage, but camp-beast language, of course--from the natives to know\nwhat he was saying.\n\nHe must have been the one that flopped into my tent, for he called to\nthe mule, \"What shall I do? Where shall I go? I have fought with a white\nthing that waved, and it took a stick and hit me on the neck.\" (That was\nmy broken tent pole, and I was very glad to know it.) \"Shall we run on?\"\n\n\"Oh, it was you,\" said the mule, \"you and your friends, that have\nbeen disturbing the camp? All right. You'll be beaten for this in the\nmorning. But I may as well give you something on account now.\"\n\nI heard the harness jingle as the mule backed and caught the camel\ntwo kicks in the ribs that rang like a drum. \"Another time,\" he said,\n\"you'll know better than to run through a mule battery at night,\nshouting `Thieves and fire!' Sit down, and keep your silly neck quiet.\"\n\nThe camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot rule, and sat down\nwhimpering. There was a regular beat of hoofs in the darkness, and a big\ntroop-horse cantered up as steadily as though he were on parade, jumped\na gun tail, and landed close to the mule.\n\n\"It's disgraceful,\" he said, blowing out his nostrils. \"Those camels\nhave racketed through our lines again--the third time this week. How's a\nhorse to keep his condition if he isn't allowed to sleep. Who's here?\"\n\n\"I'm the breech-piece mule of number two gun of the First Screw\nBattery,\" said the mule, \"and the other's one of your friends. He's\nwaked me up too. Who are you?\"\n\n\"Number Fifteen, E troop, Ninth Lancers--Dick Cunliffe's horse. Stand\nover a little, there.\"\n\n\"Oh, beg your pardon,\" said the mule. \"It's too dark to see much. Aren't\nthese camels too sickening for anything? I walked out of my lines to get\na little peace and quiet here.\"\n\n\"My lords,\" said the camel humbly, \"we dreamed bad dreams in the night,\nand we were very much afraid. I am only a baggage camel of the 39th\nNative Infantry, and I am not as brave as you are, my lords.\"\n\n\"Then why didn't you stay and carry baggage for the 39th Native\nInfantry, instead of running all round the camp?\" said the mule.\n\n\"They were such very bad dreams,\" said the camel. \"I am sorry. Listen!\nWhat is that? Shall we run on again?\"\n\n\"Sit down,\" said the mule, \"or you'll snap your long stick-legs between\nthe guns.\" He cocked one ear and listened. \"Bullocks!\" he said. \"Gun\nbullocks. On my word, you and your friends have waked the camp very\nthoroughly. It takes a good deal of prodding to put up a gun-bullock.\"\n\nI heard a chain dragging along the ground, and a yoke of the great sulky\nwhite bullocks that drag the heavy siege guns when the elephants won't\ngo any nearer to the firing, came shouldering along together. And almost\nstepping on the chain was another battery mule, calling wildly for\n\"Billy.\"\n\n\"That's one of our recruits,\" said the old mule to the troop horse.\n\"He's calling for me. Here, youngster, stop squealing. The dark never\nhurt anybody yet.\"\n\nThe gun-bullocks lay down together and began chewing the cud, but the\nyoung mule huddled close to Billy.\n\n\"Things!\" he said. \"Fearful and horrible, Billy! They came into our\nlines while we were asleep. D'you think they'll kill us?\"\n\n\"I've a very great mind to give you a number-one kicking,\" said Billy.\n\"The idea of a fourteen-hand mule with your training disgracing the\nbattery before this gentleman!\"\n\n\"Gently, gently!\" said the troop-horse. \"Remember they are always like\nthis to begin with. The first time I ever saw a man (it was in Australia\nwhen I was a three-year-old) I ran for half a day, and if I'd seen a\ncamel, I should have been running still.\"\n\nNearly all our horses for the English cavalry are brought to India from\nAustralia, and are broken in by the troopers themselves.\n\n\"True enough,\" said Billy. \"Stop shaking, youngster. The first time\nthey put the full harness with all its chains on my back I stood on\nmy forelegs and kicked every bit of it off. I hadn't learned the real\nscience of kicking then, but the battery said they had never seen\nanything like it.\"\n\n\"But this wasn't harness or anything that jingled,\" said the young mule.\n\"You know I don't mind that now, Billy. It was Things like trees, and\nthey fell up and down the lines and bubbled; and my head-rope broke, and\nI couldn't find my driver, and I couldn't find you, Billy, so I ran off\nwith--with these gentlemen.\"\n\n\"H'm!\" said Billy. \"As soon as I heard the camels were loose I came away\non my own account. When a battery--a screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks\ngentlemen, he must be very badly shaken up. Who are you fellows on the\nground there?\"\n\nThe gun bullocks rolled their cuds, and answered both together: \"The\nseventh yoke of the first gun of the Big Gun Battery. We were asleep\nwhen the camels came, but when we were trampled on we got up and walked\naway. It is better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good\nbedding. We told your friend here that there was nothing to be afraid\nof, but he knew so much that he thought otherwise. Wah!\"\n\nThey went on chewing.\n\n\"That comes of being afraid,\" said Billy. \"You get laughed at by\ngun-bullocks. I hope you like it, young un.\"\n\nThe young mule's teeth snapped, and I heard him say something about not\nbeing afraid of any beefy old bullock in the world. But the bullocks\nonly clicked their horns together and went on chewing.\n\n\"Now, don't be angry after you've been afraid. That's the worst kind\nof cowardice,\" said the troop-horse. \"Anybody can be forgiven for being\nscared in the night, I think, if they see things they don't understand.\nWe've broken out of our pickets, again and again, four hundred and fifty\nof us, just because a new recruit got to telling tales of whip snakes at\nhome in Australia till we were scared to death of the loose ends of our\nhead-ropes.\"\n\n\"That's all very well in camp,\" said Billy. \"I'm not above stampeding\nmyself, for the fun of the thing, when I haven't been out for a day or\ntwo. But what do you do on active service?\"\n\n\"Oh, that's quite another set of new shoes,\" said the troop horse. \"Dick\nCunliffe's on my back then, and drives his knees into me, and all I have\nto do is to watch where I am putting my feet, and to keep my hind legs\nwell under me, and be bridle-wise.\"\n\n\"What's bridle-wise?\" said the young mule.\n\n\"By the Blue Gums of the Back Blocks,\" snorted the troop-horse, \"do you\nmean to say that you aren't taught to be bridle-wise in your business?\nHow can you do anything, unless you can spin round at once when the\nrein is pressed on your neck? It means life or death to your man, and of\ncourse that's life and death to you. Get round with your hind legs under\nyou the instant you feel the rein on your neck. If you haven't room to\nswing round, rear up a little and come round on your hind legs. That's\nbeing bridle-wise.\"\n\n\"We aren't taught that way,\" said Billy the mule stiffly. \"We're taught\nto obey the man at our head: step off when he says so, and step in when\nhe says so. I suppose it comes to the same thing. Now, with all this\nfine fancy business and rearing, which must be very bad for your hocks,\nwhat do you do?\"\n\n\"That depends,\" said the troop-horse. \"Generally I have to go in among a\nlot of yelling, hairy men with knives--long shiny knives, worse than\nthe farrier's knives--and I have to take care that Dick's boot is just\ntouching the next man's boot without crushing it. I can see Dick's lance\nto the right of my right eye, and I know I'm safe. I shouldn't care to\nbe the man or horse that stood up to Dick and me when we're in a hurry.\"\n\n\"Don't the knives hurt?\" said the young mule.\n\n\"Well, I got one cut across the chest once, but that wasn't Dick's\nfault--\"\n\n\"A lot I should have cared whose fault it was, if it hurt!\" said the\nyoung mule.\n\n\"You must,\" said the troop horse. \"If you don't trust your man, you may\nas well run away at once. That's what some of our horses do, and I don't\nblame them. As I was saying, it wasn't Dick's fault. The man was lying\non the ground, and I stretched myself not to tread on him, and he\nslashed up at me. Next time I have to go over a man lying down I shall\nstep on him--hard.\"\n\n\"H'm!\" said Billy. \"It sounds very foolish. Knives are dirty things\nat any time. The proper thing to do is to climb up a mountain with a\nwell-balanced saddle, hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and\ncreep and crawl and wriggle along, till you come out hundreds of feet\nabove anyone else on a ledge where there's just room enough for your\nhoofs. Then you stand still and keep quiet--never ask a man to hold your\nhead, young un--keep quiet while the guns are being put together, and\nthen you watch the little poppy shells drop down into the tree-tops ever\nso far below.\"\n\n\"Don't you ever trip?\" said the troop-horse.\n\n\"They say that when a mule trips you can split a hen's ear,\" said Billy.\n\"Now and again perhaps a badly packed saddle will upset a mule, but it's\nvery seldom. I wish I could show you our business. It's beautiful. Why,\nit took me three years to find out what the men were driving at. The\nscience of the thing is never to show up against the sky line, because,\nif you do, you may get fired at. Remember that, young un. Always keep\nhidden as much as possible, even if you have to go a mile out of your\nway. I lead the battery when it comes to that sort of climbing.\"\n\n\"Fired at without the chance of running into the people who are firing!\"\nsaid the troop-horse, thinking hard. \"I couldn't stand that. I should\nwant to charge--with Dick.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, you wouldn't. You know that as soon as the guns are in\nposition they'll do all the charging. That's scientific and neat. But\nknives--pah!\"\n\nThe baggage-camel had been bobbing his head to and fro for some time\npast, anxious to get a word in edgewise. Then I heard him say, as he\ncleared his throat, nervously:\n\n\"I--I--I have fought a little, but not in that climbing way or that\nrunning way.\"\n\n\"No. Now you mention it,\" said Billy, \"you don't look as though you were\nmade for climbing or running--much. Well, how was it, old Hay-bales?\"\n\n\"The proper way,\" said the camel. \"We all sat down--\"\n\n\"Oh, my crupper and breastplate!\" said the troop-horse under his breath.\n\"Sat down!\"\n\n\"We sat down--a hundred of us,\" the camel went on, \"in a big square, and\nthe men piled our packs and saddles, outside the square, and they fired\nover our backs, the men did, on all sides of the square.\"\n\n\"What sort of men? Any men that came along?\" said the troop-horse. \"They\nteach us in riding school to lie down and let our masters fire across\nus, but Dick Cunliffe is the only man I'd trust to do that. It tickles\nmy girths, and, besides, I can't see with my head on the ground.\"\n\n\"What does it matter who fires across you?\" said the camel. \"There are\nplenty of men and plenty of other camels close by, and a great many\nclouds of smoke. I am not frightened then. I sit still and wait.\"\n\n\"And yet,\" said Billy, \"you dream bad dreams and upset the camp at\nnight. Well, well! Before I'd lie down, not to speak of sitting down,\nand let a man fire across me, my heels and his head would have something\nto say to each other. Did you ever hear anything so awful as that?\"\n\nThere was a long silence, and then one of the gun bullocks lifted up his\nbig head and said, \"This is very foolish indeed. There is only one way\nof fighting.\"\n\n\"Oh, go on,\" said Billy. \"Please don't mind me. I suppose you fellows\nfight standing on your tails?\"\n\n\"Only one way,\" said the two together. (They must have been twins.)\n\"This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon\nas Two Tails trumpets.\" (\"Two Tails\" is camp slang for the elephant.)\n\n\"What does Two Tails trumpet for?\" said the young mule.\n\n\"To show that he is not going any nearer to the smoke on the other\nside. Two Tails is a great coward. Then we tug the big gun all\ntogether--Heya--Hullah! Heeyah! Hullah! We do not climb like cats nor\nrun like calves. We go across the level plain, twenty yoke of us, till\nwe are unyoked again, and we graze while the big guns talk across the\nplain to some town with mud walls, and pieces of the wall fall out, and\nthe dust goes up as though many cattle were coming home.\"\n\n\"Oh! And you choose that time for grazing?\" said the young mule.\n\n\"That time or any other. Eating is always good. We eat till we are yoked\nup again and tug the gun back to where Two Tails is waiting for it.\nSometimes there are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of\nus are killed, and then there is all the more grazing for those that are\nleft. This is Fate. None the less, Two Tails is a great coward. That is\nthe proper way to fight. We are brothers from Hapur. Our father was a\nsacred bull of Shiva. We have spoken.\"\n\n\"Well, I've certainly learned something tonight,\" said the troop-horse.\n\"Do you gentlemen of the screw-gun battery feel inclined to eat when you\nare being fired at with big guns, and Two Tails is behind you?\"\n\n\"About as much as we feel inclined to sit down and let men sprawl all\nover us, or run into people with knives. I never heard such stuff. A\nmountain ledge, a well-balanced load, a driver you can trust to let you\npick your own way, and I'm your mule. But--the other things--no!\" said\nBilly, with a stamp of his foot.\n\n\"Of course,\" said the troop horse, \"everyone is not made in the same\nway, and I can quite see that your family, on your father's side, would\nfail to understand a great many things.\"\n\n\"Never you mind my family on my father's side,\" said Billy angrily, for\nevery mule hates to be reminded that his father was a donkey. \"My father\nwas a Southern gentleman, and he could pull down and bite and kick into\nrags every horse he came across. Remember that, you big brown Brumby!\"\n\nBrumby means wild horse without any breeding. Imagine the feelings of\nSunol if a car-horse called her a \"skate,\" and you can imagine how the\nAustralian horse felt. I saw the white of his eye glitter in the dark.\n\n\"See here, you son of an imported Malaga jackass,\" he said between\nhis teeth, \"I'd have you know that I'm related on my mother's side to\nCarbine, winner of the Melbourne Cup, and where I come from we aren't\naccustomed to being ridden over roughshod by any parrot-mouthed,\npig-headed mule in a pop-gun pea-shooter battery. Are you ready?\"\n\n\"On your hind legs!\" squealed Billy. They both reared up facing each\nother, and I was expecting a furious fight, when a gurgly, rumbly\nvoice, called out of the darkness to the right--\"Children, what are you\nfighting about there? Be quiet.\"\n\nBoth beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor\nmule can bear to listen to an elephant's voice.\n\n\"It's Two Tails!\" said the troop-horse. \"I can't stand him. A tail at\neach end isn't fair!\"\n\n\"My feelings exactly,\" said Billy, crowding into the troop-horse for\ncompany. \"We're very alike in some things.\"\n\n\"I suppose we've inherited them from our mothers,\" said the troop horse.\n\"It's not worth quarreling about. Hi! Two Tails, are you tied up?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Two Tails, with a laugh all up his trunk. \"I'm picketed for\nthe night. I've heard what you fellows have been saying. But don't be\nafraid. I'm not coming over.\"\n\nThe bullocks and the camel said, half aloud, \"Afraid of Two Tails--what\nnonsense!\" And the bullocks went on, \"We are sorry that you heard, but\nit is true. Two Tails, why are you afraid of the guns when they fire?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Two Tails, rubbing one hind leg against the other, exactly\nlike a little boy saying a poem, \"I don't quite know whether you'd\nunderstand.\"\n\n\"We don't, but we have to pull the guns,\" said the bullocks.\n\n\"I know it, and I know you are a good deal braver than you think\nyou are. But it's different with me. My battery captain called me a\nPachydermatous Anachronism the other day.\"\n\n\"That's another way of fighting, I suppose?\" said Billy, who was\nrecovering his spirits.\n\n\"You don't know what that means, of course, but I do. It means betwixt\nand between, and that is just where I am. I can see inside my head what\nwill happen when a shell bursts, and you bullocks can't.\"\n\n\"I can,\" said the troop-horse. \"At least a little bit. I try not to\nthink about it.\"\n\n\"I can see more than you, and I do think about it. I know there's a\ngreat deal of me to take care of, and I know that nobody knows how to\ncure me when I'm sick. All they can do is to stop my driver's pay till I\nget well, and I can't trust my driver.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the troop horse. \"That explains it. I can trust Dick.\"\n\n\"You could put a whole regiment of Dicks on my back without making me\nfeel any better. I know just enough to be uncomfortable, and not enough\nto go on in spite of it.\"\n\n\"We do not understand,\" said the bullocks.\n\n\"I know you don't. I'm not talking to you. You don't know what blood\nis.\"\n\n\"We do,\" said the bullocks. \"It is red stuff that soaks into the ground\nand smells.\"\n\nThe troop-horse gave a kick and a bound and a snort.\n\n\"Don't talk of it,\" he said. \"I can smell it now, just thinking of it.\nIt makes me want to run--when I haven't Dick on my back.\"\n\n\"But it is not here,\" said the camel and the bullocks. \"Why are you so\nstupid?\"\n\n\"It's vile stuff,\" said Billy. \"I don't want to run, but I don't want to\ntalk about it.\"\n\n\"There you are!\" said Two Tails, waving his tail to explain.\n\n\"Surely. Yes, we have been here all night,\" said the bullocks.\n\nTwo Tails stamped his foot till the iron ring on it jingled. \"Oh, I'm\nnot talking to you. You can't see inside your heads.\"\n\n\"No. We see out of our four eyes,\" said the bullocks. \"We see straight\nin front of us.\"\n\n\"If I could do that and nothing else, you wouldn't be needed to pull the\nbig guns at all. If I was like my captain--he can see things inside his\nhead before the firing begins, and he shakes all over, but he knows too\nmuch to run away--if I was like him I could pull the guns. But if I were\nas wise as all that I should never be here. I should be a king in the\nforest, as I used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when I liked.\nI haven't had a good bath for a month.\"\n\n\"That's all very fine,\" said Billy. \"But giving a thing a long name\ndoesn't make it any better.\"\n\n\"H'sh!\" said the troop horse. \"I think I understand what Two Tails\nmeans.\"\n\n\"You'll understand better in a minute,\" said Two Tails angrily. \"Now you\njust explain to me why you don't like this!\"\n\nHe began trumpeting furiously at the top of his trumpet.\n\n\"Stop that!\" said Billy and the troop horse together, and I could\nhear them stamp and shiver. An elephant's trumpeting is always nasty,\nespecially on a dark night.\n\n\"I shan't stop,\" said Two Tails. \"Won't you explain that, please?\nHhrrmph! Rrrt! Rrrmph! Rrrhha!\" Then he stopped suddenly, and I heard\na little whimper in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last.\nShe knew as well as I did that if there is one thing in the world the\nelephant is more afraid of than another it is a little barking dog. So\nshe stopped to bully Two Tails in his pickets, and yapped round his big\nfeet. Two Tails shuffled and squeaked. \"Go away, little dog!\" he said.\n\"Don't snuff at my ankles, or I'll kick at you. Good little dog--nice\nlittle doggie, then! Go home, you yelping little beast! Oh, why doesn't\nsomeone take her away? She'll bite me in a minute.\"\n\n\"Seems to me,\" said Billy to the troop horse, \"that our friend Two Tails\nis afraid of most things. Now, if I had a full meal for every dog I've\nkicked across the parade-ground I should be as fat as Two Tails nearly.\"\n\nI whistled, and Vixen ran up to me, muddy all over, and licked my nose,\nand told me a long tale about hunting for me all through the camp. I\nnever let her know that I understood beast talk, or she would have\ntaken all sorts of liberties. So I buttoned her into the breast of my\novercoat, and Two Tails shuffled and stamped and growled to himself.\n\n\"Extraordinary! Most extraordinary!\" he said. \"It runs in our family.\nNow, where has that nasty little beast gone to?\"\n\nI heard him feeling about with his trunk.\n\n\"We all seem to be affected in various ways,\" he went on, blowing his\nnose. \"Now, you gentlemen were alarmed, I believe, when I trumpeted.\"\n\n\"Not alarmed, exactly,\" said the troop-horse, \"but it made me feel as\nthough I had hornets where my saddle ought to be. Don't begin again.\"\n\n\"I'm frightened of a little dog, and the camel here is frightened by bad\ndreams in the night.\"\n\n\"It is very lucky for us that we haven't all got to fight in the same\nway,\" said the troop-horse.\n\n\"What I want to know,\" said the young mule, who had been quiet for a\nlong time--\"what I want to know is, why we have to fight at all.\"\n\n\"Because we're told to,\" said the troop-horse, with a snort of contempt.\n\n\"Orders,\" said Billy the mule, and his teeth snapped.\n\n\"Hukm hai!\" (It is an order!), said the camel with a gurgle, and Two\nTails and the bullocks repeated, \"Hukm hai!\"\n\n\"Yes, but who gives the orders?\" said the recruit-mule.\n\n\"The man who walks at your head--Or sits on your back--Or holds the nose\nrope--Or twists your tail,\" said Billy and the troop-horse and the camel\nand the bullocks one after the other.\n\n\"But who gives them the orders?\"\n\n\"Now you want to know too much, young un,\" said Billy, \"and that is one\nway of getting kicked. All you have to do is to obey the man at your\nhead and ask no questions.\"\n\n\"He's quite right,\" said Two Tails. \"I can't always obey, because I'm\nbetwixt and between. But Billy's right. Obey the man next to you who\ngives the order, or you'll stop all the battery, besides getting a\nthrashing.\"\n\nThe gun-bullocks got up to go. \"Morning is coming,\" they said. \"We will\ngo back to our lines. It is true that we only see out of our eyes, and\nwe are not very clever. But still, we are the only people to-night who\nhave not been afraid. Good-night, you brave people.\"\n\nNobody answered, and the troop-horse said, to change the conversation,\n\"Where's that little dog? A dog means a man somewhere about.\"\n\n\"Here I am,\" yapped Vixen, \"under the gun tail with my man. You big,\nblundering beast of a camel you, you upset our tent. My man's very\nangry.\"\n\n\"Phew!\" said the bullocks. \"He must be white!\"\n\n\"Of course he is,\" said Vixen. \"Do you suppose I'm looked after by a\nblack bullock-driver?\"\n\n\"Huah! Ouach! Ugh!\" said the bullocks. \"Let us get away quickly.\"\n\nThey plunged forward in the mud, and managed somehow to run their yoke\non the pole of an ammunition wagon, where it jammed.\n\n\"Now you have done it,\" said Billy calmly. \"Don't struggle. You're hung\nup till daylight. What on earth's the matter?\"\n\nThe bullocks went off into the long hissing snorts that Indian cattle\ngive, and pushed and crowded and slued and stamped and slipped and\nnearly fell down in the mud, grunting savagely.\n\n\"You'll break your necks in a minute,\" said the troop-horse. \"What's the\nmatter with white men? I live with 'em.\"\n\n\"They--eat--us! Pull!\" said the near bullock. The yoke snapped with a\ntwang, and they lumbered off together.\n\nI never knew before what made Indian cattle so scared of Englishmen.\nWe eat beef--a thing that no cattle-driver touches--and of course the\ncattle do not like it.\n\n\"May I be flogged with my own pad-chains! Who'd have thought of two big\nlumps like those losing their heads?\" said Billy.\n\n\"Never mind. I'm going to look at this man. Most of the white men, I\nknow, have things in their pockets,\" said the troop-horse.\n\n\"I'll leave you, then. I can't say I'm over-fond of 'em myself. Besides,\nwhite men who haven't a place to sleep in are more than likely to be\nthieves, and I've a good deal of Government property on my back. Come\nalong, young un, and we'll go back to our lines. Good-night, Australia!\nSee you on parade to-morrow, I suppose. Good-night, old Hay-bale!--try\nto control your feelings, won't you? Good-night, Two Tails! If you pass\nus on the ground tomorrow, don't trumpet. It spoils our formation.\"\n\nBilly the Mule stumped off with the swaggering limp of an old\ncampaigner, as the troop-horse's head came nuzzling into my breast, and\nI gave him biscuits, while Vixen, who is a most conceited little dog,\ntold him fibs about the scores of horses that she and I kept.\n\n\"I'm coming to the parade to-morrow in my dog-cart,\" she said. \"Where\nwill you be?\"\n\n\"On the left hand of the second squadron. I set the time for all my\ntroop, little lady,\" he said politely. \"Now I must go back to Dick. My\ntail's all muddy, and he'll have two hours' hard work dressing me for\nparade.\"\n\nThe big parade of all the thirty thousand men was held that afternoon,\nand Vixen and I had a good place close to the Viceroy and the Amir of\nAfghanistan, with high, big black hat of astrakhan wool and the great\ndiamond star in the center. The first part of the review was all\nsunshine, and the regiments went by in wave upon wave of legs all moving\ntogether, and guns all in a line, till our eyes grew dizzy. Then the\ncavalry came up, to the beautiful cavalry canter of \"Bonnie Dundee,\" and\nVixen cocked her ear where she sat on the dog-cart. The second squadron\nof the Lancers shot by, and there was the troop-horse, with his tail\nlike spun silk, his head pulled into his breast, one ear forward and one\nback, setting the time for all his squadron, his legs going as smoothly\nas waltz music. Then the big guns came by, and I saw Two Tails and two\nother elephants harnessed in line to a forty-pounder siege gun, while\ntwenty yoke of oxen walked behind. The seventh pair had a new yoke, and\nthey looked rather stiff and tired. Last came the screw guns, and Billy\nthe mule carried himself as though he commanded all the troops, and his\nharness was oiled and polished till it winked. I gave a cheer all by\nmyself for Billy the mule, but he never looked right or left.\n\nThe rain began to fall again, and for a while it was too misty to see\nwhat the troops were doing. They had made a big half circle across the\nplain, and were spreading out into a line. That line grew and grew and\ngrew till it was three-quarters of a mile long from wing to wing--one\nsolid wall of men, horses, and guns. Then it came on straight toward the\nViceroy and the Amir, and as it got nearer the ground began to shake,\nlike the deck of a steamer when the engines are going fast.\n\nUnless you have been there you cannot imagine what a frightening effect\nthis steady come-down of troops has on the spectators, even when they\nknow it is only a review. I looked at the Amir. Up till then he had not\nshown the shadow of a sign of astonishment or anything else. But now his\neyes began to get bigger and bigger, and he picked up the reins on his\nhorse's neck and looked behind him. For a minute it seemed as though he\nwere going to draw his sword and slash his way out through the English\nmen and women in the carriages at the back. Then the advance stopped\ndead, the ground stood still, the whole line saluted, and thirty bands\nbegan to play all together. That was the end of the review, and the\nregiments went off to their camps in the rain, and an infantry band\nstruck up with--\n\n     The animals went in two by two,\n          Hurrah!\n     The animals went in two by two,\n     The elephant and the battery mul',\n     and they all got into the Ark\n          For to get out of the rain!\n\nThen I heard an old grizzled, long-haired Central Asian chief, who had\ncome down with the Amir, asking questions of a native officer.\n\n\"Now,\" said he, \"in what manner was this wonderful thing done?\"\n\nAnd the officer answered, \"An order was given, and they obeyed.\"\n\n\"But are the beasts as wise as the men?\" said the chief.\n\n\"They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he\nobeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his\nlieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his major,\nand the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding\nthree regiments, and the brigadier the general, who obeys the Viceroy,\nwho is the servant of the Empress. Thus it is done.\"\n\n\"Would it were so in Afghanistan!\" said the chief, \"for there we obey\nonly our own wills.\"\n\n\"And for that reason,\" said the native officer, twirling his mustache,\n\"your Amir whom you do not obey must come here and take orders from our\nViceroy.\"\n\n\n\n\nParade Song of the Camp Animals\n\n     ELEPHANTS OF THE GUN TEAMS\n\n     We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,\n     The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees;\n     We bowed our necks to service: they ne'er were loosed again,--\n     Make way there--way for the ten-foot teams\n           Of the Forty-Pounder train!\n\n     GUN BULLOCKS\n\n     Those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball,\n     And what they know of powder upsets them one and all;\n     Then we come into action and tug the guns again--\n     Make way there--way for the twenty yoke\n           Of the Forty-Pounder train!\n\n     CAVALRY HORSES\n\n     By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes\n     Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons,\n     And it's sweeter than \"Stables\" or \"Water\" to me--\n     The Cavalry Canter of \"Bonnie Dundee\"!\n\n     Then feed us and break us and handle and groom,\n     And give us good riders and plenty of room,\n     And launch us in column of squadron and see\n     The way of the war-horse to \"Bonnie Dundee\"!\n\n     SCREW-GUN MULES\n\n     As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill,\n     The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still;\n     For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,\n     Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to\n        spare!\n\n     Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road;\n     Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load:\n     For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,\n     Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to\n        spare!\n\n     COMMISSARIAT CAMELS\n\n     We haven't a camelty tune of our own\n     To help us trollop along,\n     But every neck is a hair trombone\n     (Rtt-ta-ta-ta! is a hair trombone!)\n     And this our marching-song:\n     Can't!  Don't!  Shan't!  Won't!\n     Pass it along the line!\n     Somebody's pack has slid from his back,\n     Wish it were only mine!\n     Somebody's load has tipped off in the road--\n     Cheer for a halt and a row!\n     Urrr!  Yarrh!  Grr!  Arrh!\n     Somebody's catching it now!\n\n     ALL THE BEASTS TOGETHER\n\n     Children of the Camp are we,\n     Serving each in his degree;\n     Children of the yoke and goad,\n     Pack and harness, pad and load.\n     See our line across the plain,\n     Like a heel-rope bent again,\n     Reaching, writhing, rolling far,\n     Sweeping all away to war!\n     While the men that walk beside,\n     Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed,\n     Cannot tell why we or they\n     March and suffer day by day.\n        Children of the Camp are we,\n        Serving each in his degree;\n        Children of the yoke and goad,\n        Pack and harness, pad and load!"