The Second Jungle Book 5S-<,< LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY MRS. ALFRED W. I NGALLS _ ^-:^ THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK \^ BY RUDYARD KIPLING // DECORATED BY JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING, C. I. E. NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1906 ' ' iy Copyright, 1895, by The Century Co. How Fear Came, The Law of the Jungle ; The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, A Sonjr of Kahir; The Undertakers, A Ripple-song. Copyright, 1894, by Bacheller, Johnson &■ Bacheller. Quiquern, "Angutivun tina.*' Copyright, 1895, by Iri'ing Bacheller. The Spring Running, The Outsonf. Copyright, 1895, by John Brisben Walker. Lettiig in the Jungle, Mowgli's Song Against People. Copyright, 1894, by Rudyard KipliuL,'. Red Dog, Chil's Song. Copyright, 1895, by Rudyard Kipling. Copyright, 1895, by The Century Co. THE DE VINNE PREB6. *' Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they ; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey /" CONTENTS PAGE How Fear Came i The Law of the Jungle 29 The Miracle of Purun Bhagat ;^^ A Song of Kabir 61 Letting in the Jungle 63 MowGLi's Song Against People 112 The Undertakers 115 A Ripple-song ' 155 The King's Ankus 157 The Song of the Little Hunter 191 QuiQUERN 193 " AnGUTIVUN TINA " 234 Red Dog 237 Chil's Song 281 The Spring Running 283 The Outsong 321 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK The stream is shrunk — the pool is dry, And we be comrades, thou and I ; With fevered jowl and sunken flank Each jostling each along the bank; And, by one drouthy fear made still, Foregoing thought of quest or kill. Now 'neath his dam the fawn may see The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he, And the tall buck, unflinching, note The fangs that tore his father's throat. The pools arc shrunk — the strcajns are dry. And we be playmates, thou and I, Till yonder cloud — Good Huntini^ ! — loose The rain that breaks the Water Truce. ,m i.i .ij.ru.u-u UM. u.» i.m t^ HOW FEAR CAME HE Law of the Jungle — which is by far the old- est law in the world — has arranged for almost every kind of accident that may befall the Jun- gle People, till now its code is as perfect as time and custom can make it. If you have read the other book about Mowgli, you will remember that he spent a great part of his life in the Seeonee Wolf- Pack, learning the Law from Baloo, the Brown Bear; and it was Baloo who told him, when the boy grew impatient at the constant orders, that the Law was like the Giant 2 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK Creeper, becaruse it dropped across every one's back and no on^ could escape. " When thou hast Hved as long- as I have, Little Brother, thou wilt see how all the Jungle obeys at least one Law. And that will be no pleasant sight," said Baloo. This talk went in at one ear and out at the other, for a boy who spends his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till it actually stares him in the face. But, one year, Baloo's words came true, and Mowgli saw all the Jungle working under the Law. It began when the winter Rains failed almost entirely, and Ikki, the Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild yams were drying up. Now everybody knows that Ikki is ridiculously fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very best and ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said, "What is that to me ? " " Not much now'' said Ikki, rattling his quills in a stiff, uncomfortable way, "but later we shall see. Is there any more diving into the deep rock-pool below the Bee-Rocks, Little Brother?" " No. The foolish water is going all away, and I do not wish to break my head," said Mowgli, who, in those; days, was quite sure that HOW FEAR CAME 3 he knew as much as any five of the Jungle Peo- ple put together. "That is thy loss. A small crack might let in some wisdom." Ikki clucked quickly to prevent Mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and Mow- gli told Baloo what Ikki had said, Baloo looked very grave, and mumbled half to himself: " If I were alone I would change my hunting-grounds now, before the others began to think. And yet — hunting among strangers ends in fighting; and they might hurt the Man-cub. We must wait and see how the mokwa blooms." That spring the mohwa tree, that Baloo was so fond of, never flowered. The greeny, cream- colored, waxy blossoms were heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last least footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron ; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to and died at their feet ; the bamboos 4 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK withered, clanking- vvlien the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the Jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering' blue boulders in the bed of the stream. The birds and the monkey-people went north early in the year, for they knew what was com- ing ; and the deer and the wild pig broke far away to the perished fields of the villages, dying sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to kill them. Chil, the Kite, stayed and grew fat, for there was a orreat deal of carrion, and even- incr after evenincr he brouQfht the news to the beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunt- ing-grounds, that the sun was killing the Jungle for three days' flight in every direction. Mowgli, who had never known what real hun- ger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives — honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. All the game in the Jungle was no more than skin and l^one, and Bagheera could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. But the want of water was the worst, for though th(^ Jungle People drink seldom they must drink deep. HOW FEAR CAME • 5 And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture, till at last the main channel of the Waing-unga was the only stream that carried a trickle of water between its dead banks ; and when Hathi, the wild elephant, who lives for a hundred years and more, saw a long, lean blue ridge of rock show dry in the very center of the stream, he knew that he was looking at the Peace Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father be- fore him had proclaimed it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry hoarsely ; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great circles far and wide, whistling and shriekino- the warnine- By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places when once the Water Truce has been declared. The reason of this is that drinking comes before eating. Every one in the Jungle can scramble along somehow when only game is scarce ; but water is water, and when there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops while the Jungle People go there for their needs. In good seasons, when water was plentiful, those who came down to drink at the Waingunga — or anywhere else, for that matter — did so at the risk of their lives, and that risk made no small part of the fascination of the night's doings. To move 6 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK down SO cunningly that never a leaf stirred ; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind ; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely because they knew that at any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap upon them and bear them down. But now all that life-and-death fun was ended, and the Jun- gle People came up, starved and weary, to the shrunken river, — tiger, bear, deer, buffalo, and pig, all together, — drank the fouled waters, and hung above them, too exhausted to move off. The deer and the pig had tramped all day in search of something better than dried bark and withered leaves. The buffaloes had found no wal- lows to be cool in, and no green crops to steal. The snakes had left the Jungle and come down to the river in the hope of finding a stray frog. They curled round wet stones, and never offered to strike when the nose of a rooting pig dislodged them. The river-turtles had long ago been killed by Bagheera, cleverest of hunters, and the fish had buried themselves deep in the dry mud. HOW FEAR CAME 7 Only the Peace Rock lay across the shallows like a long snake, and the little tired ripples hissed as they dried on its hot side. It was here that Mowgli came nightly for the cool and the companionship. The most hungry of his enemies would hardly have cared for the boy then. His naked hide made him seem more lean and wretched than any of his fellows. His hair was bleached to tow color by the sun ; his ribs stood out like the ribs of a basket, and the lumps on his knees and elbows, where he was used to track on all fours, gave his shrunken limbs the look of knotted grass-stems. But his eye, under his matted forelock, was cool and quiet, for Basfheera was his adviser in this time of trouble, and told him to go quietly, hunt slowly, and never, on any account, to lose his temper. " It is an evil time," said the Black Panther, one furnace-hot evening, " but it will go if we can live till the end. Is thy stomach full, Man cub?" " There is stuff in my stomach, but I get no good of it. Think you, Bagheera, the Rains have forgotten us and will never come again ? " " Not I ! We shall see the mohwa in blossom yet, and the little fawns all fat with new grass. Come down to the Peace Rock and hear the news. On my back, Little Brother." 8 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK " This is no time to carry weig^ht. I can still stand alone, but — indeed we be no tatted bul- locks, we too." Bagheera looked along his ragged, dusty flank and whispered : " Last night I killed a bullock under the yoke. So low was I brought that I think I should not have dared to spring if he had been loose. PFou ! " Mowgli laughed. " Yes, we be great hunters now," said he. " I am very bold — to eat grubs," and the two came down too^ether throueh the crackling undergrowth to the river-bank and the lace-work of shoals that ran out from it in every direction. " The water cannot live long," said Baloo, join- inof them. " Look across. Yonder are trails like the roads of Man." On the level plain of the furtlicr bank the stiff jungle-grass had died standing, and, dying, had mummied. The beaten tracks of the deer and the pig, all heading toward the river, had striped that colorless plain with dusty gullies driven through the ten-foot grass, and, early as it was, each long avenue was full of first-comers hastening to the water. You could hear the does and fawns cough- ing- in the snuff-like dust. Up-stream, at the bend of the sluggish pool HOW FEAR CAME 9 round the Peace Rock, and Warden of the Water Truce, stood Hathi,the wild elephant, with his sons, gaunt and gray in the moonlight, rocking to and fro — always rocking. Below him a little were the vanguard of the deer ; below these, again, the pig and the wild buffalo ; and on the opposite bank, where the tall trees came down to the water's edge, was the place set apart for the Eaters of Flesh — the tiger, the wolves, the panther, and the bear, and the others. "We are under one Law, indeed," said Ba- gheera, wading into the water and looking across at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes where the deer and the pig pushed each other to and fro. " Good hunting, all you of my blood," he added, lying down at full length, one flank thrust out of the shallows ; and then, between his teeth, " But for that which is the Law it would be very good hunting." The quick-spread ears of the deer caught the last sentence, and a frightened whisper ran along the ranks. "The Truce! Remember the Truce !" " Peace there, peace ! " gurgled Hathi, the wild elephant. " The Truce holds, Bagheera. This is no time to talk of hunting." "Who should know better than I ?" Bagheera answered, rolling his yellow eyes up-stream. " I lo THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK am an eater of turtles — a fisher of frogs. Ngaa- yaJi ! Would I could get good from chewing branches ! " " We wish so, very greatly," bleated a young fawn, who had only been born that spring, and did not at all like it. Wretched as the Jungle People were, even Hathi could not help chuck- ling ; while Mowgli, lying on his elbows in the warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the scum with his feet. " Well spoken, little bud-horn," Bagheera purred. "When the Truce ends that shall be remembered in thy favor," and he looked keenly through the darkness to make sure of recognizing the fawn again. Gradually the talking spread up and down the drinking-places. One could hear the scuffling, snorting pig asking for more room ; the buffaloes grunting among themselves as they lurched out across the sand-bars, and the deer telling pitiful stories of their long foot- sore wanderings in quest of food. Now and again they asked some ques- tion of the Eaters of Flesh across the river, but all the news was bad, and the roaring hot wind of the Jungle came and went between the rocks and the rattling branches, and scattered twigs and dust on the water. HOW FEAR CAME II " The men-folk, too, they die beside their plows," said a young sambhur. " I passed three between sunset and night. They lay still, and their bullocks with them. We also shall lie still in a little." "The river has fallen since last night," said Baloo. " O Hathi, hast thou ever seen the like of this drought ? " " It will pass, it will pass," said Hathi, squirt- ing water along his back and sides. "We have one here that cannot endure long," said Baloo ; and he looked toward the boy he loved. " I ? " said Mowgli indignantly, sitting up in the water. " I have no long fur to cover my bones, but — but if thy hide were taken off, Baloo — " Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo said severely : " Man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher of the Law. Never have I been seen without my hide." " Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo ; but only that thou art, as it were, like the cocoanut in the husk, and I am the same cocoanut all naked. Now that brown husk of thine — " Mowgli was sitting cross-legged, and explaining things with his fore- 12 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK finc^er in his usual way, when Bagbeera out out a paddy paw and pulled him over backward into the water. " Worse and worse," said the Black Panther, as the boy rose spluttering-. " First, Baloo is to be skinned, and now he is a cocoanut. Be careful that he does not do what the ripe cocoanuts do." "And what is that ? " said Mowgli, off his guard for the minute, though that is one of the oldest catches in the Jungle. " Break thy head," said Bagheera quietly, pull- ing him under again. " It is not good to make a jest of thy teacher," said the bear, when Mowgli had been ducked for the third time. " Not good ! What would ye have ? That naked thing running to and fro makes a monkey- jest of those who have once been good hunters, and pulls the best of us by the whisker for sport." This was Shere Khan, the Lame Tiger, limping down to the water. He waited a little to enjoy the sensation he made among the deer on the opposite bank; then he dropped his square, frilled head and began to lap, growling: "The Jungle has become a whelping-ground for naked cubs now. Look at me, Man -cub ! " Mowgli looked — stared, rather — as insolently HOW FEAR CAME 13 as he knew how, and in a minute Shere Khan turned away uneasily. "Man-cub this, and Man- cub that," he rumbled, going on with his drink, "the cub is neither man nor cub, or he would have been afraid. Next season I shall have to beg his leave for a drink. Aurgh/" "That may come, too," said Bagheera, looking him steadily between the eyes. " That may come, too — ^ P'augh, Shere Khan ! — what new shame hast thou brought here ? " The Lame Tiger had dipped his chin and jowl in the water, and dark oily streaks were floating from it clown-stream. " Man ! " said Shere Khan coolly, " I killed an hour since." He went on purring and growling to himself The line of beasts shook and wavered to and fro, and a whisper went up that grew to a cry : " Man ! Man ! He has killed Man ! " Then all looked toward Hathi, the wild elephant, but he seemed not to hear. Hathi never does anything till the time comes, and that is one of the reasons why he lives so long. "At such a season as this to kill Man ! Was no other game afoot ? " said Bagheera scorn- fully, drawing himself out of the tainted water, and shaking each paw, cat- fashion, as he did so. 14 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK " I killed for choice — not for food." The horri- fied whisper began again, and Hathi's watchful little white eye cocked itself in Shere Khan's direction. " For choice," Shere Khan drawled. " Now come I to drink and make me clean again. Is there any to forbid ? " Baofheera's back beoj'an to curve like a bamboo in a high wind, but Hathi lifted up his trunk and spoke quietly. " Thy kill was from choice ? " he asked ; and when Hathi asks a question it is best to answer. " Even so. It was my right and my Night. Thou knowest, O Hathi." Shere Khan spoke almost courteously. " Yes, I know," Hathi answered ; and, after a little silence, " Hast thou drunk thy fill ? " " For to-night, yes." " Go, then. The river is to drink, and not to defile. None but the Lame Tiger would so have boasted of his right at this season when — when we suffer together — Man and Jungle People alike. Clean or unclean, get to thy lair, Shere Khan ! " The last words rang out like silver trumpets, and Hathi's three sons rolled forward half a pace, thouorh there was no need. Shere Khan slunk away, not daring to growl, for he knew — what HOW FEAR CAME 15 every one else knows — that when the last comes to the last, llathi is the Master of the Jungle. "What is this right Shere Khan speaks of?" Mowgli whispered in Bagheera's ear. " To kill Man is always shameful. The Law says so. And yet Hathi says — " "Ask him. I do not know, Little Brother. Right or no right, if Hathi had not spoken I would have taught that lame butcher his lesson. To come to the Peace Rock fresh from a kill of Man — and to boast of it — is a jackal's trick. Besides, he tainted the good water." Mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his courage, because no one cared to address Hathi directly, and then he cried: "What is Shere Khan's right, O Hathi ? " Both banks echoed his words, for all the People of the Jungle are in- tensely curious, and they had just seen some- thing that none, except Baloo, who looked very thoughtful, seemed to understand. " It is an old tale," said Hathi; " a tale older than the Jungle. Keep silence along the banks, and I will tell that tale." There was a minute or two of pushing and shouldering among the pigs and the buffalo, and then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after another, " We wait," and Hathi strode forward l6 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK till he was nearly knee-deep in the pool by the Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and yellow- tusked though he was, he looked what the Jungle knew him to be — their master. "Ye know, children," he began, "that of all things ye most fear Man"; and there was a mut- ter of agreement. "This tale touches thee, Little Brother," said Bagheera to Mowgli. " I ? I am of the Pack — a hunter of the Free People," Mowgli answered, " What have I to do with Man ? " "And ye do not know why ye fear Man?" Hathi went on. " This is the reason. In the beginning of the Jungle, and none know when that was, we of the Jungle walked together, hav- ing no fear of one another. In those days there was no drought, and leaves and flowers and fruit gfrew on the same tree, and we ate nothing;" at all except leaves and flowers and grass and fruit and bark." " I am glad I was not born in those days," said Bagheera. " Bark is only good to sharpen claws." " And the Lord of the Jungle was Tha, the First of the Elephants. He drew the Jungle out of deep waters with his trunk ; and where he HOW FEAR CAME 17 made furrows in the ground with his tusks, there the rivers ran ; and where he struck with his foot, there rose ponds of good water ; and when he blew through his trunk, — thus, — the trees fell. That was the manner in which the Jungle was made by Tha ; and so the tale was told to me." "It has not lost fat in the telling," Bagheera whispered, and Mowgli laughed behind his hand. "In those days there was no corn or melons or pepper or sugar-cane, nor were there any little huts such as ye have all seen ; and the Jungle People knew nothing of Man, but lived in the Jungle together, making one people. But pres- ently they began to dispute over their food, though there was grazing enough for all. They were lazy. Each wished to eat where he lay down, as sometimes we can do now when the spring rains are good. Tha, the First of the Elephants, was busy making new jungles and leading the rivers in their beds. He could not walk in all places : therefore he made the First of the Tigers the master and the judge of the Jungle, to whom the Jungle People should bring their dis- putes. In those days the First of the Tigers ate fruit and grass with the others. He was as large as I am, and he was very beautiful, in color all over like the blossom of the yellow creeper. There was i8 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK never stripe nor bar upon his hide in those good days when this the Jungle was new. All the Jungle People came before him without fear, and his word was the Law of all the Jungle. We were then, remember ye, one people. " Yet upon a night there was a dispute between two bucks — a grazing-quarrel such as ye now settle with the horns and the fore feet — and it is said that as the two spoke together before the First of the Tigers lying among the flowers, a buck pushed him with his horns, and the First of the Timers forgfot that he was the master and judge of the Jungle, and, leaping upon that buck, broke his neck. "Till that night never one of us had died, and the First of the Tigers, seeing what he had done, and being made foolish by the scent of the blood, ran away into the marshes of the North, and we of the Jungle, left without a judge, fell to fighting among ourselves ; and Tha heard the noise of it and came back. Then some of us said this and some of us said that, but he saw the dead buck among the flowers, and asked who had killed, and we of the Jungle would not tell because* the smell of the blood made us foolish. We ran to and fro in circles, capering and crying out and shaking our heads. Then Tha gave an order to HOW FEAR CAME 19 the trees that hang- low, and to the traihng- creep- ers of the Jung-le, that they should mark the killer of the buck so that he should know him again, and he said, ' Who will now be master of the Jungle People ? ' Then up leaped the Gray Ape who lives in the branches, and said, ' I will now be master of the Jungle.' At this Tha laughed, and said, ' So be it,' and went away very angry. " Children, ye know the Gray Ape. He was then as he is now. At the first he made a wise face for himself, but in a little while he beean to scratch and to leap up and down, and when Tha came back he found the Gray Ape hanging, head down, from a bough, mocking those who stood below ; and they mocked him again. And so there was no Law in the Jungle — only foolish talk and senseless words. "Then Tha called us all together and said: 'The first of your masters has brought Death into the Jungle, and the second Shame. Now it is time there was a Law, and a Law that ye must not break. Now ye shall know Fear, and when ye have found him ye shall know that he is your master, and the rest shall follow.' Then we of the Jungle said, 'What is Fear?' And Tha said, ' Seek till ye find.' So we went up and 20 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK down the Jungle seeking for Fear, and presently the bulialoes — " " Ugh ! " said M)sa, the leader of the buffaloes, from their sand-bank. " Yes, Mysa, it was the buffaloes. They came back with the news that in a cave in the Jungle sat Fear, and that he had no hair, and went upon his -hind legs. Then we of the Jungle followed the herd till we came to that cave, and Fear stood at the mouth of it, and he was, as the buf- faloes had said, hairless, and he walked upon his hinder legs. When he saw us he cried out, and his voice filled us with the fear that we have now of that voice when we hear it, and we ran away, tramping upon and tearing each other because we were afraid. That night, so it was told to me, we of the Jungle did not lie down together as used to be our custon^i, but each tribe drew off by itself — tlie pig with the pig, the deer with the deer; horn to horn, hoof to hoof, — like keeping to like, and so lay shaking in the Jungle. " Only the First of the Tigers was not with us, for he was still hidden in the; marshes of tlu; North, and when word was brought to him of the Thing we had seen in the cave, he said : ' 1 will go to this Thing and break his neck.' So he ran all the nieht till he came to the cave; but the trees and HOW FEAR CAME 21 the creepers on his path, remembering the order that Tha had given, let down their branches and marked him as he ran, drawing their fingers across his back, his tlank, his forehead, and his jowl. Wherever they touched him there was a mark and a stripe upon his yellow hide. And those sii'ipes do his children lucar to this day! When he came to the cave, Fear, the Hairless One, put out his hand and called him ' The Striped One that comes by night,' and the First of the Tigers was afraid of the Hairless One, and ran back to the swamps howling." Mowgli chuckled quietly here, his chin in the water. " So loud did he howl that Tha heard him and said, ' What is the sorrow ? ' And the First of the Tigers, lifting up his muzzle to the new-made sky, which is now so old, said: 'Give me back my power, O Tha. I am made ashamed before all the Jungle, and I have run away from a Hairless One, and he has called me a shameful name.' 'And why?' said Tha. 'Because I am smeared with the mud of the marshes,' said the First of the Tigers. ' Swim, then, and roll on the wet grass, and if it be mud it will wash away,' said Tha ; and the First of the Tigers swam, and rolled and rolled upon the grass, till the Jungle ran 22 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK round and round before his eyes, but not one little bar upon all his hide was changed, and Tha, watch- ing him, laughed. Then the First of the Tigers said, ' What hav^e I done that this comes to me ? ' Tha said, ' Thou hast killed the buck, and thou hast let Death loose in the Jungle, and with Death has come Fear, so that the people of the Jungle are afraid one of the other, as thou art afraid of the Hairless One.' The First of the Tigers said, ' They will never fear me, for I knew them since the beginning.' Tha said, ' Go and see.' And the First of the Titrers ran to and fro. callinof aloud to the deer and the pig and the sambhur and the porcupine and all the Jungle Peoples, and they all ran away from him who had been their judge, because they were afraid. " Then the First of the Tigers came back, and his pride was broken in him, and, beating his head upon the ground, he tore up the earth with all his feet and said : ' Remember that I was once the Master of the Jungle. Do not forget me, O Tha! Let my children remember that I was once with- out shame or fear! ' And Tha said : ' This much I will do, because thou and I together saw the Jungle made. For one night in each year it shall be as it was before the buck was killed — for thee and for thy children. In that one night, if ye HOW FEAR CAME 23 meet the Hairless One — and his name is Man — ye shaU not be afraid of him. but he shall be afraid of )ou, as though ye were judges of the Jungle and masters of all things. Show him mercy in that night of his fear, for thou hast known what Pear is.' "Then the First of the Tigers answered, *I am content' ; but when next he drank he saw the black stripes upon his flank and his side, and he remembered the name that the Hairless One had given him, and he was angry. For a year he lived in the marshes, waiting till Tha should keep his promise. And upon a night when the Jackal of the Moon [the Evening Star] stood clear of the Jungle, he felt that his -Night was upon him, and he went to that cave to meet the Hair- less One. Then it happened as Tha promised, for the Hairless One fell down before him and lay along the ground, and the First of the Tigers struck him and broke his back, for he thought that there was but one such Thing in the Jungle, and that he had killed Fear. Then, nos- ing above the kill, he heard Tha coming down from the woods of the North, and presently the voice of the First of the Elephants, which is the voice that we hear now — " The thunder was rolling up and down the dry, 24 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK scarred hills, l)ut it brought no rain — only heat- liLi'htnin''" that thckcred alongf the ridges — and Hathi went on: ''That was the voice he heard, and it said: 'Is this thy mercy?' The First of the Tigers licked his lips and said : ' What matter? I have killed Fear.' And Tha said: ' O blind and foolish ! Thou hast untied the feet of Death, and he will follow thy trail till thou diest. Thou hast taught Man to kill ! ' " The First of the Tigers, standing stiffly to his kill, said : ' He is as the buck was. There is no Fear. Now I will judge the Jungle Peoples once more." " And Tha said : ' Never again shall the Jungle Peoples come to thee. They shall never cross thy trail, nor sleep near thee, nor follow after thee, nor browse by thy lair. Only Fear shall follow thee, and with a blow that thou canst not see he shall bid thee wait his pleasure. He shall make the ground to open under thy feet, and the creeper to twist about thy neck, and the tree-trunks to grow tofrcther about thee higher than thou canst leap, and at the last he shall take thy hide to wrap his cubs when they are cold. Thou hast shown him no mercy, and none will he show thee.' "The First of the Tigers was very bold, for his Night was still on him, and he said: 'The HOW FEAR CAME .25 Promise of Tha is the Promise of Tha. He will not take away my Night ? ' And Tha said : ' The one Night is thine, as I have said, but there is a price to pay. Thou hast taught Man to kill, and he is no slow learner.' " The First of the Tigers said : ' He is here under my foot, and his back is broken. Let the Jungle know I have killed Fear.' " Then Tha laughed, and said : * Thou hast killed one of many, but thou thyself shalt tell the Jungle — for thy Night is ended.' " So the day came ; and from the mouth of the cave went out another Hairless One, and he saw the kill in the path, and the First of the Tigers above it, and he took a pointed stick — " " They throw a thing that cuts now," said Ikki, rustling down the bank ; for Ikki was considered uncommonly good eating by the Gonds — they called him Ho-Igoo — and he knew something of the wicked little Gondee axe that whirls across a clearing like a dragon-fly. " It was a pointed stick, such as they put in the foot of a pit-trap," said Hathi, " and throwing it, he struck the First of the Tigers deep in the flank. Thus it happened as Tha said, for the First of the Tigers ran howling up and down the Jungle till he tore out the stick, and all the Jungle 26 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK knew that the Hairless One could strike from far off, and they feared more than before. So it came about that the First of the Tigers taught the Hair- less One to kill — and ye know what harm that has since done to all our peoples — through the noose, and the pitfall, and the hidden trap, and the flying stick, and the stinging fly that comes out of white smoke [Hathi meant the rifle], and the Red Flower that drives us into the open. Yet for one night in the year the Hairless One fears the Tiger, as Tha promised, and never has the Tiger given him cause to be less afraid. Where he finds him, there he kills him, remem- bering how the First of the Tigers was made ashamed. For the rest, Fear walks up and down the Jungle by day and by night." ''Aid! Aoof said the deer, thinking of what it all meant to them. " And only when there is one great Fear over all, as there is now, can we of the Jungle lay aside our little fears, and meet together in one place as we do now." " For one night only does Man fear the Tiger ?" said Mowgli. '* For one night only," said Hathi. "But I — but we — but all the Jungle knows that Shere Khan kills Man twice and thrice in a moon." HOW FEAR CAME 27 " Kven so. T/ieu he springs from behind and turns his head aside as he strikes, for he is full of fear. If Man looked at him he would run. But on his one Night he goes openly down to the vil- lacre. He walks between the houses and thrusts his head into the doorway, and the men fall on their faces and there he does his kill. One kill in that Night." " Oh ! " said Mowgli to himself, rolling over in the water, ''Now I see why it was Shere Khan bade me look at him ! He got no good of it, for he could not hold his eyes steady, and — and I certainly did not fall down at his feet. But then I am not a man, being of the Free People." " Umm ! " said Bagheera deep in his furry throat. "Does the Tio^er know his Nig-ht?" " Never till the jackal of the Moon stands clear of the evening mist. Sometimes it falls in the dry summer and sometimes in the wet rains — this one Night of the Tiger. But for the First of the Tigers, this would never have been, nor would any of us have known fear." The deer grunted sorrowfully, and Bagheera's lips curled in a wicked smile. " Do men know this — tale ? " said he. " None know it except the tigers, and we, the 28 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK elephants — the children of Tha. Now ye by the pools have heard it, and I have spoken." Hathi dipped his trunk into the water as a sign that he did not wish to talk. "But — but — but," said Mowgli, turning to Baloo, "why did not the First of the Tigers con- tinue to eat erass and leaves and trees? He did but break the buck's neck. He did not cat. What led him to the hot meat ? " " The trees and the creepers marked him. Lit- tle Brother, and made him the striped thing that we see. Never again would he eat their fruit ; but from that day he revenged himself upon the deer, and the others, the Eaters of Grass," said Baloo. "Then thou knowest the tale. Heh ? Why have I never heard ? " " Because the Jungle is full of such tales. If 1 made a beginning there would never be an end to them. Let go my ear, Little Brother." THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE UST to give you an idea of the im- mense variety of the Jungle Law, I have translated into verse (Baloo always recited them in a sort of sing-song) a few of the laws that apply to the wolves. There are, of course, hundreds and hundreds more, but these will do for speci- mens of the simpler rulings. Nozv this is the Laiu of the Jzingie — as old ami as true as the sky ; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf tJiat shall break it must die. As the erecper that girdles the tree -trunk the Lazv run- neth forward and baek — For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is tlie Pack. 30 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink dccpl}-, but never too deep ; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, Remember the Wolf is a hunter — go forth and get food of thine own. Keep peace with the Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, the Bear; And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair. When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail. When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home. Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, THE LAW OF TUK JUNGLE 31 The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. If yc kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, Lest yc frighten the deer from the crops, and the brother^ go empty away. Ve may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can ; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man. If yc plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride ; Pack- Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must cat where it lies ; And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf He may do what he will, But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill. Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim Full-gorge when the killer has eaten ; and none may refuse him the same. 32 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own : He is freed of all calls to the Pack ; he is judged by the Council alone. Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of the Head Wolf is Law. Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, ajid many and mighty are they ; But the head and the hoof of the Lazu and the Jiaimch and the hump is — Obey ! THE MIRACLE OE PURUN BHAGAT The night wc felt the eartli would move We stole and plucked him by the hand, Because we loved him with the love That knows but cannot understand. And when the roaring hillside broke, And all our world fell down in rain. We saved hiin, we the Little Folk , But lo ! he docs not come again ! Mourn now, wc saved him for the sake Of such poor love as wild ones may. Mourn ye ! Our brother will not wake, And his own kind drive us away ! Dirge of the Langurs. H* .H! V, THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT HERE was once a man in India who was Prime Min- ister of one of the semi-in dependent native States in the northwestern part of the country. He was a Brah- min, so high-caste that caste ceased to have any particu- lar meaning for him ; and his father had been an im- portant official in the gay-colored tag-rag and bobtail of an old-fashioned Hindu Court. But as Purun Dass grew up he felt that the old order of things was changing, and that if any one wished to get on in the world he must stand 35 36 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK well with the Knglisli, and imitatt; all that the English believed to be good. At the same time a native oflicial must keep his own master's favor. This was a difficult game, but the quiet, close-mouthed young Brahmin, helped by a good English education at a Bombay Univer- sity, played it cooll)', and rose, step by step, to be Prime Minister of the kingdom. That is to say, he held more real power than his master, the Maharajah. When the old king — who was suspicious of the English, their railways and telegraphs — died, Purun Dass stood high with his young successor, who had been tutored by an Englishman ; and between them, though he always took care that his master should have the credit, they established schools for little girls, made roads, and started State dispensaries and shows of agricultural im- plements, and published a yearly blue-book on the " Moral and Material Procuress of the State," and the Foreign Office and the Government of India were delighted. Very few native States take up English progress altogether, for they will not believe, as Purun Dass showed he did, that what was good for the Englishman must be twice as orood for the Asiatic. The Prime Minister became the honored friend of Viceroys THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 37 and Governors, and Lieutenant-Governors, and medical missionaries, and common missionaries, and hard-riding- English officers who came to shoot in the State preserves, as well as of whole hosts of tourists who traveled up and down India in the cold weather, showing how things ought to be managed. In his spare time he would en- dow scholarships for the study of medicine and manufactures on strictly English lines, and write letters to the " Pioneer," the greatest Indian daily paper, explaining his master's aims and objects. At last he went to Encrland on a visit, and had to pay enormous sums to the priests when he came back ; for even so high-caste a Brahmin as Purun Dass lost caste by crossing the black sea. In London he met and talked with every one worth knowinof — men whose names o-q all over the world — and saw a great deal more than he said. He was given honorary degrees by learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of Hindu social reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all London cried, '* This is the most fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since cloths were first laid." When he returned to India there was a blaze of glory, for the Viceroy himself made a special visit to confer upon the Maharajah the Grand 38 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK Cross of the Star of India — all diamonds and ribbons and enamel; and at the same ceremony, while the cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire ; so that his' name stood Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E. That evening, at dinner in the big Viceregal tent, he stood up with the badge and the collar of the Order on his breast, and replying to the toast of his master's health, made a speech few Englishmen could have bettered. Next month, when the city had returned to its sunbaked quiet, he did a thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the world's affairs went, he died. The jeweled order of his knighthood went back to the Indian Gov- ernment, and a new Prime Minister was appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of Gen- eral Post began in all the subordinate appoint- ments. The priests knew what had happened and the people guessed ; but India is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why ; and the fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ocher-colored dress of a Sun- nyasi or holy man, was considered nothing extra- TME MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 39 ordinary. He had been, as the Old Law recom- mends, twenty )ears a )'outh, twcaity years a hghter," — though he had never carried a weapon in liis hfe, — and twenty years head of a house- hold. He had used his wealth and his power for what he knew both to be worth ; he had taken honor when it came his way ; he had seen men and cities far and near, and men and cities had stood up and honored him. Now he would let these things go, as a man drops the cloak he no lonsfer needs. Behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished brown coco-de-mer\\\ his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on the ground — behind him they were firinof salutes from the bastions in honor of his happy successor. Purun Dass nodded. All that life was ended; and he bore it no more ill-will or good-will than a man bears to a colorless dream of the night. He was a Sunnyasi — a houseless wandering mendicant, depending on his neigh- bors for his daily bread ; and so long as there is a morsel to divide in India neither priest nor beggar starves. He had never in his life tasted meat, and very seldom eaten even fish. A five-pound note would have covered his personal expenses 40 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK for food through any one of the many years in which he had been absohite master of milHons of money. Even when he was beino- honized in London he had held before him his dream of peace and quiet — the long, white, dusty Indian road, printed all over with bare feet, the incessant, slow-movintr traffic, and the sharp-smelling" wood smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twi- light, where the wayfarers sit at their evening meal. When the time came to make that dream true the Prime Minister took the proper steps, and in three days you might more easily have found a bubble in the trouoh of the lonii" Atlantic seas than Purun Dass among the roving, gathering, sepa- rating millions of India. At night his antelope skin was spread where the darkness overtook hini — sometimes in a Sun- nyasi monastery by the roadside ; sometimes by a mud pillar shrine of Kala Pir, wdiere the Jogis, who are another misty division of holy men, would receive him as they do those who know what castes and divisions are worth ; sometimes on the out- skirts of a little Hindu village, wdiere the children would steal up with the food tlunr parents had prepared ; and sometimes on the pitch of the bare grazing-grounds, where the flame of his stick fire THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 41 waked the drowsy camels. It was all one to Pu- run Dass — or Purun Bhagat, as he called him- self now. Earth, people, and food were all one. But unconsciously his feet drew him away north- ward and eastward ; from the south to Rohtak ; from Rohtak to Kurnool ; from Kurnool to ruined Samanah, and then up-stream along the dried bed of the Gugger river that fills only when the rain falls in the hills, till one day he saw the far line of the great Himalayas. Then Purun Bhagat smiled, for he remem- bered that his mother was of Rajput Brahmin birth, from Kulu way — a Hill-woman, always home- sick for the snows — and that the least touch of Hill blood draws a man at the end back to where he belongs. " Yonder," said Purun Bhagat, breasting the lower slopes of the Sewaliks, where the cacti stand up like seven-branched candlesticks — "yonder I shall sit down and get knowledge " ; and the cool wind of the Himalayas whistled about his ears as he trod the road that led to Simla. The last time he had come that way it had been in state, with a clattering cavalry escort, to visit the gentlest and most affable of Viceroys ; and the two had talked for an hour together about mutual friends in London, and what the In- THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK dian common folk really thouoht of things. This lime Piinm I)hao-at paid no calls, but leaned on the rail of the Mall, watch in ^l;- that Li'lorious view of the Plains spread out forty miles below, till a native Mohamme- dan policeman told liim he was obstruct- in_o- traffic ; and \\\- run Rhao-at sahicUiied re\ erently to the Law, because he knew the \alue of it, and was seeking for a Law of his own. 'IhcMi he moved on, and slept thatnig'ht in an empty hut at Chota Simla, which looks like the very last end of the earth, but it was only the be^^-innino- of his journey. He followed the IIimala)a- Fhibet road, the little ten-foot track that is blasted out of solid THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 43 rock, or strutted out on timbers over gulfs a thousand feet deep ; that dips into warm, wet, shut-in valleys, and climbs out across bare, grassy hill- shoulders where the sun strikes like a burn- ing-glass ; or turns through dripping, dark for- ests where the tree-ferns dress the trunks from head to heel, and the pheasant calls to his mate. And he met Thibetan herdsmen with their dogs and flocks of sheep, each sheep with a little bag of borax on his back, and wandering wood-cut- ters, and cloaked and blanketed Lamas from Thibet, coming into India on pilgrimage, and en- voys of little solitary Hill-states, posting furiously on ring-streaked and piebald ponies, or the caval- cade of a Rajah paying a visit ; or else for a long, clear day he would see nothing more than a black bear grunting and rooting below in the valley. When he first started, the roar of the world he had left still rano;" in his ears, as the roar of a tunnel rings long after the train has passed through ; but when he had put the Mutteeanee Pass behind him that was all done, and Purun Bhagat was alone with himself, walking, wonder- ing, and thinking, his eyes on the ground, and his thoughts with the clouds. One evening he crossed the highest pass he had met till then — it had been a two days' climb 44 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK — and came out on a line of snow-peaks that banded all the horizon — mountains from fifteen to twenty thousand feet high, looking- almost near enough to hit with a stone, though they were fifty or sixty miles away. The pass was crowned with dense, dark forest — deodar, walnut, wild cherry, wild olive, and wild pear, but mostly deo- dar, which is the Himalayan cedar; and under the shadow of the deodars stood a deserted shrine to Kali — who is Durga, who is Sitala, who is sometimes worshiped against the smallpox, Purun Dass swept the stone floor clean, smiled at the grinning statue, made himself a little mud fireplace at the back of the shrine, spread his an- telope skin on a bed of fresh pine-needles, tucked his bairagi — his brass-handled crutch — under his armpit, and sat down to rest. Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, where a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. All round it the tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of the mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the smooth stone circles of the threshing-floors. Look- ing across the valley, the eye was deceived by the size of thimrs, and could not at first realize that THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 45 what seemed to be low scrub, on the opposite mountain -flank, was in truth a forest of hundred- foot pines. Purun l^hagat saw an eagle swoop across the gigantic hollow, but the great bird dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. A few bands of scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, catching on a shoulder of the hills, or rising up and dying out when they were level with the head of the pass. And " Here shall I find peace," said Purun Bhagat. Now, a Hill-man makes nothing of a few hun- dred feet up or down, and as soon as the villagers saw the smoke in the deserted shrine, the village priest climbed up the terraced hillside to welcome the stranger. When he met Purun Bhagat's eyes — the eyes of a man used to control thousands — he bowed to the earth, took the begging-bowl without a word, and returned to the village, saying, " We have at last a holy man. Never have I seen such a man. He is of the Plains — but pale-colored — a Brahmin of the Brahmins." Then all the housewives of the village said, "Think you he will stay with us ? " and each did her best to cook the most savory meal for the Bhagat. Hill -food is very simple, but with buckwheat and Indian corn, and rice and red pepper, and little fish out 46 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK of the Stream in the valley, and honey from the flue-like hives built in the stone walls, and dried apricots, and turmeric, and wild ginger, and ban- nocks of flour, a devout woman can make good things, and it was a full bowl that the priest car- ried to the Bhagat. Was he going to stay ? asked the priest. Would he need a chela — a disciple — to beg for him? Had he a blanket a":ainst the cold weather ? Was the food ":ood ? Purun Bhagat ate, and thanked the giver. It was in his mind to stay. That was sufficient, said the priest. Let the begging-bowl be placed outside the shrine, in the hollow made by those two twisted roots, and daily should the Bhagat be fed ; for the village felt honored that such a man — he looked timidly into the Bhagat's face — should tarry among them. That day saw the end of Purun IMiagat's wan- derings. He had come to the place appointed for him — the silence and the space. After this, time stopped, and he, sitting at the mouth of the shrine, could not tell whether he were alive or dead; a man with control of his limbs, or a part of the hills, and the clouds, and the shifting rain and sunlight. He would rejjeat a Name softly to himself a hundred hundred times, till, at each re- petition, he seemed to move more and more out of his body, sweeping up to the doors of some THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BIIAGAT 47 tremendous discovtn-)- ; Init, just as the door was openin<^, his bod\' would drag" him back, and, with grief, he felt he was locked up again in the flesh and bones of Purun Bhagat. Every morning the fdled begging-bowl was laid silently in the crutch of the roots outside the shrine. Sometimes the priest brought it ; some- times a Ladakhi trader, lociofinor in the villaee, and anxious to get merit, trudged up the path ; but, more often, it was the woman who had cooked the meal overnight; and she would murmur, hardly above her breath : " Speak for me before the gods, Bhagat. Speak for such a one, the wife of so-and-so ! " Now and then some bold child would be allowed the honor, and Purun Bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as fast as his little legs could carry him, but the Bha- gat never caine down to the village. It was laid out like a map at his feet. He could see the even- ing gatherings, held on the circle of the threshing- floors because that was the only level ground ; could see the wonderful unnamed ereen of the young rice, the indigo blues of the Indian corn, the dock-like patches of buckwheat, and, in its season, the red bloom of the amaranth, whose tiny seeds, being neither grain nor pulse, make a food that can be lawfully eaten by Hindus in time of fasts. 48 THE SFXOND JUNGLE BOOK When the year turned, the roofs of the huts were all little squares of purest gold, for it was on the roofs that they laid out their cobs of the corn to dry. Hiv- ing and harvest, rice- sowing and husking, passed before his eyes, all embroidered down there on the many- sided plots of fields, and he thought of them all, and wondered what they all led to at the long last. Even in populated India a man cannot a day sit still before the wild things run over him as though he were a rock ; and in that wilderness very soon the wild THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 49 things, who knew Kah's Shrine- well, came back to look at the intruder. The laugiLvs, the big gray- whiskered monkeys of the Himalayas, were, naturally, the first, for they are alive with cu- riosity ; and when they had upset the begging- bowl, and rolled it round the floor, and tried their teeth on the brass-handled crutch, and made faces at the antelope skin, they decided that the human being who sat so still was harm- less. At evening, they would leap down from the {nnes, and beg with their hands for things to eat, and then swing off in graceful curves. They liked tlie warmth of the fire, too, and huddled round it till Purun Bhagat had to push them aside to throw on more fuel; and in the morn- ing, as often as not, he would find a furry ape sharing his blanket. All day long, one or other of the tribe would sit by his side, staring out at the snows, crooning and looking unspeakably wise and sorrowful. After the monkeys came the barasingh, that bior deer which is like our red deer, but strono;er. He wished to rub off the velvet of his horns against the cold stones of Kali's statue, and stamped his feet when he saw the man at the shrine. But Purun Bhagat never moved, and, little by little, the royal stag edged up and nuz- 50 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK zlcd his shoulder. Punin Bhagat shd one cool hand along the hot antlers, and the touch soothed the fretted beast, who bowed his head, and Purun Bhagat very softly rubbed and raveled off the velvet. Afterward, the barasiiigh brought his doe and fawn — gentle things that mumbled on the holy man's blanket — or would come alone at night, his eyes green in the fire-flicker, to take his share of fresh walnuts. At last, the musk- deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the deerlets, came, too, her big rabbity ears erect ; even brindled, silent niusJiick-nabJia must needs find out what the light in the shrine meant, and drop her moose-like nose into Purun Bhagat's lap, coming and going with the shadows of the fire. Purun Bhagat called them all " my bro- thers," and his low call of " BJiai I BJiai! " would draw them from the forest at noon if they were within earshot. The Himalayan black bear, moody and suspicious — Sona, who has the V- shaped white mark under his chin — passed that way more than once ; and since the 1 Mi agat showed no fear, Sona showed no anger, Init watched him, and came closer, and begged a share of the ca- resses, and a dole of bread or wild berries. Often, in the still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb to the \er)' crest of the pass to watch the red THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT 51 day walking aloni;' the peaks of the snows, he would hnd Sona shuffling" and grunting at his heels, thrusting a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing it away with a W^6>if^ t% m A SONG OF KABIR H, light was the world that he weighed in his hands ! Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands ! He has gone from the giiddee and put on the shroud, And departed in guise of bairagi avowed ! Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet. The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat ; His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd — He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed ! He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear (There was One ; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir); The Red Mist of Doing has thinned to a cloud — He has taken the Path for bairagi avowed ! To learn and discern of his brother the clod. Of his brother the brute, and his brother the God. He has gone from the council and put on the shroud ^" Can ye hear ? " saith Kabir), a bairagi avowed ! 6t LETTING IN THE JUNGLE Veil them, cover them, wall them round — Blossom, and creeper, and weed — Let us forget the sight and the sound, The smell and the touch of the breed ! Fat black ash by the altar-stone, Here is the white-foot rain, And the does bring forth in the fields unsown. And none shall affright them again ; And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown, And none shall inhabit again ! ■lb ■ 'Wif'. tei*^'i wmtsm&ma ly, ;lt '-'IP LETTING IN THE JUNGLE '^ y^^^U will remember, if you have read the tales in the first Jungle Book, that, after Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan's hide to the Coun- cil Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee ^*' V j\ Pack that henceforward he i.-;:> J would hunt in the Jungle alone ; and the four children of Mother and Father Wolf said that they would hunt with him. But it is not easy to change one's life all in a minute — particularly in the Jungle. The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep 6s 66 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK for a da)' and a nig-ht. Then he told Mother Wolf and P^ather Wolf as much as they could un- derstand of his adventures among men ; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and down the blade of his skinning-knife, — the same he had skinned Shere Khan with, — they said he had learned something. Then Akela and Gray Bro- ther had to explain their share of the great buf- falo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli had managed his war. It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and from time to time, during the talk, Mother Wolf would throw up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock. " But for Akela and Gray Brother here," Mow- gli said, at the en^l, " I could have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst seen the black herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the Man- Pack flung stones at me ! " " I am orlad I did not see that last," said Mo- ther Wolf, stiffly. " It is not my custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals. / LETTING IN THE JUNGLE bj would have taken a price from the Man-Pack; but I woukl have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes, I woukl have spared her alone." " Peace, peace, Raksha ! " said Father Wolf, lazily. "Our Prog has come back again — so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is a cut, more or less, on the head ? Leave Men alone." Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: " Leave Men alone." Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf's side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again. " But what," said Akela, cocking one ear — " but what if men do not leave thee alone, Little Bro- ther?" "Webeyfz'^," said Gray Brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word. "We also miofht attend to that huntinof," said Bagheera, with a little switcJi-sivitch of his tail, looking at Baloo. " But why think of men now, Akela?" " For this reason," the Lone Wolf answered: " when that yellow thief's hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the vil- lage, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and 68 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK lying" down, to miikc ii mixed trail in case one should follow us. Hut whcni I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawkino^ between the trees, and huncf up above me. Said Mang, ' The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest.' " "It w^as a big stone that I threw," chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throw- ing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him. " I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said the Red Flower blossomed at the o-ate of the vil- lage, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now /know, for I have good cause," — i\kela looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side, — " that men do not carry guns for pleasure. Pres- ently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail — if, indeed, he be not already on it." " But why should he ? Men have cast me out. What more do they need ? " said Mowgli, angrily. "Thou art a man. Little Brother," Akc^la re- turned. " It is not for us, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why." He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-isinife cut deep into the ground below. LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 69 Mowgli Struck quicker than an average human eye coukl follow, hut Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on. " Another time," Mowgli said quietly, return- ing the knife to its sheath, " speak of the Man- Pack and of Mowgli in tzvo breaths — not one." " Phff ! That is a sharp tooth," said Akela, snuffing at the blade's cut in the earth, " but liv- ing with the Man- Pack has spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking." Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Gray Brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up wind, and, half crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously. He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose ; and his three months in the smoky village had set him back sadly. However, he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect 70 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK to catch the upper scent, which, though it is the faintest, is the truest. " Man ! " Akela growled, ch'opping on his haunches. " Bulcleo ! " said Mowgh, sitting down. " He follows our trail, and yonder is the sunlight on his gun. . Look ! " It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a second, on the brass clamps of the old Tower musket, but nothing in the Jungle winks with just that flash, except when the clouds race over the sky. Then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or even a highly polished leaf will flash like a heliograph. But that day was cloudless and still. " I knew men would follow," said Akela, trium- phantly. " Not for nothing have I led the Pack." The four cubs said nothing, but ran down hill on their bellies, melting into the thorn and under- brush as a mole melts into a lawn. "Where go ye, and without word?" Mowgli called. " H'sh ! We roll his skull here before mid- day ! " Gray Brother answered. "Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat Man ! " Mowgli shrieked. " Who was a wolf but now ? Who drove the LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 71 knife at me for thinking- he mi^-ht be Man ? " o o said Akela, as the four wolves turned back sul- lenly and dropped to heel. " Am I to o^ive a reason for all I choose to do ?" said Mowgli, furiously. "That is Man! There speaks Man!" Ba- ofheera muttered under his whiskers. " Even so did men talk round the King's cages at Oodey- pore. We of the Jungle know that Man is wisest of all. If we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he is most foolish." Raising his voice, he added, "The Man-cub is right in this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one, unless we know what the others will do, is bad hunt- ing. Come, let us see what this Man means toward us." " We will not come," Gray Brother growled. ** Hunt alone, Little Brother. We know our own minds. That skull would have been ready to bring by now." Mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends, his chest heaving and his eyes full of tears. He strode forward to the wolves, and, dropping on one knee, said : " Do I not know my mind ? Look at me ! " They looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called them back again and again, 72 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and they trembled in every liml), while Mowgli stared and stared. "Now," said he, " of us five, which is leader? " "Thou art leader, Little Brother," said Gray Brother, and he licked Mowgli's foot. " Follow, then," said Mowgli, and the four fol- lowed at his heels with their tails between their leors. " This comes of living with the Man-Pack," said Bagheera, slipping down after them. "There is more in the Jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo." The old bear said nothings but he thouo-ht many things. Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jun- gle, at right angles to Buldeo's path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his musket on his shoulder, running up the trail of overnight at a dog-trot. You will remember that Mowgli had left the village with the heavy weight of Shere Khan's raw hide on his shoulders, while Akela and Gray Brother trotted behind, so that the triple trail was very clearly marked. Presently Buldeo came to where Akela, as you know, had gone back and mixed it all up. Then he sat down, and coughed and grunted, and made little casts round and about LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 73 into the Jungle to pick it up again, and all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him. No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be heard ; and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old man as a school of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech began below the lowest end of the scale that un- trained human beings can hear. [The other end is bounded by the high squeak of Mang, the Bat, which very many people cannot catch at all. From that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.] " This is betterthan any kill, "said Gray Brother, as Buldeo stooped and peered and puffed. " He looks like a lost pig in the Jungles by the river. What does he say ? " Buldeo was muttering savagely. Mowgli translated. " He says that packs of wolves must have danced round me. He says that he never saw such a trail in his life. He says he is tired." " He will be rested before he picks it up again," said Bagheera coolly, as he slipped round a tree- trunk, in the game of blindman's-buff that they 74 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK were playing. ''Now, what does the lean thing do ? " " Eat or blow smoke out of his mouth. Men always play with their mouths," said Mowgli ; and the silent trailers saw the old man fill and light and puff at a water-pipe, and they took good note of the smell of the tobacco, so as to be sure of Buldeo in the darkest night, if necessp^y. Then a little knot of charcoal-burners came down the path, and naturally halted to speak to Buldeo, whose fame as a hunter reached for at least twenty miles round. They all sat down and smoked, and Bagheera and the others came up and watched while Buldeo began to tell the story of Mowgli, the Devil-child, from one end to another, with additions and inventions. How he himself had really killed Shere Khan ; and how Mowgli had turned himself into a wolf, and fought with him all the afternoon, and changed into a boy again and bewitched Buldeo's rifle, so that the bullet turned the corner, when he pointed it at Mowgli, and killed one of Buldeo's own buffaloes ; and how the village, knowing him to be the bravest hunter in Seeonee, had sent him out to kill this Devil -child. But meantime the village had got hold of Messua and her husband, who were un- doubtedly the father and mother of this Devil- LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 75 child, and had barricaded them in dieir own hut, and presently would torture them to make them confess they were witch and wizard, and then they would be burned to death. "When?" said the charcoal-burners, because they would very much like to be present at the ceremony. Buldeo said that nothing would be done till he returned, because the village wished him to kill the Jungle Boy first. After that they would dis- pose of Messua and her husband, and divide their lands and buffaloes among the village. Messua's husband had some remarkably fine buffaloes, too. It was an excellent thing to destroy wizards, Bul- deo thought ; and people who entertained Wolf- children out of the Jungle were clearly the worst kind of witches. But, said the charcoal-burners, what would hap- pen if the English heard of it ? The English, they. had heard, were a perfectly mad people, who would not let honest farmers kill witches in peace. Why, said Buldeo, the head-man of the village would report that Messua and her husband had died of snake-bite. That was all arranged, and the only thing now was to kill the Wolf- child. They did not happen to have seen anything of such a creature? 76 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK The charcoal-burners looked round cautiously, and thanked their stars they had not ; but they had no doubt that so brave a man as Buldeo would find him if any one could. The sun was getting rather low, and they had an idea that they would push on to Buldeo's village and see that wicked witch. Buldeo said that, though it was his duty to kill the Devil-child, he could not think of letting a party of unarmed men go through the Jungle, which might produce the Wolf-demon at any minute, without his escort. He, therefore, would accompany them, and if the sorcerer's child appeared — well, he would show them how the best hunter in Seeonee dealt with such things. The Brahmin, he said, had given him a charm against the creature that made everything per- fectly safe. " What says he ? What says he ? What says he ? " the wolves repeated every few minutes ; and Mowofli translated until he came to the witch part of the story, which was a little beyond him, and then he said that the man and woman who had been so kind to him were trapped. " Does Man trap Man ? " said Bagheera. " So he says. I cannot understand the talk. They are all mad together. What have Messua and her man to do with me that they should be LETTING IN THE JUNGLE T] put in a trap ; and what is all this talk about the Red Flower? I must look to this. Whatever they would do to Messua they will not do till Buldeo returns. And so — " Mowgli thought hard, with his fingers playing round the haft of the skinning-knife, while Buldeo and the char- coal-burners went off very valiantly in single file. " I am going hot- foot back to the Man- Pack," Mowgli said at last. " And those ? " said Gray Brother, looking hun- grily after the brown backs of the charcoal- burners. " Sing them home," said Mowgli with a grin ; " I do not wish them to be at the villasfe gfates till it is dark. Can ye hold them ? " Gray Brother bared his white teeth in contempt. " We can head them round and round in circles like tethered goats — if I know Man." " That I do not need. Sing to them a little, lest they be lonely on the road, and, Gray Bro- ther, the song need not be of the sweetest. Go with them, Bagheera, and help make that song. When the night is shut down, meet me by the village — Gray Brother knows the place." " It is no liofht huntincr to work for a Maii-cub. When shall I sleep ? " said Bagheera, yawning, 78 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK though his eyes showed that he was deHghted with the amusement. " Me to singr to naked men ! But let us try." He lowered his head so that the sound would travel, and cried a long, long, " Good hunting" — a midnight call in the afternoon, which was quite awful enouoh to beo^in with. MowQfli heard it rumble, and rise, and fall, and die off in a creepy sort of whine behind him, and laughed to himself as he ran through the Jungle. He could see the charcoal-burners huddled in a knot ; old Buldeo's gun-barrel waving, like a banana-leaf, to every point of the compass at once. Then Gray Bro- ther gave the Ya-la-hi ! Yalaha ! call for the buck-driving, when the Pack drives the nilghai, the big blue cow, before them, and it seemed to come from the very ends of the earth, nearer, and nearer, and nearer, till it ended in a shriek snapped off short. The other three answered, till even Mowgli could have vowed that the full Pack was in full cry, and then they all broke into the mag- nificent Morning-song in the Jungle, with every turn, and flourish, and grace- note, that a deep- mouthed wolf of the Pack knows. This is a rough rendering of the song, but you must imagine what it sounds like when it breaks the afternoon hush of the Jungle : LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 79 One moment past our bodies cast No shadow on the plain ; Now clear and black they stride our track, And we run home again. In morning hush, each rock and bush Stands hard, and high, and raw : Then give the Call : " Good rest to all That keep the Jungle Law ! " Now horn and pelt our peoples melt In covert to abide ; Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill Our Jungle Barons gHde. Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain. That draw the new-yoked plow ; Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red Above the lit talao. Ho ! Get to lair ! The sun 's aflare Behind the breathing grass : And creaking through the young bamboo The warning whispers pass. By day made strange, the woods we range With blinking eyes we scan ; While down the skies the wild duck cries : " The Day— the Day to Majif " The dew is dried that drenched our hide, Or washed about our way ; And where we drank, the puddled bank Is crisping into clay. 8o THI-: SECOND JUNGLE BOOK The traitor Dark gives up each mark Of stretched or hooded claw ; Then hear the Call : " Good rest to all That keep the Jungle Law I " But no translation can give the effect of it, or the yelping scorn the Four threw into every word of it, as they heard the trees crash w^hen the men hastily climbed up into the branches, and Buldeo began repeating incantations and charms. Then they lay down and slept, for, like all who live by their own exertions, they were of a methodical cast of mind ; and no one can work well without sleep. Meantime, Mowgli was putting the miles be- hind him, nine to the hour, swinging on, delighted to tind himself so fit after all his cramped months among men. The one idea in his head was to get Messua and her husband out of the trap, whatever it was ; for he had a natural mistrust of traps. Later on, he promised himself, he would j)ay his debts to the village at large. It was at twilight when he saw the well-re- membered grazing-grounds, and the d/m/c-trQQ where Gray Brother had waited for him on the morning that he killed Shere Khan. Angry as he was at the whole breed and community of Man, LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 8i something" jumped uj) in his throat and made him catch his breath when he looked at the villatre roofs. Me noticed that every one had come in from the fields unusually early, and that, instead of getting" to their evening" cooking, they gathered in a crowd under the village tree, and chattered, and shouted. " Men must always be making traps for men, or they are not content," said Mowgli. " Last night it was Mowgli — but that night seems many Rains ago. To-night it is Messua and her man. To-morrow, and for very many nights after, it will be Mowgli's turn again." He crept along outside the wall till he came to Messua's hut, and looked through the window into the room. There lay Messua, gagged, and bound hand and foot, breathing hard, and groan- ing : her husband was tied to the gaily painted bedstead. The door of the hut that opened into the street was shut fast, and three or four people were sitting with their backs to it. Mowgli knew the manners and customs of the villagers very fairly. He argued that so long as they could eat, and talk, and smoke, they would not do anything else ; but as soon as they had fed they would begin to be dangerous. Buldeo would be coming in before long, and if his escort 82 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK had done its dut)-, Buldco would have a very interesting tale to tell. So he went in through the window, and, stooping over the man and the woman, cut their thongs, pulling out the gags, and looked round the hut for some milk. Messua was half wild with pain and fear (she had been beaten and stoned all the morning), and Mowgli put his hand over her mouth just in time to stop a scream. Her husband was only be- wildered and angry, and sat picking dust and things out of his torn beard. "I knew — I knew he would come," *Messua sobbed at last. " Now do I k}iow that he is my son ! " and she hugged Mowgli to her heart. Up to that time Mowgli had been perfectly steady, but now he began to tremble all over, and that surprised him immensely. "Why are these thongs? Why have they tied thee ? " he asked, after a pause. "To be put to the death for making a son of thee — what else ? " said the man, sullenly. "Look! I bleed." Messua said nothing, but it was at he}' wounds that Mowgli looked, and they heard him grit his teeth when he saw the blood. "Whose work is this?" said he. "There is a price to pay." LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 83 " The work of all the village. I was too rich. I had too many cattle. Therefore she and I are witches, because we gave thee shelter." " I do not understand. Let Messua tell the tale." " I gave thee milk, Nathoo ; dost thou remem- ber? " Messua said timidly. " Because thou wast my son, whom the tiger took, and because I loved thee very dearly. They said that I was thy mother, the mother of a devil, and therefore worthy of death." " And what is a devil ? " said Mowgfli. " Death I have seen." The man looked up gloomily, but Messua laughed. " See ! " she said to her husband, " I knew ^ I said that he was no sorcerer. He is my son — my son ! " " Son or sorcerer, what good will that do us? " the man answered. "We be as dead already." "Yonder is the road to the Jungle" — Mowgli pointed through the window. " Your hands and feet are free. Go now." " We do not know the Jungle, my son, as — as thou knowest," Messua began. " I do not think that I could walk far." " And the men and women would be upon our backs and drag us here again," said the husband. 84 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK " H'm ! " said Mowgli, and he tickled the palm of his hand with tlie tip of his skinning-knife ; " I have no wish to do harm to any one of this vil- lage — ye^. But I do not think they will stay thee. In a little while they will have much else to think upon. Ah ! " he lifted his head and lis- tened to shouting and trampling outside. "So they have let Buldeo come home at last ? " " He was sent out this morning to kill thee," Messua cried. " Didst thou meet him ? " "Yes — we — I met him. He has a tale to tell ; and while he is telling it there is time to do much. But first I will learn what they mean. Think where ye would go, and tell me when I come back." He bounded through the window and ran alontr acfain outside the wall of the villag-e till he came within ear-shot of the crowd round the peepul-tree. Buldeo was lying on the ground, coughing and groaning, and every one was ask- ing him questions. His hair had fallen about his shoulders ; his hands and legs were skinned from climbing up trees, and he could hardly speak, but he felt the importance of his position keenly. From time to time he said something about devils and singing devils, and magic enchantment, just to give the crowd a taste of what was coming. Then he called for water. LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 85 " Bah ! " said Moworli. " Chatter — chatter ! Talk, talk ! Men are blood-brothers of the Ba7i- dar-loi^. Now he must wash his mouth with water ; now he must blow smoke ; and when all that is done he has still his story to tell. They are very wise people — men. They will leave no one to guard Messua till their ears are stuffed with Buldeo's tales. And — I grow as lazy as they ! " He shook himself and glided back to the hut. Just as he was at the window he felt a touch on his foot. " Mother," said he, for he knew that tongue well, " what dost thou here ? " " I heard my children singing through the woods, and I followed the one I loved best. Lit- tle Frog, I have a desire to see that woman who gave thee milk," said Mother Wolf, all wet with the dew. " They have bound and mean to kill her. I have cut those ties, and she goes with her man through the Jungle." " I also will follow. I am old, but not yet toothless." Mother Wolf reared herself up on end, and looked through the window into the dark of the hut. In a minute she dropped noiselessly, and all 86 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK she said was: "I gave thee th)- first milk; but Bagheera speaks truth: Man goes to Man at the last." " Maybe," said Mowgli, with a very unpleas- ant look on his face; "but to-night I am very fir from that trail. Wait here, but do not let her see." ''Thou wast never afraid of 7ne, Little Frog," said Mother Wolf, backing into the high grass, and blotting herself out, as she knew how. "And now," said Mowgli, cheerfully, as he swung into the hut again, " they are all sitting round Buldeo, who is saying that which did not happen. When his talk is finished, they say they will assuredly come here with the Red — with fire and burn you both. And then?" " I have spoken to my man," said Messua. " Kanhiwara is thirty miles from here, but at Kanhiwara we may find the English — " " And what Pack are they ? " said Mowgli. "I do not know. They be white, and it is said that they govern all the land, and do not suf- fer people to burn or beat each other without witnesses. If we can get thither to-night, we live. Otherwise we die." " Live, then. No man passes the gates to-night. But what does he do ? " Messua's husband was LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 87 on his hands and knees digging up the earth in one corner ot the hut. "It is his httle money," said Messua. "We can take nothing else." "Ah, yes. The stuff that passes from hand to hand and never grows warmer. Do they need it outside this place also ? " said Mowgli. The man stared angrily. " He is a fool, and no devil," he muttered. "With the money I can buy a horse. We are too bruised to walk far, and the village will follow us in an hour." " I say they will not follow till I choose ; but the horse is well thought of, for Messua is tired." Her husband stood up and knotted the last of the rupees into his waist-cloth. Mowgli helped Mes- sua through the window, and the cool night air revived her, but the Jungle in the starlight looked very dark and terrible. "Ye know the trail to Kanhiwara?" Mowgli whispered. They nodded. " Good. Remember, now, not to be afraid. And there is no need to go quickly. Only — only there may be some small singing in the Jun- gle behind you and before." "Think you we would have risked a night in the Jungle through anything less than the fear of 88 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK burning? It is better to l)e killed by beasts than by men," said Messua's husband ; but Messua looked at Mowgli and smiled. " I say," Mowgli went on, just as though he were Baloo repeating an old Jungle Law for the hundredth time to a foolish cub — " I say that not a tooth in the Jungle is bared against you ; not a foot in the Jungle is lifted against you. Neither man nor beast shall stay you till ye come within eye- shot of Kanhiwara. There will be a watch about you." He turned quickly to Messua, say- ing, " He does not believe, but thou wilt believe ? " "Ay, surely, my son. Man, ghost, or wolf of the Jungle, I believe." ''He will be afraid when he hears my people sinofino". Thou wilt know and understand. Go now, and slowly, for there is no need of any haste. The gates are shut." Messua flung herself sobbing at Mowgli's feet, but he Hfted her very quickly with a shiver. Then she hung about his neck and called him every name of blessing she could think of, but her hus- band looked enviously across his fields, and said : "//"we reach Kanhiwara, and I get the ear of the English, I will bring such a lawsuit against the Brahmin and old Buldeo and the others as shall eat the village to the bone. They shall pay me LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 89 twice over for my crops untilled and my buffaloes unfed. I will have a great justice," Mowgli laughed. "I do not know what justice is, but — come next Rains and see what is left." They went off toward the Jungle, and Mother Wolf leaped from her place of hiding. " Follow ! " said Mowgli ; " and look to it that all the Jungle knows these two are safe. Give toncfue a little. I would call Baeheera." The long, low howl rose and fell, and Mowgli saw Messua's husband flinch and turn, half minded to run back to the hut. "Go on," Mowgli called cheerfully. "I said there might be singing, The call will follow up to Kanhiwara. It is Favor of the Jungle." Messua uro-ed her husband forward, and the darkness of the Jungle shut down on them and Mother Wolf as Bagheera rose up almost under Mowgli's feet, trembling with delight of the night that drives the Jungle People wild. "I am ashamed of thy brethren," he said, pur- ring. " What ? Did they not sing sweetly to Buldeo?" said Mowgli. « " Too well ! Too well ! They made even me forget my pride, and, by the Broken Lock that freed me, I went singing through the Jungle as 90 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK though I were out wooing in the spring ! Didst thou not hear us ? " " I had other game afoot. Ask Buldeo if he hked the song. But where are the Four ? I do not wish one of the Man- Pack to leave the cfates to-night." " What need of the Four, then?" said Bagheera, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes ablaze, and purring louder than ever. " I can hold them, Little Brother. Is it killinor at last ? The sinor- ing and the sight of the men climbing up the trees have made me very ready. What is Man that we should care for him — the naked brown digger, the hairless and toothless, the eater of earth ? I have followed him all day — at noon — in the white sunlight. I herded him as the wolves herd buck. I am Bagheera ! Bagheera ! Bagheera ! As I dance with my shadow, so danced I with those men. Look ! " The great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling overhead, struck left and right into the empty air, that sung under the strokes, landed noiselessly, and leaped again and again, while the half purr, half growl gathered head as steam rumbles in a boiler. "I am Bagheera — in the Jungle — in the night, and all my strength is in me. Who shall stay my stroke ? Man -cub, with LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 91 one blow of my paw I could beat thy head flat as a dead frog in the summer ! " "Strike, then!" said Mowgli, in the dialect of the village, not the talk of the Jungle, and the human words brought Bagheera to a full stop, flung back on haunches that quivered under him, his head just at the level of Mowgli's. Once more Mowgli stared, as he had stared at the rebellious cubs, full into the beryl-green eyes till the red glare behind their green went out like the light of a lighthouse shut off twenty miles across the sea ; till the eyes dropped, and the big head with them — dropped lower and lower, and the red rasp of a tongue grated on Mowgli's instep. " Brother — Brother — Brother ! " the boy whis- pered, stroking steadily and lightly from the neck along the heaving back : "Be still, be still ! It is the fault of the night, and no fault of thine." " It was the smells of the night," said Bagheera penitently. " This air cries aloud to me. But how dost tli07i know ? " Of course the air round an Indian village is full of all kinds of smells, and to any creature who does nearly all his thinking through his nose, smells are as maddening as music and drugs are to human beings. Mowgli gentled the pan- 92 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK ther for a few minutes longer, and he lay down like a cat before a fire, his paws tucked under his breast, and his eyes half shut. " Thou art of the Jungle and not of the Jungle," he said at last. "And I am only a black pan- ther. But I love thee. Little Brother." "They are very long at their talk under the tree," Mowgli s.aid, without noticing the last sentence. " Buldeo must have told many tales. They should come soon to drag the woman and her man out of the trap and put them into the Red Flower. They will find that trap sprung. Ho! ho!" " Nay, listen," said Bagheera. " The fever is out of my blood now. Let them find me there ! Few would leave their houses after meeting me. It is not the first time I have been in a cage ; and I do not tliink they will tie me with cords." "Be wise, then," said Mowgli, laughing; for he was beginning to feel as reckless as the pan- ther, who had glided into the hut. "Pah!" Bagheera grunted. "This place is rank with Man, but here is just such a bed as they gave me to lie upon in the King's cages at Oodeypore. Now I lie down." Mowgli heard the strings of the cot crack under the great brute's weight. "By the Broken Lock that freed me, LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 93 they will think they have caught big game ! Come and sit beside me, Little Brother; we will give them ' good hunting ' together ! " " No ; I have another thought in my stomach. The Man- Pack shall not know what share I have in the sport. Make thine own hunt. I do not wish to see them." "Be it so," said Bagheera. "Ah, now they come ! " The conference under the peepul-tree had been growing noisier and noisier, at the far end of the village. It broke in wild yells, and a rush up the street of men and women, waving clubs and bam- boos and sickles and knives. Buldeo and the Brahmin were at the head of it, but the mob was 4 close at their heels, and they cried, " The witch and the wizard! Let us see if hot coins will make them confess ! Burn the hut over their heads ! We will teach them to shelter wolf-devils ! Nay, beat them first ! Torches ! More torches ! Bul- deo, heat the cfun-barrels ! " Here was some little difficulty with the catch of the door. It had been very firmly fastened, but the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light of the torches streamed into the room where, stretched at full length on the bed, his paws crossed and lightly hung down over one end, black as the Pit, 94 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera. There was one half-minute of desperate silence, as the front ranks of the crowd clawed and tore their way back from the threshold, and in that minute Bagheera raised his head and yawned — elabo- rately, carefully, and ostentatiously — as he would yawn when he wished to insult an equal. The fringed lips drew back and up ; the red tongue curled ; the lower jaw dropped and dropped till you could see half-way down the hot gullet ; and the gigantic dog-teeth stood clear to the pit of the gums till they rang together, upper and un- der, with the snick of steel-faced wards shooting home round the edges of a safe. Next instant the street was empty; Bagheera had leaped back through the window, and stood at Mowgli's side, while a yelling, screaming torrent scrambled and tumbled one over another in their panic haste to get to their own huts. " They will not stir till day comes," said Ba- gheera quietly. "And now?" The silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to have overtaken the village, but, as they listened, they could hear the sound of heavy grain-boxes being dragged over earthen floors and set down against doors. Bagheera was quite right ; the village would not stir till daylight. Mowgli sat LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 95 Still, and thought, and his face grew darker and darker. "What have I done? " said Bagheera, at last, coming t-o his feet, fawning, " Nothing but great good. Watch them now till the day. I sleep." Mowgli ran off into the Jun- gle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, and slept and slept the day round, and the night back again. When he waked, Bagheera was at his side, and there was a newly-killed buck at his feet. Ba- gheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to work with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in his hands. " The man and the woman are come safe within eye-shot of Kanhiwara," Bagheera said. "Thy lair mother sent the word back by Chil, the Kite. They found a horse before midnight of the night they were freed, and went very quickly. Is not that well ? " " That is well," said Mowgli. " And thy Man-Pack in the village did not stir till the sun was high this morning. Then they ate their food and ran back quickly to their houses." " Did they, by chance, see thee? " " It may have been. I was rolling in the dust g6 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK before the gate at dawn, and I may have made also some small song to myself. Now, Little Brother, there is nothing more to do. Come hiintinof with me and Baloo. He has new hives that he wishes to show, and we all desire thee back again as of old. Take off that look which makes even me afraid ! The man and woman will not be put into the Red Flower, and all goes well in the Jungle. Is it not true? Let us forget the Man-Pack." " They shall be forgotten in a little while. Where does Hathi feed to-night ? " " Where he chooses. Who can answer for the Silent One? But why? What is there Hathi can do which we cannot?" " Bid him and his three sons come here to me." " But, indeed, and trul)-. Little l)rother, it is not — it is not seemly to say ' Come,' and ' Go,' to Hathi. Remember, he is the Master of the Jun- gle, and before the Man -Pack changed the look on thy face, he taught thee the Master-words of the Jungle." " That is all one. I have a Master- word for him now. Bid him come to Mowgli, the Frog, and if he does not hear at first, bid him come be- cause of the Sack of the Fields of Bh-urtpore." "The Sack of the Melds of Bhurtpore," Ba- LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 97 gheera repeated two or three times to make sure. " I go. I lathi can but he angry at the worst, and I would give a moon's hunting to hear a Mas- ter-word that compels the Silent One." He w^ent away, leaving Mowgli stabbing fu- riously with his skinning-knile into the earth. Mowgli had never seen human blood in his life before till he had seen, and — what meant much more to him — smelled Messua's blood on the thongs that bound her. And Messua had been kind to him, and, so far as he knew anything about love, he loved Messua as completely as he hated the rest of mankind. But deeply as he loathed them, their talk, their cruelty, and their cowardice, not for anything the Jungle had to offer could he bring himself to take a human life, and have that terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. His plan was simpler but much more thorough; and he laughed to himself when he thought that it was one of old Buldeo's tales told under the pee- pul-tree in the evening that had put the idea into his head. " It was a Master-word," Bagheera wdiispered in his ear. " They were feeding by the river, and they obeyed as though they were bullocks. Look, where they come now ! " Hathi and his three sons had arrived in their 98 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK usual way, without a sound. 1 he mud of the river was still fresh on their flanks, and Hathi was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a young plantain-tree that he had gouged up with his tusks. But every line in his vast body showed to Bagheera, who could see things when he came across them, that it was not the Master of the Jungle speaking to a Man-cub, but one who was afraid coming before one who was not. His three sons rolled side by side, behind their father. Mowgli hardly lifted his head as Hathi gave him " Good hunting." He kept him swinging and rocking, and shifting from one foot to another, for a long time before he spoke, and when he opened his mouth it was to Bagheera, not to the ele- phants. " I will tell a tale that was told to me by the hunter ye hunted to-day," said Mowgli. " It concerns an elephant, old and wise, who fell into a trap, and the sharpened stake in the pit scarred him from a little above his heel to the crest of his shoulder, leaving a white mark." Mowgli threw out his hand, and as Hathi wheeled the moonlight showed a long white scar on his slaty side, as though he had been struck with a red-hot whip. " Men came to take him from the trap," Mowgli continued, "but he broke his ropes, for he was I LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 99 Strong", and went away till his wound was healed. Then came he, angry, by night to the helds of those hunters. And I remember now that he had three sons. These things happened many, many Rains ago, and very far away — among the helds of Bhurtpore. What came to those fields at the next reaping, Hathi?" "They were reaped by me and by my three sons," said Hathi. "And to the plowing that follows the reap- ing ? " said Mowgli. "There was no plowing," said Hathi. " And to the men that live by the green crops on the ground ? " said Mowgli. " They went away." "And to the huts in which the men slept?" said Mowgli. "We tore the roofs to pieces, and the Jungle swallowed up the walls," said Hathi. " And what more ? " said Mowgli. " As much good ground as I can walk over in two niorhts from the east to the west, and from the north to the south as much as I can walk over in three nights, the Jungle took. We let in the Jungle upon five villages ; and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the soft crop-grounds, there is not one man to-day loo THE SFXOND JUNGLE BOOK who takes his food from the trround. That was the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, which I and my three sons did ; and now I ask, Man-cub, how the news of it came to thee?" said Hathi. "A man told me, and now I 'see even Buldeo can speak truth. It was well done, Hathi with the white mark ; but the second time it shall be done better, for the reason that there is a man to direct. Thou knowest the village of the Man- Pack that cast me out ? They are idle, senseless, and cruel; they play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport. When they are full-fed they would throw their own breed into the Red Flower. This I have seen. It is not well that they should live here any more. I hate them ! " " Kill, then," said the youngest of Hathi's three sons, picking up a tuft of grass, dusting it against his fore legs, and throwing it awa)^ while his little red eyes glanced furtively from side to side. " What good are white bones to me ? " Mowgli answered angrily. "Am I the cub of a wolf to play in the sun with a raw head ? I have killed Shere Khan, and his hide rots on the Council Rock; but — but I do not know whither Shere Khan is gone, and my stomach is still empty. LETTING IN THE JUNGLE loi Now I will take that which I can see and touch. Let in the Jungle upon that village, Hathi ! " Bagheera shivered, and cowered down. He could understand, if the worst came to the worst, a quick rush down the village street, and a right and left blow into a crowd, or a crafty killing of men as they plowed in the twilight, but this scheme for deliberately blotting out an entire village from the eyes of man and beast frightened him. Now he saw why Mow- gli had sent for Hathi. No one but the long- lived elephant could plan and carry through such a war. " Let them run as the men ran from the fields of Bhurtpore, till we have the rain-water for the only plow, and the noise of the rain on the thick leaves for the pattering of their spindles — till Bap^heera and I lair in the house of the Brahmin, and the buck drink at the tank behind the tem- ple ! Let in the Jungle, Hathi ! " "But I — but we have no quarrel with them, and it needs the red rage of great pain ere we tear down the places where men sleep," said Hathi, doubtfully. " Are ye the only eaters of grass in the Jungle ? Drive in your peoples. Let the deer and the pig and the nilghai look to it. Ye need never show I02 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK a hand's-breadth of hide till the fields are naked. Let in the Jungle, Hathi ! " " There will be no killing? My tusks were red at the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, and I would not wake that smell again." " Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean earth. Let them 0^0 and find a fresh lair. They cannot stay here. I have seen and smelled the blood of the woman that gave me food — the woman whom they would have killed but for me. Only the smell of the new grass on their door- steps can take away that smell. It burns in my mouth. Let in the Jungle, Hathi ! " "Ah!" said Hathi. " So did the scar of the stake burn on my hide till we watched the villages die under in the spring growth. Now I see. Thy war shall be our war. We will let in the Jungle ! " Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath — he was shaking all over with rage and hate — be- fore the place where the elephants had stood was empty, and Bagheera was looking at him with terror. " By the Broken Lock that freed me ! " said the Black Panther at last. " Art thou the naked thing I spoke for in the Pack when all was young? Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes, LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 103 speak for me — speak for Baloo — speak for us all ! We are cubs before thee ! Snapped twigs under foot ! Fawns that have lost their doe ! " The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset Mowgli altogether, and he laughed and caught his breath, and sobbed and laughed again, till he had to jump into a pool to make himself stop. Then he swam round and round, ducking in and out of the bars of the moonlight like the frog, his namesake. By this time Hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one point of the compass, and were striding silently down the valleys a mile away. They went on and on for two days' march — that is to say, a long sixty miles — through the Jungle ; and every step they took, and every wave of their trunks, was known and noted and talked over by Mang and Chil and the Monkey People and all the birds. Then they began to feed, and fed quietly for a week or so. Hathi and his sons are like Kaa, the Rock Python. They never hurry till they have to. At the end of that time — and none knew who had started it — a rumor went through the Jungle that there was better food and water to be found in such and such a valley. The pig — who, of course, will go to the ends of the earth for a full I04 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK meal — moved first by companies, scuffling over the rocks, and the deer foHowed, with the small wild foxes that live on the dead and dying of the herds ; and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps came after the nilghai. The least little thino^ would have turned the scattered, straggling droves that trrazed and sauntered and drank and o^razed again ; but whenever there was an alarm some one would rise up and soothe them. At one time it would be Sahi the Porcupine, full of news of good feed just a little further on ; at another Mang would cry cheerily and flap down a glade to show it was all empty ; or Baloo, his mouth full of roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line and half frighten, half romp it clumsily back to the proper road. Very many creatures broke back or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go forward. At the end of another ten days or so the situation was this. The deer and the pig and the nilghai were milling round and round in a circle of eight or ten miles radius, while the Eaters of P'lesh skirmished round its edge. And the center of that circle was the village, and round the village the crops were ripening, and in the crops sat men on what they call machans — platforms like pigeon-perches, made of sticks at ' LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 105 the top of four poles — to scare away birds and other stealers. Then the deer were coaxed no more. The Eaters of Flesh were close behind them, and forced them forward and inward. It was a dark night when Hathi and his three sons slipped down from the Jungle, and broke * off the poles of the wac/iajis with their trunks ; they fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom falls, and the men that tumbled from them heard the deep gurgling of the elephants in their ears. Then the vanguard of the bewildered armies of the deer broke down and flooded into the village grazing-grounds and the plowed fields ; and the sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig came with them, and what the deer left the pig spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of wolves would shake the herds, and they would rush to and fro desperately, treading down the young barley, and cutting flat the banks of the irrigating channels. Before the dawn broke the pressure on the outside of the circle gav^e way at one point. The Eaters of Flesh had fallen back and left an open path to the south, and drove upon drove of buck fled along it. Others, who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal next night. But the work was practicalh^ done. When the villagers looked in the morning they saw their lo6 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK crops were lost. And that meant death if they did not get away, for they Hved year in and year out as near to starvation as the Jungle was near to them. When the buffaloes were sent to graze the hungry brutes found that the deer had cleared the grazing-grounds, and so wandered into the Jungle and drifted off with their wild mates; and when twilight fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the village lay in their stables with their heads beaten in. Only Bagheera could have given those strokes, and only Bagheera would have thought of insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street. The villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that night, so Hathi and his three sons went o-leaninof among- what was left ; and where Hathi gleans there is no need to follow. The men de- cided to live on their stored seed-corn until the rains had fallen, and then to take work as ser- vants till they could catch up with the lost year ; but as the grain -dealer was thinking of his well- filled crates of corn, and the prices he would levy at the sale of it, Hathi's sharp tusks were picking out the corner of his mud house, and smashing open the big wicker-chest, leeped with cow-dung, where the precious stuff lay. When that last loss was discovered, it was the LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 107 Brahmin's turn to speak. He had prayed to his own Gods without answer. It might be, he said, that, unconsciously, the village had offended some one of the Gods of the Jungle, for, beyond doubt, the Jungle was against them. So they sent for the head man of the nearest tribe of wandering Gonds — little, wise, and very black hunters, living in the deep Jungle, whose fathers came of the old- est race in India — the aboriginal owners of the land. They made the Gond welcome with what they had, and he stood on one leg, his bow in his hand, and two or three poisoned arrows stuck through his top -knot, looking half afraid and half contemptuously at the anxious villagers and their ruined fields. They wished to know whether his Gods — the Old Gods — were angry with them, and what sacrifices should be offered. The Gond said nothing, but picked up a trail of the Karela, the vine that bears the bitter wild gourd, and laced it to and fro across the temple door in the face of the staring red Hindu image. Then he pushed with his hand in the open air along the road to Kanhiwara, and went back to his Jungle, and watched the Jungle people drifting through it. He knew that when the Jungle moves only white men can hope to turn it aside. There was no need to ask his meaning. The io8 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK wild gourd would grow where they had wor- shiped their God, and the sooner they saved themselves the better. But it is hard to tear a villao^e from its moor- ings. They stayed on as long as any summer food was left to them, and they tried to gather nuts in the Jungle, but shadows with glaring eyes watched them, and rolled before them even at midday ; and when they ran back afraid to their walls, on the tree trunks they had passed not five minutes before the bark would be stripped and chiseled with the stroke of some great taloned paw. The more they kept to their village, the bolder grew the wild things that gamboled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Wain- gunga. They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the empty byres that backed on to the Jungle; the wild pig trampled them down, and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and threw their elbows over the new-won ground, and the coarse grass bristled behind the vines like the lances of a goblin army following a retreat. The unmarried men ran away first, and carried the news far and near that the village was doonied. Who could fight, they said, against the Jungle, or the Gods of the Jungle, when the very village cobra had left his hole in the platform under the LETTING IN THE JUNGLE lo^j peepul-tree? So their little commerce with the outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across the open grew fewer and fainter. At last the nightly trumpetings of Hathi and his three sons ceased to trouble them ; for they had no more to be robbed of The crop on the ground and the seed in the ground had been taken. The out- lying fields were already losing their shape, and it was time to throw themselves on the charity of the English at Kanhiwara. Native fashion, they delayed their departure from one day to another till the first Rains caught them and the unmended roofs let in a flood, and the grazing-ground stood ankle deep, and all life came on with a rush after the heat of the summer. Then they waded out, men, women, and children, through the blinding hot rain of the morning, but turned naturally for one farewell look at their homes. They heard, as the last burdened family filed through the (jate, a crash of fallinof beams and thatch behind the walls. They saw a shiny, snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering sodden thatch. It disappeared, and there was another crash, followed by a squeal. Hathi had been plucking off the roofs of the huts as you pluck water-lilies, and a rebounding beam had no THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK pricked him. He needed only this to unchain his full strength, for of all things in the Jungle the wild elephant enraged is the most wantonly destructive. He kicked backward at a mud wall that crumbled at the stroke, and, crumbling, melted to yellow mud under the torrent of rain. Then he wheeled and squealed, and tore through the narrow streets, leaning against the huts right and left, shivering the crazy doors, and crumpling up the eaves ; while his three sons raged behind as they had raged at the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore. "The Jungle will swallow these shells," said a quiet voice in the wreckage. "It is the outer wall that must lie down," and Mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo. "All in good time," panted Hathi. " Oh, but ray tusks were red at r3hurtpore ! To the outer wall, children ! With the head ! Together ! Now ! " The four pushed side by side ; the outer wall bulged, split, and fell, and the villagers, dumb with horror, saw the savage, clay- streaked heads of the wreckers in the ragged gap. Then they fled, houseless and foodless, down the valley, as LETTING IN THE JUNGLE iii their village, shredded and tossed and trampled, melted behind them. A month later the place was a dimpled mound, covered with soft, green young stuff; and by the end of the Rains there was the roaring Jungle in full blast on the spot that had been under plow not six months before. 4A 7/ k,. MOWGLI'S SONG AGAINST PEOPLE WILL let loose against you the fleet-footed vines — I will call in the Jungle to stamp out your lines ! The roofs shall fade before it, The house-beams shall fall, And the Karcla, the bitter Karcla, Shall cover it all ! In the gates of these your councils my people shall sing. In the doors of these your garners the Bat-folk shall cling ; And the snake shall be your watchman, By a hearthstone unswept ; For the Karcla, the bitter Karela, Shall fruit where ye slept ! Ye shall not see my strikers ; ye shall hear them and guess ; By night, before the moon-rise, I will send for my cess, And the wolf shall be your herdsman By a landmark removed, For the Karcla, the bitter Karcla, Shall seed where ye loved ! LETTING IN THE JUNGLE 113 I will reap your fields before j'oii at tiic hands of a host; Ye shall fjlean behind my reapers for the bread that is lost ; And the deer shall be your oxen By a headland untilled, For the Karela, the bitter Karela, Shall leaf where ye build ! I have untied against you the club-footed vines, I have sent in the Jungle to swamp out your lines The trees — the trees are on you ! The house-beams shall fall, And the Karela, the bitter Karela. Shall cover you all ! THE UNDERTAKERS When ye say to Tabaqui, " My Brother ! " when ye call the Hyena to meat, Ye may cry the Full Truce with Jacala — the Belly that runs on four feet. '— Jungle Law. THE UNDERTAKERS ESPECT the a^ed!" It was a thick voice — a muddy voice that would have made you shudder — a voice Hke somethine soft breaking in tw^o. There was a quaver in it, a croak and a whine. " Respect the aged ! O Companions of the River — respect the aged ! " Nothing coukl be seen on the broad reach of the river except a Httle fleet of square-sailed, wooden-pinned barges, loaded with building- stone, that had just come under the railway bridge, and were driving down -stream. They put their clumsy helms over to avoid the sand-bar* Il8 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK made by the scour of the bridge-piers, and as they passed, three abreast, the horrible voice began again : " O Brahmins of the River — respect the aged and infirm ! " A boatman turned where he sat on the gun- wale, lifted up his hand, said something that was not a blessing, and the boats creaked on through the twilight. The broad Indian river, that looked more like a chain of little lakes than a stream, was as smooth as glass, reflecting the sandy- red sky in mid-channel, but splashed with patches of yellow and dusky purple near and under the low banks. Little creeks ran into the river in the wet season, but now their dry mouths hung clear above water-line. On the left shore, and almost under the railway bridge, stood a mud-and-brick and thatch-and-stick village, whose main street, full of cattle going back to their byres, ran straight to the river, and ended in a sort of rude brick pier- head, where people who wanted to wash could wade in step by step. That was the Ghaut of the village of Mugger- Ghaut. Nieht was falling fast over the fields of lentils and rice and cotton in the low-lying ground yearly flooded by the river ; over the reeds that fringed the elbow of the bend, and the tangled THE UNDERTAKERS 119 low jungle of the grazing-grounds behind the still reeds. The parrots and crows, who had been chattering and shouting over their evening drink, had flown inland to roost, crossing the out- going battahons of the flying-foxes; and cloud upon cloud of water-birds came whistling and " honkincr " to the cover of the reed-beds. There were geese, barrel-headed and black-backed, teal, widgeon, mallard, and sheldrake, with curlews, and here and there a flamingo. A lumbering Adjutant-crane brought up the rear, flying as though each slow stroke would be his last. " Respect the aged ! Brahmins of the River — respect the aged ! " The Adjutant half turned his head, sheered a little in the direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sand-bar below the bridge. Then you saw what a ruffianly brute he really was. His back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six feet high, and looked rather like a very proper bald-headed parson. In front it was different, for his Ally Sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to them, and there was a horrible raw-skin pouch on his neck under his chin — a hold-all for the things his pickaxe beak might steal. His legs were long and thin and 120 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK skinii)-, but he moved them cleHcately, and looked at theiiA with pride as he preened down liis ashy- gray tail-leathers, glanced over the; smooth of his shoulder, and stiffened into "Stand at attention." A mangy little Jackal, who had been yapping hungrily on a low bluff, cc:)cked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the shallows to join the Adjutant. He was the lowest of his caste — not that the best of jackals are good for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a criminal- — a cleaner-up of village rubbish-heaps, desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly hungry, and full of cunning that never did him any good, " Ugh ! " he said, shaking himself dolefully as he landed. " May the red mange destroy the doofs of this villaee ! I have three bites for each flea upon me, and all because I looked — only looked, mark you — at an old shoe in a cow-byre. Can I eat mud ? " He scratched himself under his left ear. " I heard," said the Adjutant, in a voice like a blunt saw going through a thick board — " I Jicard there was a new-born puppy in that same shoe." "To hear is one thing; to know is another," said the Jackal, who had a very fair knowledge THE UNDERTAKERS 121 of proverbs, picked up by listening to men round the village fires of an evening. " Quite true. So, to make surje, I took care of that puppy while the dogs were busy elsewhere." "They were vciy busy," said the Jackal. "Well, I must not go to the village hunting for scraps yet awhile. And so there truly was a blind puppy in that shoe ? " "It is here," said the Adjutant, squinting over his beak at his full pouch. " A small thing, but acceptable now that charity is dead in the world." " Ahai ! The world is iron in these days," wailed the Jackal. Then his restless eye caught the least possible ripple on the water, and he went on quickly: " Life is hard for us all, and I doubt not that even our excellent master, the Pride of the Ghaut and the Envy of the River — " "A liar, a flatterer, and a Jackal were all hatched out of the same Qgg,'' said the Adjutant to nobody in particular ; for he was rather a fine sort of a liar on his own account when he took the trouble. " Yes, the Envy of the River," the Jackal re- peated, raising his voice. " Even he, I doubt not, finds that since the bridge has been built good food is more scarce. But on the other hand, though I w^ould by no means say this to his 122 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK noble face, he is so wise and so virtuous — as I, alas ! am not — " "When the Jackal owns he is gray, how black must the Jackal be ! " muttered the Adjutant, He could not see what was coming. '* That his food never fails, and in conse- quence — " There was a soft grating sound, as though a boat had just touched in shoal water. The Jackal spun round quickly and faced (it is always best to face) the creature he had been talking about. It was a twenty-four-foot crocodile, cased in what looked like treble-riveted boiler-plate, studded and keeled and crested ; the yellow points of his upper teeth just overhanging his beautifully fluted lower jaw. It was the blunt-nosed Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut, older than any man in the village, who had given his name to the village; the demon of the ford before the railway bridge came — murderer, man-eater, and local fetish in one. He lay with his chin in the shallows, keep- ing his place by an almost invisible rippling of his tail, and well the Jackal knew that one stroke of that same tail in the water could carry the Mugger up the bank with the rush of a steam- engine. " Auspiciously met, Protector of the Poor ! " he THE UNDERTAKERS 123 fawned, backini^ at every word. " A delectable voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of sweet conversation. My tailless presumption, while waiting here, led me, indeed, to speak of thee. It is my hope that nothing was overheard." Now the Jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery was the best way of get- ting things to eat, and the Mugger knew that the Jackal had spoken for this end, and the Jackal knew that the Mugger knew, and the Mugger knew that the Jackal knew that the Mugger knew, and so they were all very contented to- gether. The old brute pushed and panted and grunted up the bank, mumbling, " Respect the aged and infirm ! " and all the time his little eyes burned like coals under the heavy, horny eyelids on the top of his triangular head, as he shoved his bloated barrel-body along between his crutched legs. Then he settled down, and, accustomed as the Jackal was to his ways, he could not help starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw how exactly the Mugger imitated a log adrift on the bar. He had even taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the time and place. All this was 124 THK SFXOND JUNGLE BOOK only a matter of habit, of course, because the Mugger had come ashore for pleasure ; but a crocodile is never quite full, and if the Jackal had been deceived by the likeness he would not have lived to philosophize over it. " My child, I heard nothing," said the Mugger, shutting one eye. "The water was in my ears, and also I was faint with hunger. Since the rail- way bridge was built my people at my village have ceased to love me ; and that is breaking my heart." "Ah, shame!" said the Jackal. "So noble a heart, too ! But men are all alike, to my mind." " Nay, there are very great differences indeed," the Mugger answered gently. " Some are as lean as boat-poles. Others again are fat as young ja — dogs. Never would I causelessly revile men. They are of all fashions, but the long years have shown me that, one with another, they are very good. Men, women, and children — I have no fault to find with them. And remem- ber, child, he who rebukes the World is rebuked by the World." " Mattery is worse than an empty tin can in the belly. Rut that which we have just heard is wisdom," said the Adjutant, bringing down one foot. THE UNDERTAKERS 125 " Consider, though, their in('//6«r-scrub yon- der. Then come they down, my broad-shouldered Jats — eight or nine together under the stars, bearing the dead man upon a bed. They are old men with gray beards, and voices as deep as mine. They light a little fire — ah ! how well I know that fire ! — and they drink tobacco, and they nod their heads too-ether forward in a rinp", or side- ways toward the dead man upon the bank. They say the English Law will come with a rope for this matter, and that such a man's family will be ashamed, because such a man must be hanged in the great square of the Jail. Then say the friends of the dead, ' Let him hang ! ' and the talk is all to do over again — once, twice, twenty times in the long night. Then says one, at last, ' The fight was a fair fight. Let us take blood- money, a little more than is offered by the slayer, and we will say no more about it.' Then do they haofSfle over the blood- money, for the dead was a strong man, leaving many sons. Yet before am- ratvela (sunrise) they put the fire to him a little, 134 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK as the custom is, and the dead man comes to me, and he says no more about it. Aha ! my children, the Mugger knows — the Mugger knows — and my Malwah Jats are a good people ! " "They are too close — too narrow in the hand for my crop," croaked the Adjutant. "They waste not the polish on the cow's horn, as the saying is ; and, again, who can glean after a Malwai ? " "Ah, I — ":lean — than'' said the Mucrorer. " Now, in Calcutta of the South, in the old days," the Adjutant went on, " everything was thrown into the streets, and we picked and chose. Those were dainty seasons. But to-day they keep their streets as clean as the outside of an ^^%, and my people fly away. To be clean is one thing ; to dust, sweep, and sprinkle seven times a day wearies the very Gods themselves." "There was a down-country jackal had it from a brother, who told me, that in Calcutta of the South all the jackals were as fat as otters in the Rains," said the Jackal, his mouth watering at the bare thousfht of it. " Ah, but the white-faces are there — the Eng- lish, and they bring dogs from somewhere down the river, in boats — big fat dogs — to keep those same jackals lean," said the Adjutant. THE UNDERTAKERS 135 " They are, then, as hard-hearted as these peo- ple ? I might have known. Neither earth, sky, nor water shows charity to a jackal. I saw the tents of a white-face last season, after the Rains, and I also took a new yellow bridle to eat. The white-faces do not dress their leather in the pro- per way. It made me very sick." "That was better than my case," said the Ad- jutant. " When I was in my third season, a young and a bold bird, I went down to the river where the bio- boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice as big as this village." " He has been as far as Delhi, and says all the people there walk on their heads," muttered the Jackal. The Mugger opened his left eye, and looked keenly at the Adjutant. "It is true," the big bird insisted. "A liar only lies when he hopes to be believed. No one who had not seen those boats could believe this truth." " That is more reasonable," said the Mugger. "And then?" " From the insides of this boat they were taking out great pieces of white stuff, which, in a little while, turned to water. Much split off, and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. But a boatman, 136 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK who laughed, took a piece no larger than a small dog, and threw it to me. I — all my people — swallow without reflection, and that piece I swal- lowed as is our custom. Immediately I was af- flicted with an excessive cold which, beginning in my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and deprived me even of speech, while the boat- men laughed at me. Never have I felt such cold. I danced in my grief and amazement till I could recover my breath, and then I danced and cried out against the falseness of this world ; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. The chief wonder of the matter, settinof aside that marvelous colciness, was that there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my lament- ings ! " The Adjutant had done his very best to de- scribe his feelings after swallowing a seven-pound lump of Wenham Lake ice, off an American ice- ship, in the days before Calcutta made her ice by machinery; but as he did not know what ice was, and as the Mugger and the Jackal knew rather less, the tale missed fire. " Anything," said the Mugger, shutting his left eye again — " anytJiing is possible that comes out of a boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut. My village is not a small one." THE UNDERTAKERS 137 There was a whistle overhead on the bridge, and the Delhi Mail slid across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully following along the river. It clanked away into the dark again ; but the Mugger and the Jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads. " Is that anything less wonderful than a boat thrice the size of Mugger- Ghaut ? " said the bird, looking up. " I saw that built, child. Stone by stone I saw the bridge-piers rise, and when the men fell off (they were wondrous sure-footed for the most part — but w/ie/i they fell) I was ready. After the first pier was made they never thought to look down the stream for the body to burn. There, again, I saved much trouble. There was nothing strange in the building of the bridge," said the Muo-orer. " But that which goes across, pulling the roofed carts ! That is strange," the Adjutant repeated. " It is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. Some day it will not be able to keep its foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did. The old Mugger will then be ready." The Jackal looked at the Adjutant, and the Adjutant looked at the Jackal. If there was one 138 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK thing" they were more certain of than another, it was that the engine was everything in the wide world except a bullock. The Jackal had watched it time and again from the aloe-hedges by the side of the line, and the Adjutant had seen engines since the first locomotive ran in India. But the Mugger had only looked up at the thing frf)m below, where the brass dome seemed rather like a bullock's hump. " M — yes, a new kind of bullock," the Mugger repeated ponderously, to make himself quite sure in his own mind ; and " Certainly it is a bullock," said the Jackal. "And agrain itmio^ht be — " beo-an the Musfo-er pettishly. "Certainly — most certainly," said the Jackal, without waiting for the other to finish. "What?" said the Mugger angrily, -for he could feel that the others knew more than he did. " What might it be ? / never finished my words. You said it was a bullock." "It is anything the Protector of the Poor pleases. I am his servant — not the servant of the thing that crosses the river." " Whatever it is, it is white-face work," said the Adjutant; "and for my own part, I would not lie out upon a place so near to it as this bar." I "You do not know the I'lnglish as I do," said THE UNDERTAKERS 139 the Mugger. " There was a white-face here when the bridge was built, and he would take a boat in the evenings and shuffle with his feet on the bot- tom-boards, and whisper : ' Is he here ? Is he there? Bring^ne my gun.' I could hear him be- fore I could sec him — each sound that he made — creaking and puffing and rattling his gun, up and down the river. As surely as I had picked up one of his workmen, anci thus saved great ex- pense in wood for the burning, so surely would he come down to the Ghaut, and shout in a loud voice that he would hunt me, and rid the river of me — the Muo^oer of Mu or 2:er- Ghaut ! Me ! Chil- dren, I have swum under the bottom of his boat for hour after hour, and heard him fire his gun at logs ; and when I was well sure he was wearied, I have risen by his side and snapped my jaws in his face. When the bridge was finished he went away. All the English hunt in that fashion, ex- cept when they are hunted." "Who hunts the white-faces?" yapped the Jackal excitedly. " No one now, but I have hunted them in my time." "I remember a little of that Hunting. I was young then," said the Adjutant, clattering his beak significantly. " I was well established here. My village was HO THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK being builded for the third time, as I remember, when my cousin, the Gavial, brought me word of rich waters above Benares. At first 1 would not go, for my cousin, who is a fish -eater, does not always know the good from the bad ; but I heard my people talking in the evenings, and what they said made me certain." "And what did they say? " the Jackal asked. " They said enough to make me, the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut, leave water and take to my feet. I went by night, using the littlest streams as they served me ; but it was the beginning of the hot weather and all streams were low. I crossed dusty roads ; I went through tall grass ; I climbed hills in the moonlight. Even rocks did I climb, children — consider this well. I crossed the tail of Sirhind, the waterless, before I could find the set of the little rivers that flow Gunea- ward. I was a month's journey from my own people and the river that I knew. That was very marvelous ! " "What food on the way ?" said the Jackal, who kept his soul in his little stomach, ami was not a bit im])r(;ssed b\' the Mugger's land travels. "That which I could find — cousin,^' said the Mugger slowly, dragging each word. Now you do not call a man a cousin in India THE UNDERTAKERS 141 unless you think you can establish some kind of blood-relationship, and as it is only in old fairy- tales that the Mugg-er ever marries a jackal, the Jackal knew for what reason he had been sud- denly lifted into the Mugger's family circle. If they had been alone he would not have cared, but the Adjutant's eyes twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest. " Assuredly, Father, I might have known," said the Jackal. A Mugger does not care to be called a father of jackals, and the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut said as much — and a great deal more which there is no use in repeating here. " The Protector of the Poor has claimed kin- ship. How can I remember the precise degree? Moreover, we eat the same food. He has said it," was the Jackal's reply. That made matters rather worse, for what the Jackal hinted at was that the Mugger must have eaten his food on that land march fresh and fresh every day, instead of keeping it by him till it was in a fit and proper condition, as every self-respecting mugger and most wild beasts do when they can. Indeed, one of the worst terms of contempt along the River-bed is "eater of fresh meat." It is nearly as bad as calling a man a cannibal. 142 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK •'That food was eaten thirty seasons ago," said the Adjutant quietly. "If we talk for thirty seasons more it will nev^er come back. Tell us, now, what happened when the good waters were reached after thy most wonderful land journey. If we listened, to the howling of every jackal the business of the town would stop, as the saying is." The Mugger must have been grateful for the interruption, because he went on, with a rush : " By the Right and Left of Gunga ! when I came there never did I see such waters ! " "Were they better, then, than the big flood of last season?" said the Jackal. " Better ! That flood was no more than comes every five years — a handful of drowned strangers, some chickens, and a dead bullock in muddy water with cross-currents. But the season I think of, the river was low, smooth, and even, and, as the Gavial had warned me, the dead Eng- lish came down, touching each other. I got my girth in that season — my girth and my depth. From Agra, by Etawah and the broad waters by Allahabad—" " Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the fort at Allahabad ! " said the Adjutant. " They came in there like widgeon to the reeds, and round and round they swung — thus ! " THE UNDERTAKERS I43 He went off into his horrible dance again, while the Jackal looked on enviously. He natu- rally could not remember the terrible year of the Mutiny they were talking about. The Mugger continued : "Yes, by Allahabad one lay still in the slack- water and let twenty go by to pick one ; and, above all, the English were not cumbered with jewelry and nose-rings and anklets as my women are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for necklace, as the saying is. All the muCTo-ers of all the rivers o^rew fat then, but it was my Fate to be fatter than them all. The news was that the English were being hunted into the rivers, and by the Right and Left of Gunga ! we believed it was true. So far as I went south I believed it to be true ; and I went down-stream beyond Monghyr and the tombs that look over the river." " I know that place," said the Adjutant. "Since those days Monghyr is a lost city. Very few live there now." "Thereafter I worked up-stream very slowly and lazily, and a little above Monghyr there came down a boatful of white-faces — alive ! They were, as I remember, women, lying under a cloth spread over sticks, and crying aloud. There was 144 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK never a gun fired at us the watchers of the fords in those days. All the guns were busy elsewhere. We could hear them day and night inland, com- ing and going as the wind shifted. I rose up full before the boat, because I had never seen white-faces alive, though I knew them well — otherwise. A naked white child kneeled by the side of the boat, and, stooping over, must needs try to trail his hands in the river. It is a pretty thing to see how a child loves running water. I had fed that day, but there was yet a little unfilled space within me. Still, it was for sport and not for food that I rose at the child's hands. They were so clear a mark that I did not even look when I closed ; but they were so small that though my jaws rang true — I am sure of that — the child drew them up swiftly, unhurt. They must have passed between tooth and tooth — those small white hands. I should have caught him crosswise at the elbows ; but, as I said, it was only for sport and desire to see new things that I rose at all. They cried out one after an- other in the boat, and presently I rose again to watch them. fheir boat was too heavy to push over. They were only women, but he who trusts a woman will walk on duckweed in a pool, as the saying is : and by the Right and Left of Gunga, that is truth ! " THE UNDERTAKERS 145 " Once a woman gave me some dried skin from a fish," said the Jackal. " I had hoped to get her baby, but horse-food is better than the kick of a horse, as the saying is. What did thy woman do?" " She fired at me with a short gun of a kind I have never seen before or since. Five times, one after another" (the Mugger must have met with an old-fashioned revolver); "and I stayed open- mouthed and gaping, my head in the smoke. Never did I see such a thing. Five times, as swiftly as I wave my tail — thus ! " The Jackal, who had been growing more and more interested in the story, had just time to leap back as the long tail swung by like a scythe.. " Not before the fifth shot," said the Mugger, as though he had never dreamed of stunning one of his listeners — "not before the fifth shot did I sink, and I rose in time to hear a boatman telling all those white women that I was most certainly dead. One bullet had gone under a neckplate of mine. I know not if it is there still, for the reason I cannot turn my head. Look and see, child. It will show that my tale is true." " I ?" said the Jackal. "Shall an eater of old shoes, a bone-cracker, presume to doubt the word of the Envy of the River ? May my tail be bit- 146 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK ten off b)- blind puppies if the shadow of such a thought has crossed my humble mind. The Protector of the Poor has condescended to inform me, his slave, that once in his life he has been wounded by a woman. That is sufficient, and I will tell the tale to all my children, asking for no proof" " Over-much civility is sometimes no better than over-much discourtesy, for, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds. I do not de- sire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miser- ably as does their father." " It is forgotten long ago ! It was never said ! There never was a white woman ! There was no boat! Nothing whatever happened at all." The Jackal waved his brush to show how com- pletely everything was wiped out of his memory, and sat down with an ^ir. " Indeed, very man)' things happened," said the Mugger, beaten in his second attempt that night to get the better of his friend. (Neither bore malice, however. Eat and be eaten was fair law along the river, and the Jackal came in for his share of plunder when the Mugger had finished THE UNDERTAKERS 147 a meal.) " I left that boat and went up-stream, and, when I had reached Arrah and the back- waters behind it, there were no more dead Eng- lish. The river was empty for a while. Then came one or two dead, in red coats, not English, but of one kind all — Hindus and Purbeeahs — then five and six abreast, and at last, from Arrah to the North beyond Agra, it was as though whole villages had walked into the water. They came out of little creeks one after another, as the log's come down in the Rains. When the river rose they rose also in companies from the shoals they had rested upon ; and the falling flood dragge(f them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the long hair. All night, . too, going North, I heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy cart-wheel makes on sand under water; and every ripple brought more dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said : ' If this thinor happen to men how shall the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut escape?' There were boats, too, that came up behind me without sails, burning con- tinually, as the cotton-boats sometimes burn, but never sinking." "Ah ! " said the Adjutant. " Boats like those come to Calcutta of the South. Thev are tall 148 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK and black, they beat up the water behind them with a tail, and they — " " Are thrice as big as my village. My boats were low and white ; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle." "Was there still crood food in the river?" said the Jackal. " More than I had any desire for. Even I — and I do not eat mud — even I was tired, and, as I remember, a little frightened of this constant coming down of the silent ones. I heard my people say in my village that all the English were dead ; but those that came, face -down, with the curr(Mit were not English, as my people saw. Then my people said that it was best to say noth- ing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. After a long time the river cleared, and those that came down it had been clearly drowned by THE UNDERTAKERS 149 the floods, as I could well see ; and, though it was not so easy then to get food, I was heartily- glad of it. A little killing- here and there is no bad thing — but even the Mugger is sometimes satisfied, as the saying is." " Marvelous ! Most truly marvelous ! " said the Jackal. " I am become fat through merely hearing about so much good eating. And after- ward what, if it be permitted to ask, did the Pro- tector of the Poor do ? " " I said to myself — and by the Right and Left of Gunga! I locked my jaws on that vow — I said I would never go roving any more. So I lived by the Ghaut, very close to my own people, and I watched over them year after year ; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. Yes, and my Fate has been very kind to me, and the river is good enough to respect my poor and infirm presence ; only — " " No one is all happy from his beak to his tail," said the Adjutant sympathetically. " What does the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut need more ? " " That little white child which I did not get," said the Mugger, with a deep sigh. " He was very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old now, but before I die it is my desire to try one I50 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK new thing. It is true they are a heavy-footed, noisy, and foohsli pc^ople, and the s[)ort would be small, but I remember the old days above Benares, and, if the child lives, he will remember still. It may be he goes up and down the bank of some river, telling how he once passed his hands be- tween the teeth of the Mugger of Mugger- (ihaut, and lived to make a tale of it. My Fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams — the thought of the little white child in the bows of that boat." He yawned, and closed his jaws. " And now I will rest and think. Keep silent, my children, and respect the aged." He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the Jackal drew back with the Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on the end nearest the railway bridge. " That was a pleasant and profitable life," he grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird who towered above him. "And not once, mark you, did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left along the banks. Yet I have told hi77t a hundred times of good things wallowing down-stream. How true is the saying, ' All the world forgets the Jackal and the Barber when the news has been told ! ' Now he is going to sleep ! A rrh ! " THE UNDERTAKERS 151 "How can a Jackal luint with a Mugger?" said the Atljutanl coolh . " Big thief and Httle thief; it is easy to say who gets the pick- ingrs." The Jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going; to curl himself up under the tree-trunk, when suddenl)- he cowered, and looked up through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head. "What now?" said the Adjutant, opening his wings uneasily. " Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they are not looking for us — those two men." " Men, is it? My office protects me. All In- dia knows I am holy." The Adjutant, being a first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and so this one never flinched. " I am not worth a blow from an)thing greater than an old shoe," said the Jackal, and listened again. " Hark to that footfall ! " he went on. " That was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white-face. Listen again ! Iron hits iron up there ! It is a gun ! Friend, those heavy- footed, foolish English are coming to speak with the Muofcrer." " Warn him, then. He was called Protector 152 THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK of the Poor l^y some one not unlike