Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free--
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh hear the call!--Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
_Night-Song in the Jungle_.
It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when
Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned,
and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy
feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped
across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the
mouth of the cave where they all lived. 'Augrh!' said Father Wolf,
'it is time to hunt again'; and he was going to spring down hill when
a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined:
'Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and
strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never
forget the hungry in this world.'
It was the jackal--Tabaqui, the Dish-licker--and the wolves of India
despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling
tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village
rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more
than any one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he
forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the
forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides
when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful
thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but
they call it _dewanee_--the madness--and run.
'Enter, then, and look,' said Father Wolf, stiffly; 'but there is no
food here.'
'For a wolf, no,' said Tabaqui; 'but for so mean a person as myself a
dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal
people], to pick and choose?' He scuttled to the back of the cave,
where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat
cracking the end merrily.
'All thanks for this good meal,' he said, licking his lips. 'How
beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so
young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children
of kings are men from the beginning.'
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any one else that there is nothing so
unlucky as to compliment children to their faces; and it pleased him
to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and
then he said spitefully:
'Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting-grounds. He will
hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.'
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty
miles away.
'He has no right!' Father Wolf began angrily--'By the Law of the
Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He
will frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I--I have to
kill for two, these days.'
'His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing,' said
Mother Wolf, quietly. He has been lame in one foot from his birth.
That is why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the
Waingunga are angry with him, and he has come here to make _our_
villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is far
away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set alight.
Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!'
'Shall I tell him of your gratitude?' said Tabaqui.
'Out!' snapped Father Wolf. 'Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast
done harm enough for one night.'
'I go,' said Tabaqui, quietly. 'Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the
thickets. I might have saved myself the message.'
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a
little river, he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a
tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle
knows it.
'The fool!' said Father Wolf. 'To begin a night's work with that
noise. Does he think that our buck are like his fat Waingunga
bullocks?'
'H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,' said Mother
Wolf. 'It is Man.' The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr
that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the
noise that bewilders woodcutters and gipsies sleeping in the open,
and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
'Man!' said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. 'Faugh! Are
there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man,
and on our ground too!'
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason,
forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his
children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the
hunting-grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is
that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on
elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and
rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason
the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most
defenceless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch
him. They say too--and it is true--that man-eaters become mangy, and
lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated 'Aaarh!' of the
tiger's charge.
Then there was a howl--an untigerish howl--from Shere Khan. He has
missed,' said Mother Wolf. 'What is it?'
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering and
mumbling savagely, as he tumbled about in the scrub.
'The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutters'
camp-fire, and has burned his feet,' said Father Wolf, with a grunt.
'Tabaqui is with him.'
'Something is coming up hill,' said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear.
'Get ready.'
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped
with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had
been watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the
world--the wolf checked in mid spring. He made his bound before he
saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself.
The result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five
feet, landing almost where he left ground.
'Man!' he snapped. 'A man's cub. Look!'
Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked
brown baby who could just walk--as soft and as dimpled a little atom
as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Father
Wolf's face, and laughed.
'Is that a man's cub?' said Mother Wolf. 'I have never seen one.
Bring it here.'
A wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an
egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf's jaws closed right
on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin, as he laid
it down among the cubs.
'How little! How naked, and--how bold!' said Mother Wolf, softly. The
baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm
hide. 'Ahai! He is taking his meal with the others. And so this is a
man's cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's cub
among her children?'
'I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our Pack or
in my time,' said Father Wolf. 'He is altogether without hair, and I
could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is
not afraid.'
The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere
Khan's great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance.
Tabaqui, behind him, was squeaking: 'My lord, my lord, it went in
here!'
'Shere Khan does us great honour,' said Father Wolf, but his eyes
were very angry. 'What does Shere Khan need?'
'My quarry. A man's cub went this way,' said Shere Khan. 'Its parents
have run off. Give it to me.'
Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutters' camp-fire, as Father Wolf had
said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father
Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to
come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and fore paws
were cramped for want of room, as a man's would be if he tried to
fight in a barrel.
'The Wolves are a free people,' said Father Wolf. 'They take orders
from the Head of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-dealer.
The man's cub is ours--to kill if we choose.'
'Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing? By
the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog's den for
my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!'
The tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook
herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two
green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.
'And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answer. The man's cub is mine,
Lungri--mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with
the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter
of little naked cubs--frog-eater--fish-killer--he shall hunt _thee_!
Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (_I_ eat no starved
cattle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle,
lamer than ever thou earnest into the world! Go!'
Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when
he had won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she
ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment's sake.
Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up
against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the
advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed
out of the cave-mouth growling, and when he was clear he shouted:--
'Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say
to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he
will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!'
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father
Wolf said to her gravely:--
'Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the
Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?'
'Keep him!' she gasped. 'He came naked, by night, alone and very
hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to
one side already. And that lame butcher would have killed him and
would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted
through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep
him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli--for Mowgli the Frog I
will call thee--the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as
he has hunted thee.' 'But what will our Pack say?' said Father Wolf.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when
he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to; but as soon as his
cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the
Pack Council, which is generally held once a month at full moon, in
order that the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection
the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they have
killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the
Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where the murderer
can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this
must be so. Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and
then on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother
Wolf to the Council Rock--a hilltop covered with stones and boulders
where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf,
who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length
on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and
colour, from badger-coloured veterans who could handle a buck alone,
to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf
had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf-trap in
his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew
the manners and customs of men. There was very little talking at the
rock. The cubs tumbled over each other in the centre of the circle
where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf
would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to
his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push her cub
far out into the moonlight, to be sure that he had not been
overlooked. Akela from his rock would cry: 'Ye know the Law--ye know
the Law. Look well, O Wolves!' and the anxious mothers would take up
the call: 'Look--look well, O Wolves!'
At last--and Mother Wolfs neck-bristles lifted as the time
came--Father Wolf pushed 'Mowgli the Frog,' as they called him, into
the centre, where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that
glistened in the moonlight.
Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the
monotonous cry: 'Look well!' A muffled roar came up from behind the
rocks--the voice of Shere Khan crying: 'The cub is mine. Give him to
me. What have the Free People to do with a man's cub?' Akela never
even twitched his ears: all he said was: 'Look well, O Wolves! What
have the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free
People? Look well!'
There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth
year flung back Shere Khan's question to Akela: 'What have the Free
People to do with a man's cub?' Now the Law of the Jungle lays down
that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted
by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the
Pack who are not his father and mother.
'Who speaks for this cub?' said Akela. 'Among the Free People who
speaks?' There was no answer, and Mother Wolf got ready for what she
knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting.
Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack
Council--Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the
Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases
because he eats only nuts and roots and honey--rose up on his hind
quarters and grunted.
'The man's cub--the man's cub?' he said. '_I_ speak for the man's
cub. There is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift of words, but I
speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the
others. I myself will teach him.'
'We need yet another,' said Akela. 'Baloo has spoken, and he is our
teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks beside Baloo?'
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the
Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings
showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk.
Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he
was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as
reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild
honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
'O Akela, and ye the Free People,' he purred, 'I have no right in
your assembly; but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a
doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life
of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who
may or may not pay that price. Am I right?'
'Good! good!' said the young wolves, who are always hungry. 'Listen
to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law.'
'Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave.'
'Speak then,' cried twenty voices.
'To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for
you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo's
word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a
mile from here, if ye will accept the man's cub according to the Law.
Is it difficult?'
There was a clamour of scores of voices, saying: 'What matter? He
will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm
can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is the bull,
Bagheera? Let him be accepted.' And then came Akela's deep bay,
crying: Look well--look well, O Wolves!'
Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not
notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last
they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only Akela,
Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli's own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared
still in the night, for he was very angry that Mowgli had not been
handed over to him.
'Ay, roar well,' said Bagheera, under his whiskers; 'for the time
comes when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I
know nothing of man.'
'It was well done,' said Akela. 'Men and their cubs are very wise. He
may be a help in time.'
'Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the Pack
for ever,' said Bagheera.
Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every
leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets
feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a
new leader comes up--to be killed in his turn.
'Take him away,' he said to Father Wolf, 'and train him as befits one
of the Free People.'
And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee wolf-pack for the
price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.
* * * * *
Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only
guess at all the wonderful life Mowgli led among the wolves, because
if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up
with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves almost
before he was a child, and Father Wolf taught him his business, and
the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass,
every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his
head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a
tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool, meant
just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business
man. When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and
ate and went to sleep again; when he felt dirty or hot he swam in the
forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and
nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it,
and that Bagheera showed him how to do. Bagheera would lie out on a
branch and call, 'Come along, Little Brother,' and at first Mowgli
would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself
through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took his
place at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he
discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be
forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun. At other
times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends,
for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats. He
would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night, and
look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a
mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a
drop-gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked
into it, and told him that it was a trap. He loved better than
anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the
forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how
Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt
hungry, and so did Mowgli--with one exception. As soon as he was old
enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that he must never
touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price
of a bull's life. 'All the jungle is thine,' said Bagheera, 'and thou
canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for
the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any
cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.' Mowgli obeyed
faithfully.
And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that
he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think
of except things to eat.
Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature
to be trusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan; but though
a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli
forgot it because he was only a boy--though he would have called
himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue.
Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela
grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends
with the younger wolves of the Pack, who followed him for scraps, a
thing Akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his
authority to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them
and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a
dying wolf and a man's cub. 'They tell me,' Shere Khan would say,
'that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes'; and the
young wolves would growl and bristle.
Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this,
and once or twice he told Mowgli in so many words that Shere Khan
would kill him some day; and Mowgli would laugh and answer: 'I have
the Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might
strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?'
It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera--born of
something that he had heard. Perhaps Sahi the Porcupine had told him;
but he said to Mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy
lay with his head on Bagheera's beautiful black skin: 'Little
Brother,' how often have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?'
'As many times as there are nuts on that palm,' said Mowgli, who,
naturally, could not count. 'What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and
Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk--like Mor the Peacock.'
'But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the
Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui has
told thee, too.'
'Ho! ho!' said Mowgli. 'Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some
rude talk that I was a naked man's cub and not fit to dig pig-nuts;
but I caught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a
palm-tree to teach him better manners.'
'That was foolishness; for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he
would have told thee of something that concerned thee closely. Open
those eyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the
jungle; but remember, Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when
he cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. Many of
the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the
Council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere
Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack. In a
little time thou wilt be a man.'
'And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?' said
Mowgli. 'I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the
Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not
pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!'
Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes.
'Little Brother,' said he, 'feel under my jaw.'
Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under Bagheera's silky
chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy
hair, he came upon a little bald spot.
'There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry
that mark--the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was
born among men, and it was among men that my mother died--in the
cages of the King's Palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that
I paid the price for thee at the Council when thou wast a little
naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the
jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I
felt that I was Bagheera--the Panther--and no man's plaything, and I
broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and
because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the
jungle than Shere Khan. Is it not so?'
'Yes,' said Mowgli;' all the jungle fear Bagheera--all except
Mowgli.'
'Oh, _thou_ art a man's cub,' said the Black Panther, very
tenderly; 'and even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back
to men at last,--to the men who are thy brothers,--if thou art not
killed in the Council.'
'But why--but why should any wish to kill me?' said Mowgli.
'Look at me,' said Bagheera; and Mowgli looked at him steadily
between the eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half a
minute.
'_That_ is why,' he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. 'Not even I
can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love
thee, Little Brother. The others they hate thee because their eyes
cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled
out thorns from their feet--because thou art a man.'
'I did not know these things,' said Mowgli, sullenly; and he frowned
under his heavy black eyebrows.
'What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By
thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It
is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill,--and at each
hunt it costs him more to pin the buck,--the Pack will turn against
him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock,
and then--and then--I have it!' said Bagheera, leaping up. 'Go thou
down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the
Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou
mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the
Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.'
By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle
will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear
of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.
'The Red Flower?' said Mowgli. 'That grows outside their huts in the
twilight. I will get some.'
'There speaks the man's cub,' said Bagheera, proudly. 'Remember that
it grows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for
time of need.'
'Good!' said Mowgli. 'I go. But art thou sure, O my Bagheera'--he
slipped his arm round the splendid neck, and looked deep into the big
eyes--' art thou sure that all this is Shere Khan's doing?'
'By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little Brother.'
'Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full tale
for this, and it may be a little over,' said Mowgli; and he bounded
away.
'That is a man. That is all a man,' said Bagheera to himself, lying
down again. 'Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunting than that
frog-hunt of thine ten years ago!'
Mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his
heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose,
and drew breath, and looked down the valley. The cubs were out, but
Mother Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that
something was troubling her frog.
'What is it, Son?' she said.
'Some bat's chatter of Shere Khan,' he called back. 'I hunt among the
ploughed fields to-night'; and he plunged downward through the
bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley. There he checked,
for he heard the yell of the Pack hunting, heard the bellow of a
hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there
were wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves: 'Akela! Akela! Let
the Lone Wolf show his strength. Room for the leader of the Pack!
Spring, Akela!'
The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli heard
the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him over
with his fore foot.
He did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells grew
fainter behind him as he ran into the croplands where the villagers
lived.
'Bagheera spoke truth,' he panted, as he nestled down in some
cattle-fodder by the window of a hut. 'To-morrow is one day both for
Akela and for me.'
Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on
the hearth. He saw the husbandman's wife get up and feed it in the
night with black lumps; and when the morning came and the mists were
all white and cold, he saw the man's child pick up a wicker pot
plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal,
put it under his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre.
'Is that all?' said Mowgli. 'If a cub can do it, there is nothing to
fear'; so he strode round the corner and met the boy, took the pot
from his hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy howled
with fear.
'They are very like me,' said Mowgli, blowing into the pot, as he had
seen the woman do. 'This thing will die if I do not give it things to
eat'; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Half-way
up the hill he met Bagheera with the morning dew shining like
moonstones on his coat.
'Akela has missed,' said the Panther. 'They would have killed him
last night, but they needed thee also. They were looking for thee on
the hill.'
'I was among the ploughed lands. I am ready. See!' Mowgli held up the
fire-pot.
'Good! Now I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and
presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou not
afraid?'
'No. Why should I fear? I remember now--if it is not a dream--how,
before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm and
pleasant.'
All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire-pot and dipping
dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that
satisfied him, and in the evening when Tabaqui came to the cave and
told him rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council Rock, he
laughed till Tabaqui ran away. Then Mowgli went to the Council, still
laughing.
Akela the lone wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the
leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following of
scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly being flattered. Bagheera
lay close to Mowgli, and the fire-pot was between Mowgli's knees.
When they were all gathered together, Shere Khan began to speak--a
thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.
'He has no right,' whispered Bagheera. 'Say so. He is a dog's son.
He will be frightened.'
Mowgli sprang to his feet. 'Free People,' he cried, does Shere Khan
lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?'
'Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to
speak--' Shere Khan began.
'By whom?' said Mowgli. 'Are we _all_ jackals, to fawn on this
cattle-butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack alone.'
There were yells of 'Silence, thou man's cub!' 'Let him speak. He has
kept our Law'; and at last the seniors of the Pack thundered: 'Let
the Dead Wolf speak.' When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill,
he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long.