'Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons
I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has
been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that
plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to
make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill
me here on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make
an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the
Jungle, that ye come one by one.'
There was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela to the
death. Then Shere Khan roared: 'Bah! what have we to do with this
toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived
too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me.
I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle for ten
seasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not
give you one bone. He is a man, a man's child, and from the marrow of
my bones I hate him!'
Then more than half the Pack yelled: A man! a man!
What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.
'And turn all the people of the villages against us?' clamoured Shere
Khan. 'No; give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him
between the eyes.'
Akela lifted his head again, and said: 'He has eaten our food. He has
slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of
the Law of the Jungle.'
'Also, I paid for him with a Bull when he was accepted. The worth of
a bull is little, but Bagheera's honour is something that he will
perhaps fight for,' said Bagheera, in his gentlest voice.
'A bull paid ten years ago!' the Pack snarled. 'What do we care for
bones ten years old?'
'Or for a pledge?' said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his
lip. 'Well are ye called the Free People!'
'No man's cub can run with the people of the jungle,' howled Shere
Khan. 'Give him to me!'
'He is our brother in all but blood,' Akela went on; 'and ye would
kill him here! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are eaters
of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere Khan's
teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children from the villager's
door-step Therefore I know ye to be cowards, and it is to cowards I
speak. It is certain that I must die, and my life is of no worth, or
I would offer that in the man-cub's place. But for the sake of the
Honour of the Pack,--a little matter that by being without a leader
ye have forgotten,--I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his
own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth
against ye. I will die without fighting. That will at least save the
Pack three lives. More I cannot do; but if ye will, I can save ye the
shame that comes of killing a brother against whom there is no
fault,--a brother spoken for and bought into the Pack according to
the Law of the Jungle.'
'He is a man--a man--a man--!' snarled the Pack; and most of the
wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to
switch.
'Now the business is in thy hands,' said Bagheera to Mowgli. '_We_
can do no more except fight.'
Mowgli stood upright--the fire-pot in his hands. Then he stretched
out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was
furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolf-like, the wolves had never
told him how they hated him. 'Listen you!' he cried. 'There is no
need for this dog's jabber. Ye have told me so often to night that I
am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life's
end), that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my
brothers any more, but _sag_ [dogs], as a man should. What ye will
do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. That matter is with
_me_; and that we may see the matter more plainly, I, the man, have
brought here a little of the Red Flower which ye, dogs, fear.'
He flung the fire-pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a
tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in
terror before the leaping flames.
Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit and
crackled, and whirled it above his head among the cowering wolves.
'Thou art the master,' said Bagheera, in an undertone. 'Save Akela
from, the death. He was ever thy friend.'
Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life,
gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long
black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing
branch that made the shadows jump and quiver.
'Good!' said Mowgli, staring round slowly. 'I see that ye are dogs. I
go from you to my own people--if they be ray own people. The jungle
is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship;
but I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your
brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not
betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.' He kicked the fire with his
foot, and the sparks flew up. 'There shall be no war between any of
us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go.' He strode
forward to where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and
caught him by the tuft on his chin. Bagheera followed in case of
accidents. 'Up, dog!' Mowgli cried. 'Up, when a man speaks, or I will
set that coat ablaze!'
Shere Khan's ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes,
for the blazing branch was very near.
'This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he
had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat
dogs when we are men. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red
Flower down thy gullet!' He beat Shere Khan over the head with the
branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear.
'Pah! Singed jungle-cat--go now! But remember when next I come to the
Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan's hide
on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye
will _not_ kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I think that
ye will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though ye
were somebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out--thus! Go!' The
fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and Mowgli
struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling
with the sparks burning their fur. At last there were only Akela,
Bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli's part. Then
something began to hurt Mowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt
in his life before, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the
tears ran down his face.
'What is it? What is it?' he said. 'I do not wish to leave the
jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?'
'No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use,' said
Bagheera. 'Now I know thou art a man, and a man's cub no longer. The
jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli.
They are only tears.' So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart
would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.
'Now,' he said, 'I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to
my mother'; and he went to the cave where she lived with Father Wolf,
and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably.
'Ye will not forget me?' said Mowgli.
'Never while we can follow a trail,' said the cubs. 'Come to the foot
of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we
will come into the crop-lands to play with thee by night.'
'Come soon!' said Father Wolf. 'Oh, wise little frog, come again
soon; for we be old, thy mother and I.'
'Come soon,' said Mother Wolf, 'little naked son of mine; for,
listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs.'
'I will surely come,' said Mowgli; 'and when I come it will be to
lay out Shere Khan's hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me!
Tell them in the jungle never to forget me!'
The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside
alone, to meet those mysterious things that are called men.