The second year after the great fight with Red Dog and the death of
Akela, Mowgli must have been nearly seventeen years old. He looked
older, for hard exercise, the best of good eating, and baths whenever
he felt in the least hot or dusty, had given him strength and growth
far beyond his age. He could swing by one hand from a top branch for
half an hour at a time, when he had occasion to look along the
tree-roads. He could stop a young buck in mid-gallop and throw him
sideways by the head. He could even jerk over the big, blue wild boars
that lived in the Marshes of the North. The Jungle People who used to
fear him for his wits feared him now for his strength, and when he
moved quietly on his own affairs the mere whisper of his coming
cleared the wood-paths. And yet the look in his eyes was always
gentle. Even when he fought, his eyes never blazed as Bagheera's did.
They only grew more and more interested and excited; and that was one
of the things that Bagheera himself did not understand.
He asked Mowgli about it, and the boy laughed and said: "When I miss
the kill I am angry. When I must go empty for two days I am very
angry. Do not my eyes talk then?"
"The mouth is angry," said Bagheera, "but the eyes say nothing.
Hunting, eating, or swimming, it is all one--like a stone in wet or
dry weather." Mowgli looked at him lazily from under his long
eyelashes, and, as usual, the panther's head dropped. Bagheera knew
his master.
They were lying out far up the side of a hill overlooking the
Waingunga, and the morning mist hung below them in bands of white and
green. As the sun rose it changed into bubbling seas of red gold,
churned off, and let the low rays stripe the dried grass on which
Mowgli and Bagheera were resting. It was the end of the cold weather,
the leaves and the trees looked worn and faded, and there was a dry,
ticking rustle everywhere when the wind blew. A little leaf
tap-tap-tapped furiously against a twig, as a single leaf caught in a
current will. It roused Bagheera, for he snuffed the morning air with
a deep, hollow cough, threw himself on his back, and struck with his
fore-paws at the nodding leaf above.
"The year turns," he said. "The Jungle goes forward. The Time of New
Talk is near. That leaf knows. It is very good."
"The grass is dry," Mowgli answered, pulling up a tuft. "Even
Eye-of-the-Spring [that is a little trumpet-shaped, waxy red flower
that runs in and out among the grasses]--even Eye-of-the Spring is
shut, and ... Bagheera, _is_ it well for the Black Panther so to lie
on his back and beat with his paws in the air, as though he were the
tree-cat?"
"Aowh?" said Bagheera. He seemed to be thinking of other things.
"I say, _is_ it well for the Black Panther so to mouth and cough, and
howl and roll? Remember, we be the Masters of the Jungle, thou and
I."
"Indeed, yes: I hear, Man-cub." Bagheera rolled over hurriedly and sat
up, the dust on his ragged, black flanks. (He was just casting his
winter coat.) "We be surely the Masters of the Jungle! Who is so
strong as Mowgli? Who so wise?" There was a curious drawl in the voice
that made Mowgli turn to see whether by any chance the Black Panther
were making fun of him, for the Jungle is full of words that sound
like one thing, but mean another. "I said we be beyond question the
Masters of the Jungle," Bagheera repeated. "Have I done wrong? I did
not know that the Man-cub no longer lay upon the ground. Does he fly,
then?"
Mowgli sat with his elbows on his knees, looking out across the valley
at the daylight. Somewhere down in the woods below a bird was trying
over in a husky, reedy voice the first few notes of his spring song.
It was no more than a shadow of the liquid, tumbling call he would be
pouring later, but Bagheera heard it.
"I said the Time of New Talk is near," growled the panther, switching
his tail.
"I hear," Mowgli answered. "Bagheera, why dost thou shake all over?
The sun is warm."
"That is Ferao, the scarlet woodpecker," said Bagheera. "_He_ has not
forgotten. Now I, too, must remember my song," and he began purring
and crooning to himself, harking back dissatisfied again and again.
"There is no game afoot," said Mowgli.
"Little Brother, are _both_ thine ears stopped? That is no
killing-word, but my song that I make ready against the need."
"I had forgotten. I shall know when the Time of New Talk is here,
because then thou and the others all run away and leave me alone."
Mowgli spoke rather savagely.
"But, indeed, Little Brother," Bagheera began, "we do not always--"
"I say ye do," said Mowgli, shooting out his forefinger angrily. "Ye
_do_ run away, and I, who am the Master of the Jungle, must needs walk
alone. How was it last season, when I would gather sugar-cane from the
fields of a Man-Pack? I sent a runner--I sent thee!--to Hathi, bidding
him to come upon such a night and pluck the sweet grass for me with
his trunk."
"He came only two nights later," said Bagheera, cowering a little;
"and of that long, sweet grass that pleased thee so he gathered more
than any Man-cub could eat in all the nights of the Rains. That was no
fault of mine."
"He did not come upon the night when I sent him the word. No, he was
trumpeting and running and roaring through the valleys in the
moonlight. His trail was like the trail of three elephants, for he
would not hide among the trees. He danced in the moonlight before the
houses of the Man-Pack. I saw him, and yet he would not come to me;
and _I_ am the Master of the Jungle!"
"It was the Time of New Talk," said the panther, always very humble.
"Perhaps, Little Brother, thou didst not that time call him by a
Master-word? Listen to Ferao, and be glad!"
Mowgli's bad temper seemed to have boiled itself away. He lay back
with his head on his arms, his eyes shut. "I do not know--nor do I
care," he said sleepily. "Let us sleep, Bagheera. My stomach is heavy
in me. Make me a rest for my head."
The panther lay down again with a sigh, because he could hear Ferao
practising and repractising his song against the Springtime of New
Talk, as they say.
In an Indian Jungle the seasons slide one into the other almost
without division. There seem to be only two--the wet and the dry; but
if you look closely below the torrents of rain and the clouds of char
and dust you will find all four going round in their regular ring.
Spring is the most wonderful, because she has not to cover a clean,
bare field with new leaves and flowers, but to drive before her and to
put away the hanging-on, over-surviving raffle of half-green things
which the gentle winter has suffered to live, and to make the partly
dressed stale earth feel new and young once more. And this she does so
well that there is no spring in the world like the Jungle spring.
There is one day when all things are tired, and the very smells, as
they drift on the heavy air, are old and used. One cannot explain
this, but it feels so. Then there is another day--to the eye nothing
whatever has changed--when all the smells are new and delightful, and
the whiskers of the Jungle People quiver to their roots, and the
winter hair comes away from their sides in long, draggled locks. Then,
perhaps, a little rain falls, and all the trees and the bushes and the
bamboos and the mosses and the juicy-leaved plants wake with a noise
of growing that you can almost hear, and under this noise runs, day
and night, a deep hum. _That_ is the noise of the spring--a vibrating
boom which is neither bees, nor falling water, nor the wind in
tree-tops, but the purring of the warm, happy world.
Up to this year Mowgli had always delighted in the turn of the
seasons. It was he who generally saw the first Eye-of-the-Spring deep
down among the grasses, and the first bank of spring clouds which are
like nothing else in the Jungle. His voice could be heard in all sorts
of wet, star-lighted, blossoming places, helping the big frogs through
their choruses, or mocking the little upside-down owls that hoot
through the white nights. Like all his people, spring was the season
he chose for his flittings--moving, for the mere joy of rushing
through the warm air, thirty, forty, or fifty miles between twilight
and the morning star, and coming back panting and laughing and
wreathed with strange flowers. The Four did not follow him on these
wild ringings of the Jungle, but went off to sing songs with other
wolves. The Jungle People are very busy in the spring, and Mowgli
could hear them grunting and screaming and whistling according to
their kind. Their voices then are different from their voices at other
times of the year, and that is one of the reasons why spring in the
Jungle is called the Time of New Talk.
But that spring, as he told Bagheera, his stomach was changed in him.
Ever since the bamboo shoots turned spotty-brown he had been looking
forward to the morning when the smells should change. But when the
morning came, and Mor the Peacock, blazing in bronze and blue and
gold, cried it aloud all along the misty woods, and Mowgli opened his
mouth to send on the cry, the words choked between his teeth, and a
feeling came over him that began at his toes and ended in his hair--a
feeling of pure unhappiness, so that he looked himself over to be sure
that he had not trod on a thorn. Mor cried the new smells, the other
birds took it over, and from the rocks by the Waingunga he heard
Bagheera's hoarse scream--something between the scream of an eagle and
the neighing of a horse. There was a yelling and scattering of
_bandar-log_ in the new-budding branches above, and there stood
Mowgli, his chest, filled to answer Mor, sinking in little gasps as
the breath was driven out of it by this unhappiness.
He stared all round him, but he could see no more than the mocking
_bandar-log_ scudding through the trees, and Mor, his tail spread in
full splendor, dancing on the slopes below.
"The smells have changed," screamed Mor. "Good hunting, Little
Brother! Where is thy answer?"
"Little Brother, good hunting!" whistled Chil the Kite and his mate,
swooping down together. The two baffed under Mowgli's nose so close
that a pinch of downy white feathers brushed away.
A light spring rain--elephant-rain they call it--drove across the
Jungle in a belt half a mile wide, left the new leaves wet and nodding
behind, and died out in a double rainbow and a light roll of thunder.
The spring hum broke out for a minute, and was silent, but all the
Jungle Folk seemed to be giving tongue at once. All except Mowgli.
"I have eaten good food," he said to himself. "I have drunk good
water. Nor does my throat burn and grow small, as it did when I bit
the blue-spotted root that Oo the Turtle said was clean food. But my
stomach is heavy, and I have given very bad talk to Bagheera and
others, people of the Jungle and my people. Now, too, I am hot and now
I am cold, and now I am neither hot nor cold, but angry with that
which I cannot see. Huhu! It is time to make a running! To-night I
will cross the ranges; yes, I will make a spring running to the
Marshes of the North, and back again. I have hunted too easily too
long. The Four shall come with me, for they grow as fat as white
grubs."
He called, but never one of the Four answered. They were far beyond
earshot, singing over the spring songs--the Moon and Sambhur
Songs--with the wolves of the Pack; for in the springtime the Jungle
People make very little difference between the day and the night. He
gave the sharp, barking note, but his only answer was the mocking
_maiou_ of the little spotted tree-cat winding in and out among the
branches for early birds' nests. At this he shook all over with rage,
and half drew his knife. Then he became very haughty, though there was
no one to see him, and stalked severely down the hillside, chin up and
eyebrows down. But never a single one of his people asked him a
question, for they were all too busy with their own affairs.
"Yes," said Mowgli to himself, though in his heart he knew that he had
no reason. "Let the Red Dhole come from the Dekkan, or the Red Flower
dance among the bamboos, and all the Jungle runs whining to Mowgli,
calling him great elephant-names. But now, because Eye-of-the-Spring
is red, and Mor, forsooth, must show his naked legs in some spring
dance, the Jungle goes mad as Tabaqui.... By the Bull that bought me!
am I the Master of the Jungle, or am I not? Be silent! What do ye
here?"
A couple of young wolves of the Pack were cantering down a path,
looking for open ground in which to fight. (You will remember that the
Law of the Jungle forbids fighting where the Pack can see.) Their
neck-bristles were as stiff as wire, and they bayed furiously,
crouching for the first grapple. Mowgli leaped forward, caught one
outstretched throat in either hand, expecting to fling the creatures
backward as he had often done in games or Pack hunts. But he had never
before interfered with a spring fight. The two leaped forward and
dashed him aside, and without word to waste rolled over and over close
locked.
Mowgli was on his feet almost before he fell, his knife and his white
teeth were bared, and at that minute he would have killed both for no
reason but that they were fighting when he wished them to be quiet,
although every wolf has full right under the Law to fight. He danced
round them with lowered shoulders and quivering hand, ready to send in
a double blow when the first flurry of the scuffle should be over; but
while he waited the strength seemed to ebb from his body, the
knife-point lowered, and he sheathed the knife and watched.
"I have surely eaten poison," he sighed at last. "Since I broke up the
Council with the Red Flower--since I killed Shere Khan--none of the
Pack could fling me aside. And these be only tail-wolves in the Pack,
little hunters! My strength is gone from me, and presently I shall
die. Oh, Mowgli, why dost thou not kill them both?"
The fight went on till one wolf ran away, and Mowgli was left alone on
the torn and bloody ground, looking now at his knife, and now at his
legs and arms, while the feeling of unhappiness he had never known
before covered him as water covers a log.
He killed early that evening and eat but little, so as to be in good
fettle for his spring running, and he eat alone because all the Jungle
People were away singing or fighting. It was a perfect white night, as
they call it. All green things seemed to have made a month's growth
since the morning. The branch that was yellow-leaved the day before
dripped sap when Mowgli broke it. The mosses curled deep and warm over
his feet, the young grass had no cutting edges, and all the voices of
the Jungle boomed like one deep harp-string touched by the moon--the
Moon of New Talk, who splashed her light full on rock and pool,
slipped it between trunk and creeper, and sifted it through a million
leaves. Forgetting his unhappiness, Mowgli sang aloud with pure
delight as he settled into his stride. It was more like flying than
anything else, for he had chosen the long downward slope that leads to
the Northern Marshes through the heart of the main Jungle, where the
springy ground deadened the fall of his feet. A man-taught man would
have picked his way with many stumbles through the cheating moonlight,
but Mowgli's muscles, trained by years of experience, bore him up as
though he were a feather. When a rotten log or a hidden stone turned
under his foot he saved himself, never checking his pace, without
effort and without thought. When he tired of ground-going he threw up
his hands monkey-fashion to the nearest creeper, and seemed to float
rather than to climb up into the thin branches, whence he would follow
a tree-road till his mood changed, and he shot downward in a long,
leafy curve to the levels again. There were still, hot hollows
surrounded by wet rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy
scents of the night flowers and the bloom along the creeper-buds; dark
avenues where the moonlight lay in belts as regular as checkered
marbles in a church aisle; thickets where the wet young growth stood
breast-high about him and threw its arms round his waist; and
hilltops crowned with broken rock, where he leaped from stone to stone
above the lairs of the frightened little foxes. He would hear, very
faint and far off, the _chug-drug_ of a boar sharpening his tusks on a
bole; and would come across the great gray brute all alone, scribing
and rending the bark of a tall tree, his mouth dripping with foam, and
his eyes blazing like fire. Or he would turn aside to the sound of
clashing horns and hissing grunts, and dash past a couple of furious
sambhur, staggering to and fro with lowered heads, striped with blood
that showed black in the moonlight. Or at some rushing ford he would
hear Jacala the Crocodile bellowing like a bull, or disturb a twined
knot of the Poison People, but before they could strike he would be
away and across the glistening shingle, deep in the Jungle again.
So he ran, sometimes shouting, sometimes singing to himself, the
happiest thing in all the Jungle that night, till the smell of the
flowers warned him that he was near the marshes, and those lay far
beyond his furthest hunting-grounds.
Here, again, a man-trained man would have sunk overhead in three
strides, but Mowgli's feet had eyes in them, and they passed him from
tussock to tussock and clump to quaking clump without asking help
from the eyes in his head. He ran out to the middle of the swamp,
disturbing the duck as he ran, and sat down on a moss-coated
tree-trunk lapped in the black water. The marsh was awake all round
him, for in the spring the Bird-People sleep very lightly, and
companies of them were coming or going the night through. But no one
took any notice of Mowgli sitting among the tall reeds humming songs
without words, and looking at the soles of his hard brown feet in case
of neglected thorns. All his unhappiness seemed to have been left
behind in his own jungle, and he was just beginning a full-throat song
when it came back again--ten times worse than before.
This time Mowgli was frightened. "It is here also!" he said half
aloud. "It has followed me," and he looked over his shoulder to see
whether the It were not standing behind him. "There is no one here."
The night noises of the marsh went on, but never a bird or beast spoke
to him, and the new feeling of misery grew.
"I have surely eaten poison," he said in an awe-stricken voice. "It
must be that carelessly I have eaten poison, and my strength is going
from me. I was afraid--and yet it was not _I_ that was afraid--Mowgli
was afraid when the two wolves fought. Akela, or even Phao, would
have silenced them; yet Mowgli was afraid. That is true sign I have
eaten poison.... But what do they care in the Jungle? They sing and
howl and fight, and run in companies under the moon, and
I--_Hai-mai!_--I am dying in the marshes, of that poison which I have
eaten." He was so sorry for himself that he nearly wept. "And after,"
he went on, "they will find me lying in the black water. Nay, I will
go back to my own Jungle, and I will die upon the Council Rock, and
Bagheera, whom I love, if he is not screaming in the valley--Bagheera,
perhaps, may watch by what is left for a little, lest Chil use me as
he used Akela."
A large, warm tear splashed down on his knee, and, miserable as he
was, Mowgli felt happy that he was so miserable, if you can understand
that upside-down sort of happiness. "As Chil the Kite used Akela," he
repeated, "on the night I saved the Pack from Red Dog." He was quiet
for a little, thinking of the last words of the Lone Wolf, which you,
of course, remember. "Now Akela said to me many foolish things before
he died, for when we die our stomachs change. He said.... None the
less, I _am_ of the Jungle!"
In his excitement, as he remembered the fight on Waingunga bank, he
shouted the last words aloud, and a wild buffalo-cow among the reeds
sprang to her knees, snorting, "Man!"
"Uhh!" said Mysa the Wild Buffalo (Mowgli could hear him turn in his
wallow), "_that_ is no man. It is only the hairless wolf of the
Seeonee Pack. On such nights runs he to and fro."
"Uhh!" said the cow, dropping her head again to graze, "I thought it
was Man."
"I say no. Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?" lowed Mysa.
"Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?" the boy called back mockingly. "That is
all Mysa thinks for: Is it danger? But for Mowgli, who goes to and fro
in the Jungle by night, watching, what do ye care?"
"How loud he cries!" said the cow.
"Thus do they cry," Mysa answered contemptuously, "who, having torn up
the grass, know not how to eat it."
"For less than this," Mowgli groaned to himself--"for less than this
even last Rains I had pricked Mysa out of his wallow, and ridden him
through the swamp on a rush halter." He stretched a hand to break one
of the feathery reeds, but drew it back with a sigh. Mysa went on
steadily chewing the cud, and the long grass ripped where the cow
grazed. "I will not die _here_," he said angrily. "Mysa, who is of one
blood with Jacala and the pig, would see me. Let us go beyond the
swamp, and see what comes. Never have I run such a spring running--hot
and cold together. Up, Mowgli!"
He could not resist the temptation of stealing across the reeds to
Mysa and pricking him with the point of his knife. The great dripping
bull broke out of his wallow like a shell exploding, while Mowgli
laughed till he sat down.
"Say now that the hairless wolf of the Seeonee Pack once herded thee,
Mysa," he called.
"Wolf! _Thou?_" the bull snorted, stamping in the mud. "All the Jungle
knows thou wast a herder of tame cattle--such a man's brat as shouts
in the dust by the crops yonder. _Thou_ of the Jungle! What hunter
would have crawled like a snake among the leeches, and for a muddy
jest--a jackal's jest--have shamed me before my cow? Come to firm
ground, and I will--I will...." Mysa frothed at the mouth, for Mysa
has nearly the worst temper of any one in the Jungle.
Mowgli watched him puff and blow with eyes that never changed. When he
could make himself heard through the spattering mud, he said: "What
Man-Pack lair here by the marshes, Mysa? This is new jungle to me."
"Go north, then," roared the angry bull, for Mowgli had pricked him
rather sharply. "It was a naked cowherd's jest. Go and tell them at
the village at the foot of the marsh."
"The Man-Pack do not love jungle-tales, nor do I think, Mysa, that a
scratch more or less on thy hide is any matter for a council. But I
will go and look at this village. Yes, I will go. Softly now. It is
not every night that the Master of the Jungle comes to herd thee."
He stepped out to the shivering ground on the edge of the marsh, well
knowing that Mysa would never charge over it, and laughed, as he ran,
to think of the bull's anger.
"My strength is not altogether gone," he said. "It may be that the
poison is not to the bone. There is a star sitting low yonder." He
looked at it between his half-shut hands. "By the Bull that bought me,
it is the Red Flower--the Red Flower that I lay beside before--before
I came even to the first Seeonee Pack! Now that I have seen, I will
finish the running."
The marsh ended in a broad plain where a light twinkled. It was a long
time since Mowgli had concerned himself with the doings of men, but
this night the glimmer of the Red Flower drew him forward.
"I will look," said he, "as I did in the old days, and I will see how
far the Man-Pack has changed."
Forgetting that he was no longer in his own jungle, where he could do
what he pleased, he trod carelessly through the dew-loaded grasses
till he came to the hut where the light stood. Three or four yelping
dogs gave tongue, for he was on the outskirts of a village.
"Ho!" said Mowgli, sitting down noiselessly, after sending back a deep
wolf-growl that silenced the curs. "What comes will come. Mowgli, what
hast thou to do any more with the lairs of the Man-Pack?" He rubbed
his mouth, remembering where a stone had struck it years ago when the
other Man-Pack had cast him out.
The door of the hut opened, and a woman stood peering out into the
darkness. A child cried, and the woman said over her shoulder, "Sleep.
It was but a jackal that waked the dogs. In a little time morning
comes."
Mowgli in the grass began to shake as though he had fever. He knew
that voice well, but to make sure he cried softly, surprised to find
how man's talk came back, "Messua! O Messua!"
"Who calls?" said the woman, a quiver in her voice.
"Hast thou forgotten?" said Mowgli. His throat was dry as he spoke.
"If it be _thou_, what name did I give thee? Say!" She had half shut
the door, and her hand was clutching at her breast.
"Nathoo! Ohe Nathoo!" said Mowgli, for, as you remember, that was the
name Messua gave him when he first came to the Man-Pack.
"Come, my son," she called, and Mowgli stepped into the light, and
looked full at Messua, the woman who had been good to him, and whose
life he had saved from the Man-Pack so long before. She was older, and
her hair was gray, but her eyes and her voice had not changed.
Woman-like, she expected to find Mowgli where she had left him, and
her eyes traveled upward in a puzzled way from his chest to his head,
that touched the top of the door.
"My son," she stammered; and then, sinking to his feet: "But it is no
longer my son. It is a Godling of the Woods! Ahai!"
As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and
beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife
swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white
jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a
jungle legend. The child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked
aloud with terror. Messua turned to soothe him, while Mowgli stood
still, looking in at the water-jars and the cooking-pots, the
grain-bin, and all the other human belongings that he found himself
remembering so well.
"What wilt thou eat or drink?" Messua murmured. "This is all thine. We
owe our lives to thee. But art thou him I called Nathoo, or a Godling,
indeed?"
"I am Nathoo," said Mowgli, "I am very far from my own place. I saw
this light, and came hither. I did not know thou wast here."
"After we came to Kanhiwara," Messua said timidly, "the English would
have helped us against those villagers that sought to burn us.
Rememberest thou?"
"Indeed, I have not forgotten."
"But when the English Law was made ready, we went to the village of
those evil people, and it was no more to be found."
"That also I remember," said Mowgli, with a quiver of his nostril.
"My man, therefore, took service in the fields, and at last--for,
indeed, he was a strong man--we held a little land here. It is not so
rich as the old village, but we do not need much--we two."
"Where is he--the man that dug in the dirt when he was afraid on that
night?"
"He is dead--a year."
"And he?" Mowgli pointed to the child.
"My son that was born two Rains ago. If thou art a Godling, give him
the Favor of the Jungle, that he may be safe among thy--thy people, as
we were safe on that night."
She lifted up the child, who, forgetting his fright, reached out to
play with the knife that hung on Mowgli's chest, and Mowgli put the
little fingers aside very carefully.
"And if thou art Nathoo whom the tigers carried away," Messua went on,
choking, "he is then thy younger brother. Give him an elder brother's
blessing."
"_Hai-mai!_ What do I know of the thing called a blessing? I am
neither a Godling nor his brother, and--O mother, mother, my heart is
heavy in me." He shivered as he set down the child.
"Like enough," said Messua, bustling among the cooking-pots. "This
comes of running about the marshes by night. Beyond question, the
fever has soaked thee to the marrow." Mowgli smiled a little at the
idea of anything in the Jungle hurting him. "I will make a fire, and
thou shalt drink warm milk. Put away the jasmine wreath: the smell is
heavy in so small a place."
Mowgli sat down, muttering, with his face in his hands. All manner of
strange feelings that he had never felt before were running over him,
exactly as though he had been poisoned, and he felt dizzy and a little
sick. He drank the warm milk in long gulps, Messua patting him on the
shoulder from time to time, not quite sure whether he were her son
Nathoo of the long ago days, or some wonderful Jungle being, but glad
to feel that he was at least flesh and blood.
"Son," she said at last,--her eyes were full of pride,--"have any told
thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men?"
"Hah?" said Mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the
kind. Messua laughed softly and happily. The look in his face was
enough for her.
"I am the first, then? It is right, though it comes seldom, that a
mother should tell her son these good things. Thou art very beautiful.
Never have I looked upon such a man."
Mowgli twisted his head and tried to see over his own hard shoulder,
and Messua laughed again so long that Mowgli, not knowing why, was
forced to laugh with her, and the child ran from one to the other,
laughing too.
"Nay, thou must not mock thy brother," said Messua, catching him to
her breast. "When thou art one half as fair we will marry thee to the
youngest daughter of a king, and thou shalt ride great elephants."
Mowgli could not understand one word in three of the talk here; the
warm milk was taking effect on him after his long run, so he curled up
and in a minute was deep asleep, and Messua put the hair back from his
eyes, threw a cloth over him, and was happy. Jungle-fashion, he slept
out the rest of that night and all the next day; for his instincts,
which never wholly slept, warned him there was nothing to fear. He
waked at last with a bound that shook the hut, for the cloth over his
face made him dream of traps; and there he stood, his hand on his
knife, the sleep all heavy in his rolling eyes, ready for any fight.
Messua laughed, and set the evening meal before him. There were only a
few coarse cakes baked over the smoky fire, some rice, and a lump of
sour preserved tamarinds--just enough to go on with till he could get
to his evening kill. The smell of the dew in the marshes made him
hungry and restless. He wanted to finish his spring running, but the
child insisted on sitting in his arms, and Messua would have it that
his long, blue-black hair must be combed out. So she sang, as she
combed, foolish little baby-songs, now calling Mowgli her son, and now
begging him to give some of his jungle power to the child. The hut
door was closed, but Mowgli heard a sound he knew well, and saw
Messua's jaw drop with horror as a great gray paw came under the
bottom of the door, and Gray Brother outside whined a muffled and
penitent whine of anxiety and fear.
"Out and wait! Ye would not come when I called," said Mowgli in
jungle-talk, without turning his head, and the great gray paw
disappeared.
"Do not--do not bring thy--thy servants with thee," said Messua.
"I--we have always lived at peace with the Jungle."
"It is peace," said Mowgli, rising. "Think of that night on the road
to Kanhiwara. There were scores of such folk before thee and behind
thee. But I see that even in springtime the Jungle People do not
always forget. Mother, I go."
Messua drew aside humbly--he was indeed a wood-god, she thought; but
as his hand was on the door the mother in her made her throw her arms
round Mowgli's neck again and again.
"Come back!" she whispered. "Son or no son, come back, for I love
thee--Look, he too grieves."
The child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going
away.
"Come back again," Messua repeated. "By night or by day this door is
never shut to thee."
Mowgli's throat worked as though the cords in it were being pulled,
and his voice seemed to be dragged from it as he answered, "I will
surely come back."
"And now," he said, as he put by the head of the fawning wolf on the
threshold, "I have a little cry against thee, Gray Brother. Why came
ye not all four when I called so long ago?"
"So long ago? It was but last night. I--we--were singing in the Jungle
the new songs, for this is the Time of New Talk. Rememberest thou?"
"Truly, truly."
"And as soon as the songs were sung," Gray Brother went on earnestly,
"I followed thy trail. I ran from all the others and followed
hot-foot. But, O Little Brother, what hast _thou_ done, eating and
sleeping with the Man-Pack?"
"If ye had come when I called, this had never been," said Mowgli,
running much faster.
"And now what is to be?" said Gray Brother.
Mowgli was just going to answer when a girl in a white cloth came down
some path that led from the outskirts of the village. Gray Brother
dropped out of sight at once, and Mowgli backed noiselessly into a
field of high-springing crops. He could almost have touched her with
his hand when the warm, green stalks closed before his face and he
disappeared like a ghost. The girl screamed, for she thought she had
seen a spirit, and then she gave a deep sigh. Mowgli parted the stalks
with his hands and watched her till she was out of sight.
"And now I do not know," he said, sighing in his turn. "_Why_ did ye
not come when I called?"
"We follow thee--we follow thee," Gray Brother mumbled, licking at
Mowgli's heel. "We follow thee always, except in the Time of the New
Talk."
"And would ye follow me to the Man-Pack?" Mowgli whispered.
"Did I not follow thee on the night our old Pack cast thee out? Who
waked thee lying among the crops?"
"Ay, but again?"
"Have I not followed thee to-night?"
"Ay, but again and again, and it may be again, Gray Brother?"
Gray Brother was silent. When he spoke he growled to himself, "The
Black One spoke truth."
"And he said?"
"Man goes to Man at the last. Raksha, our mother, said--"
"So also said Akela on the night of Red Dog," Mowgli muttered.
"So also says Kaa, who is wiser than us all."
"What dost thou say, Gray Brother?"
"They cast thee out once, with bad talk. They cut thy mouth with
stones. They sent Buldeo to slay thee. They would have thrown thee
into the Red Flower. Thou, and not I, hast said that they are evil and
senseless. Thou, and not I--I follow my own people--didst let in the
Jungle upon them. Thou, and not I, didst make song against them more
bitter even than our song against Red Dog."
"I ask thee what _thou_ sayest?"
They were talking as they ran. Gray Brother cantered on a while
without replying, and then he said,--between bound and bound as it
were,--"Man-cub--Master of the Jungle--Son of Raksha, Lair-brother to
me--though I forget for a little while in the spring, thy trail is my
trail, thy lair is my lair, thy kill is my kill, and thy death-fight
is my death-fight. I speak for the Three. But what wilt thou say to
the Jungle?"
"That is well thought. Between the sight and the kill it is not good
to wait. Go before and cry them all to the Council Rock, and I will
tell them what is in my stomach. But they may not come--in the Time of
New Talk they may forget me."
"Hast thou, then, forgotten nothing?" snapped Gray Brother over his
shoulder, as he laid himself down to gallop, and Mowgli followed,
thinking.
At any other season the news would have called all the Jungle together
with bristling necks, but now they were busy hunting and fighting and
killing and singing. From one to another Gray Brother ran, crying,
"The Master of the Jungle goes back to Man! Come to the Council Rock."
And the happy, eager People only answered, "He will return in the
summer heats. The Rains will drive him to lair. Run and sing with us,
Gray Brother."
"But the Master of the Jungle goes back to Man," Gray Brother would
repeat.
"Eee--Yoawa? Is the Time of New Talk any less sweet for that?" they
would reply. So when Mowgli, heavy-hearted, came up through the
well-remembered rocks to the place where he had been brought into the
Council, he found only the Four, Baloo, who was nearly blind with age,
and the heavy, cold-blooded Kaa coiled around Akela's empty seat.
"Thy trail ends here, then, Manling?" said Kaa, as Mowgli threw
himself down, his face in his hands. "Cry thy cry. We be of one blood,
thou and I--man and snake together."
"Why did I not die under Red Dog?" the boy moaned. "My strength is
gone from me, and it is not any poison. By night and by day I hear a
double step upon my trail. When I turn my head it is as though one had
hidden himself from me that instant. I go to look behind the trees,
and he is not there. I call and none cry again; but it is as though
one listened and kept back the answer. I lie down, but I do not rest.
I run the spring running, but I am not made still. I bathe, but I am
not made cool. The kill sickens me, but I have no heart to fight
except I kill. The Red Flower is in my body, my bones are
water--and--I know not what I know."
"What need of talk?" said Baloo slowly, turning his head to where
Mowgli lay. "Akela by the river said it, that Mowgli should drive
Mowgli back to the Man-Pack. I said it. But who listens now to Baloo?
Bagheera--where is Bagheera this night?--he knows also. It is the
Law."
"When we met at Cold Lairs, Manling, I knew it," said Kaa, turning a
little in his mighty coils. "Man goes to Man at the last, though the
Jungle does not cast him out."
The Four looked at one another and at Mowgli, puzzled but obedient.
"The Jungle does not cast me out, then?" Mowgli stammered.
Gray Brother and the Three growled furiously, beginning, "So long as
we live none shall dare--" But Baloo checked them.
"I taught thee the Law. It is for me to speak," he said; "and, though
I cannot now see the rocks before me, I see far. Little Frog, take
thine own trail; make thy lair with thine own blood and pack and
people; but when there is need of foot or tooth or eye, or a word
carried swiftly by night, remember, Master of the Jungle, the Jungle
is thine at call."
"The Middle Jungle is thine also," said Kaa. "I speak for no small
people."
"_Hai-mai_, my brothers," cried Mowgli, throwing up his arms with a
sob. "I know not what I know! I would not go; but I am drawn by both
feet. How shall I leave these nights?"
"Nay, look up, Little Brother," Baloo repeated. "There is no shame in
this hunting. When the honey is eaten we leave the empty hive."
"Having cast the skin," said Kaa, "we may not creep into it afresh. It
is the Law."
"Listen, dearest of all to me," said Baloo. "There is neither word nor
will here to hold thee back. Look up! Who may question the Master of
the Jungle? I saw thee playing among the white pebbles yonder when
thou wast a little frog; and Bagheera, that bought thee for the price
of a young bull newly killed, saw thee also. Of that Looking Over we
two only remain; for Raksha, thy lair-mother, is dead with thy
lair-father; the old Wolf Pack is long since dead; thou knowest
whither Shere Khan went, and Akela died among the dholes, where, but
for thy wisdom and strength, the second Seeonee Pack would also have
died. There remains nothing but old bones. It is no longer the
Man-cub that asks leave of his Pack, but the Master of the Jungle
that changes his trail. Who shall question Man in his ways?"
"But Bagheera and the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli. "I would
not--"
His words were cut short by a roar and a crash in the thicket below,
and Bagheera, light, strong, and terrible as always, stood before him.
"_Therefore_," he said, stretching out a dripping right paw, "I did
not come. It was a long hunt, but he lies dead in the bushes now--a
bull in his second year--the Bull that frees thee, Little Brother. All
debts are paid now. For the rest, my word is Baloo's word." He licked
Mowgli's foot. "Remember, Bagheera loved thee," he cried and bounded
away. At the foot of the hill he cried again long and loud, "Good
hunting on a new trail, Master of the Jungle! Remember, Bagheera loved
thee."
"Thou hast heard," said Baloo. "There is no more. Go now; but first
come to me. O wise Little Frog, come to me!"
"It is hard to cast the skin," said Kaa as Mowgli sobbed and sobbed,
with his head on the blind bear's side and his arms round his neck,
while Baloo tried feebly to lick his feet.
"The stars are thin," said Gray Brother, snuffing at the dawn-wind.
"Where shall we lair to-day? For, from now, we follow new trails."
* * * * *
And this is the last of the Mowgli stories.
[Illustration]