“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?” clamored 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 honor 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 doorstep.
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 Honor 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, wolflike, 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 tonight 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 my 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 croplands 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.