Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half-way up to the jealous moon!
Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
Don't you wish you had extra hands?
Wouldn't you like if your tails were--_so_--
Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
Now you're angry, but--never mind,
_Brother, thy tail hangs down behind_!
Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two--
Something noble and grand and good,
Won by merely wishing we could.
Now we're going to--never mind,
_Brother, thy tail hangs down behind_!
All the talk we ever have heard
Uttered by bat or beast or bird--
Hide or fin or scale or feather--
Jabber it quickly and all together!
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again!
Now we are talking just like men.
Let's pretend we are ... never mind,
_Brother, thy tail hangs down behind_!
This is the way of the Monkey-kind.
_Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through
the pines,
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape
swings.
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we
make,
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid
things!_
"TIGER! TIGER!"
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
_Brother, the watch was long and cold._
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
_Brother, he crops in the jungle still._
Where is the power that made your pride?
_Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side._
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
_Brother, I go to my lair--to die._
[Illustration]
"TIGER! TIGER!"
NOW we must go back to the last tale but one. When Mowgli left the
wolf's cave after the fight with the Pack at the Council Rock, he went
down to the plowed lands where the villagers lived, but he would not
stop there because it was too near to the jungle, and he knew that he
had made at least one bad enemy at the Council. So he hurried on,
keeping to the rough road that ran down the valley, and followed it at a
steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that
he did not know. The valley opened out into a great plain dotted over
with rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, and
at the other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the
grazing-grounds, and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a
hoe. All over the plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the
little boys in charge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away,
and the yellow pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked.
Mowgli walked on, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the
village gate he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate
at twilight, pushed to one side.
"Umph!" he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in
his night rambles after things to eat. "So men are afraid of the People
of the Jungle here also." He sat down by the gate, and when a man came
out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he
wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one street of the
village shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in
white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to
the gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked
and shouted and pointed at Mowgli.
"They have no manners, these Men Folk," said Mowgli to himself. "Only
the gray ape would behave as they do." So he threw back his long hair
and frowned at the crowd.
"What is there to be afraid of?" said the priest. "Look at the marks on
his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child
run away from the jungle."
Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped Mowgli harder
than they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and
legs. But he would have been the last person in the world to call these
bites; for he knew what real biting meant.
"_Arré! Arré!_" said two or three women together. "To be bitten by
wolves, poor child! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire. By
my honor, Messua, he is not unlike thy boy that was taken by the tiger."
"Let me look," said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and
ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the palm of her hand. "Indeed he
is not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy."
The priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua was wife to the
richest villager in the place. So he looked up at the sky for a minute,
and said solemnly: "What the jungle has taken the jungle has restored.
Take the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to honor the
priest who sees so far into the lives of men."
"By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli to himself, "but all this
talking is like another looking-over by the Pack! Well, if I am a man, a
man I must become."
The crowd parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to her hut, where there
was a red lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain-chest with curious
raised patterns on it, half a dozen copper cooking-pots, an image of a
Hindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall a real looking-glass, such
as they sell at the country fairs.
She gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid her
hand on his head and looked into his eyes; for she thought perhaps that
he might be her real son come back from the jungle where the tiger had
taken him. So she said: "Nathoo, O Nathoo!" Mowgli did not show that he
knew the name. "Dost thou not remember the day when I gave thee thy new
shoes?" She touched his foot, and it was almost as hard as horn. "No,"
she said, sorrowfully; "those feet have never worn shoes, but thou art
very like my Nathoo, and thou shalt be my son."
Mowgli was uneasy, because he had never been under a roof before; but
as he looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if
he wanted to get away, and that the window had no fastenings. "What is
the good of a man," he said to himself at last, "if he does not
understand man's talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with
us in the jungle. I must learn their talk."
It was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to
imitate the challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little
wild pig. So as soon as Messua pronounced a word Mowgli would imitate it
almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many
things in the hut.
There was a difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would not sleep under
anything that looked so like a panther-trap as that hut, and when they
shut the door he went through the window. "Give him his will," said
Messua's husband. "Remember he can never till now have slept on a bed.
If he is indeed sent in the place of our son he will not run away."
So Mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge of the
field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked him
under the chin.
"Phew!" said Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Mother Wolf's cubs).
"This is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou smellest of
wood-smoke and cattle--altogether like a man already. Wake, Little
Brother; I bring news."
[Illustration: "'WAKE, LITTLE BROTHER; I BRING NEWS.'"]
"Are all well in the jungle?" said Mowgli, hugging him.
"All except the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now,
listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows
again, for he is badly singed. When he returns he swears that he will
lay thy bones in the Waingunga."
"There are two words to that. I also have made a little promise. But
news is always good. I am tired to-night,--very tired with new things,
Gray Brother,--but bring me the news always."
"Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make thee
forget?" said Gray Brother, anxiously.
"Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in our cave; but
also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the Pack."
"And that thou mayest be cast out of another pack. Men are only men,
Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond.
When I come down here again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at the
edge of the grazing-ground."
For three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the village
gate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had
to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had
to learn about money, which he did not in the least understand, and
about plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then the little children
in the village made him very angry. Luckily, the Law of the Jungle had
taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle, life and food depend
on keeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would
not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only
the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept
him from picking them up and breaking them in two.
He did not know his own strength in the least. In the jungle he knew he
was weak compared with the beasts, but in the village, people said he
was as strong as a bull.
And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes
between man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the clay-pit,
Mowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their
journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for
the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When the priest
scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey, too, and the
priest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had better be set to work as
soon as possible; and the village head-man told Mowgli that he would
have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while they
grazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because he
had been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to
a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great
fig-tree. It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and
the barber (who knew all the gossip of the village), and old Buldeo, the
village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat
and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the
platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk
every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree
and talked, and pulled at the big _huqas_ (the water-pipes) till far
into the night. They told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts;
and Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the
jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged
out of their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle
was always at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their
crops, and now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within
sight of the village gates.
Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of,
had to cover his face not to show that he was laughing, while Buldeo,
the Tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story
to another, and Mowgli's shoulders shook.
Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away Messua's son
was a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked
old money-lender, who had died some years ago. "And I know that this is
true," he said, "because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he
got in a riot when his account-books were burned, and the tiger that I
speak of _he_ limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are unequal."
"True, true; that must be the truth," said the graybeards, nodding
together.
"Are all these tales such cobwebs and moon-talk?" said Mowgli. "That
tiger limps because he was born lame, as every one knows. To talk of the
soul of a money-lender in a beast that never had the courage of a jackal
is child's talk."
[Illustration: "'ARE ALL THESE TALES SUCH COBWEBS AND MOONTALK?' SAID
MOWGLI."]
Buldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the head-man
stared.
"Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?" said Buldeo. "If thou art so wise,
better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government has set a
hundred rupees [$30] on his life. Better still, do not talk when thy
elders speak."
Mowgli rose to go. "All the evening I have lain here listening," he
called back over his shoulder, "and, except once or twice, Buldeo has
not said one word of truth concerning the jungle, which is at his very
doors. How, then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and gods and
goblins which he says he has seen?"
"It is full time that boy went to herding," said the head-man, while
Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli's impertinence.
The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the cattle
and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back at
night; and the very cattle that would trample a white man to death allow
themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by children that
hardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with the herds
they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cattle. But
if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes
carried off. Mowgli went through the village street in the dawn, sitting
on the back of Rama, the great herd bull; and the slaty-blue buffaloes,
with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out of
their byres, one by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear
to the children with him that he was the master. He beat the buffaloes
with a long, polished bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze
the cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be
very careful not to stray away from the herd.
An Indian grazing-ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little
ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The buffaloes
generally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing
or basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them on to the edge
of the plain where the Waingunga River came out of the jungle; then he
dropped from Rama's neck, trotted off to a bamboo clump, and found Gray
Brother. "Ah," said Gray Brother, "I have waited here very many days.
What is the meaning of this cattle-herding work?"
"It is an order," said Mowgli. "I am a village herd for a while. What
news of Shere Khan?"
"He has come back to this country, and has waited here a long time for
thee. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. But he means to
kill thee."
"Very good," said Mowgli. "So long as he is away do thou or one of the
brothers sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come out of the
village. When he comes back wait for me in the ravine by the _dhâk_-tree
in the center of the plain. We need not walk into Shere Khan's mouth."
Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while the
buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest
things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move
on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes
very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after
another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and
staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and there they lie like
logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd-children
hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead,
and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep
down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and
the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be
a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and wake
and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put
grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying-mantises and make them fight;
or string a necklace of red and black jungle-nuts; or watch a lizard
basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they
sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and
the day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they
make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and
put reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the
figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. Then
evening comes, and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of
the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other,
and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village
lights.
Day after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and
day after day he would see Gray Brother's back a mile and a half away
across the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day
after day he would lie on the grass listening to the noise round him,
and dreaming of old days in the jungle. If Shere Khan had made a false
step with his lame paw up in the jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would
have heard him in those long still mornings.
[Illustration]
At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal
place, and he laughed and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the
_dhâk_-tree, which was all covered with golden-red flowers. There sat
Gray Brother, every bristle on his back lifted.
"He has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He crossed the
ranges last night with Tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail," said the wolf,
panting.
Mowgli frowned. "I am not afraid of Shere Khan, but Tabaqui is very
cunning."
"Have no fear," said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little. "I met
Tabaqui in the dawn. Now he is telling all his wisdom to the kites, but
he told _me_ everything before I broke his back. Shere Khan's plan is to
wait for thee at the village gate this evening--for thee and for no one
else. He is lying up now in the big dry ravine of the Waingunga."
"Has he eaten to-day, or does he hunt empty?" said Mowgli, for the
answer meant life or death to him.
"He killed at dawn,--a pig,--and he has drunk too. Remember, Shere Khan
could never fast even for the sake of revenge."
"Oh! Fool, fool! What a cub's cub it is! Eaten and drunk too, and he
thinks that I shall wait till he has slept! Now, where does he lie up?
If there were but ten of us we might pull him down as he lies. These
buffaloes will not charge unless they wind him, and I cannot speak their
language. Can we get behind his track so that they may smell it?"
"He swam far down the Waingunga to cut that off," said Gray Brother.
"Tabaqui told him that, I know. He would never have thought of it
alone." Mowgli stood with his finger in his mouth, thinking. "The big
ravine of the Waingunga. That opens out on the plain not half a mile
from here. I can take the herd round through the jungle to the head of
the ravine and then sweep down--but he would slink out at the foot. We
must block that end. Gray Brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for
me?"
"Not I, perhaps--but I have brought a wise helper." Gray Brother trotted
off and dropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a huge gray head that
Mowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry
of all the jungle--the hunting-howl of a wolf at midday.
"Akela! Akela!" said Mowgli, clapping his hands. "I might have known
that thou wouldst not forget me. We have a big work in hand. Cut the
herd in two, Akela. Keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls
and the plow-buffaloes by themselves."
The two wolves ran, ladies'-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which
snorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps. In one the
cow-buffaloes stood, with their calves in the center, and glared and
pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and
trample the life out of him. In the other the bulls and the young bulls
snorted and stamped; but, though they looked more imposing, they were
much less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. No six men could
have divided the herd so neatly.
"What orders!" panted Akela. "They are trying to join again."
Mowgli slipped on to Rama's back. "Drive the bulls away to the left,
Akela. Gray Brother, when we are gone hold the cows together, and drive
them into the foot of the ravine."
"How far?" said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.
"Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump," shouted Mowgli.
"Keep them there till we come down." The bulls swept off as Akela bayed,
and Gray Brother stopped in front of the cows. They charged down on him,
and he ran just before them to the foot of the ravine, as Akela drove
the bulls far to the left.
"Well done! Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful,
now--careful, Akela. A snap too much, and the bulls will charge.
_Hujah!_ This is wilder work than driving black-buck. Didst thou think
these creatures could move so swiftly?" Mowgli called.
"I have--have hunted these too in my time," gasped Akela in the dust.
"Shall I turn them into the jungle?"
"Ay, turn! Swiftly turn them. Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I could only
tell him what I need of him to-day!"
The bulls were turned to the right this time, and crashed into the
standing thicket. The other herd-children, watching with the cattle half
a mile away, hurried to the village as fast as their legs could carry
them, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run away.
But Mowgli's plan was simple enough. All he wanted to do was to make a
big circle uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the
bulls down it and catch Shere Khan between the bulls and the cows, for
he knew that after a meal and a full drink Shere Khan would not be in
any condition to fight or to clamber up the sides of the ravine. He was
soothing the buffaloes now by voice, and Akela had dropped far to the
rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the rear-guard. It was a
long, long circle, for they did not wish to get too near the ravine and
give Shere Khan warning. At last Mowgli rounded up the bewildered herd
at the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down to
the ravine itself. From that height you could see across the tops of the
trees down to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides
of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they
ran nearly straight up and down, and the vines and creepers that hung
over them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out.
"Let them breathe, Akela," he said, holding up his hand. "They have not
winded him yet. Let them breathe. I must tell Shere Khan who comes. We
have him in the trap."
He put his hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine,--it was
almost like shouting down a tunnel,--and the echoes jumped from rock to
rock.
After a long time there came back the drawling, sleepy snarl of a
full-fed tiger just awakened.
"Who calls?" said Shere Khan, and a splendid peacock fluttered up out of
the ravine, screeching.
"I, Mowgli. Cattle-thief, it is time to come to the Council Rock!
Down--hurry them down, Akela. Down, Rama, down!"
The herd paused for an instant at the edge of the slope, but Akela gave
tongue in the full hunting-yell, and they pitched over one after the
other just as steamers shoot rapids, the sand and stones spurting up
round them. Once started, there was no chance of stopping, and before
they were fairly in the bed of the ravine Rama winded Shere Khan and
bellowed.
"Ha! Ha!" said Mowgli, on his back. "Now thou knowest!" and the torrent
of black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the
ravine like boulders in flood-time; the weaker buffaloes being
shouldered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through the
creepers. They knew what the business was before them--the terrible
charge of the buffalo-herd, against which no tiger can hope to stand.
Shere Khan heard the thunder of their hoofs, picked himself up, and
lumbered down the ravine, looking from side to side for some way of
escape, but the walls of the ravine were straight, and he had to keep
on, heavy with his dinner and his drink, willing to do anything rather
than fight. The herd splashed through the pool he had just left,
bellowing till the narrow cut rang. Mowgli heard an answering bellow
from the foot of the ravine, saw Shere Khan turn (the tiger knew if the
worst came to the worst it was better to meet the bulls than the cows
with their calves), and then Rama tripped, stumbled, and went on again
over something soft, and, with the bulls at his heels, crashed full into
the other herd, while the weaker buffaloes were lifted clean off their
feet by the shock of the meeting. That charge carried both herds out
into the plain, goring and stamping and snorting. Mowgli watched his
time, and slipped off Rama's neck, laying about him right and left with
his stick.
"Quick, Akela! Break them up. Scatter them, or they will be fighting one
another. Drive them away, Akela. _Hai_, Rama! _Hai! hai! hai!_ my
children. Softly now, softly! It is all over."
Akela and Gray Brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes' legs, and
though the herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, Mowgli
managed to turn Rama, and the others followed him to the wallows.
Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were
coming for him already.
"Brothers, that was a dog's death," said Mowgli, feeling for the knife
he always carried in a sheath round his neck now that he lived with men.
"But he would never have shown fight. His hide will look well on the
Council Rock. We must get to work swiftly."
A boy trained among men would never have dreamed of skinning a ten-foot
tiger alone, but Mowgli knew better than any one else how an animal's
skin is fitted on, and how it can be taken off. But it was hard work,
and Mowgli slashed and tore and grunted for an hour, while the wolves
lolled out their tongues, or came forward and tugged as he ordered them.
Presently a hand fell on his shoulder, and looking up he saw Buldeo with
the Tower musket. The children had told the village about the buffalo
stampede, and Buldeo went out angrily, only too anxious to correct
Mowgli for not taking better care of the herd. The wolves dropped out of
sight as soon as they saw the man coming.
"What is this folly?" said Buldeo, angrily. "To think that thou canst
skin a tiger! Where did the buffaloes kill him? It is the Lame Tiger,
too, and there is a hundred rupees on his head. Well, well, we will
overlook thy letting the herd run off, and perhaps I will give thee one
of the rupees of the reward when I have taken the skin to Khanhiwara."
He fumbled in his waist-cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to
singe Shere Khan's whiskers. Most native hunters singe a tiger's
whiskers to prevent his ghost haunting them.
"Hum!" said Mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin of a fore
paw. "So thou wilt take the hide to Khanhiwara for the reward, and
perhaps give me one rupee? Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for
my own use. Heh! old man, take away that fire!"
"What talk is this to the chief hunter of the village? Thy luck and the
stupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. The tiger has
just fed, or he would have gone twenty miles by this time. Thou canst
not even skin him properly, little beggar-brat, and forsooth I, Buldeo,
must be told not to singe his whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give thee one
anna of the reward, but only a very big beating. Leave the carcass!"
"By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli, who was trying to get at the
shoulder, "must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon? Here, Akela,
this man plagues me."
Buldeo, who was still stooping over Shere Khan's head, found himself
sprawling on the grass, with a gray wolf standing over him, while Mowgli
went on skinning as though he were alone in all India.
"Ye-es," he said, between his teeth. "Thou art altogether right, Buldeo.
Thou wilt never give me one anna of the reward. There is an old war
between this lame tiger and myself--a very old war, and--I have won."
To do Buldeo justice, if he had been ten years younger he would have
taken his chance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf
who obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating
tigers was not a common animal. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind,
thought Buldeo, and he wondered whether the amulet round his neck would
protect him. He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see
Mowgli turn into a tiger, too.
[Illustration: "BULDEO LAY AS STILL AS STILL, EXPECTING EVERY MINUTE TO
SEE MOWGLI TURN INTO A TIGER, TOO."]
"Maharaj! Great King," he said at last, in a husky whisper.
"Yes," said Mowgli, without turning his head, chuckling a little.
"I am an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a
herd-boy. May I rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to
pieces?"
"Go, and peace go with thee. Only, another time do not meddle with my
game. Let him go, Akela."
Buldeo hobbled away to the village as fast as he could, looking back
over his shoulder in case Mowgli should change into something terrible.
When he got to the village he told a tale of magic and enchantment and
sorcery that made the priest look very grave.
Mowgli went on with his work, but it was nearly twilight before he and
the wolves had drawn the great gay skin clear of the body.
"Now we must hide this and take the buffaloes home! Help me to herd
them, Akela."
The herd rounded up in the misty twilight, and when they got near the
village Mowgli saw lights, and heard the conches and bells in the temple
blowing and banging. Half the village seemed to be waiting for him by
the gate. "That is because I have killed Shere Khan," he said to
himself; but a shower of stones whistled about his ears, and the
villagers shouted: "Sorcerer! Wolf's brat! Jungle-demon! Go away! Get
hence quickly, or the priest will turn thee into a wolf again. Shoot,
Buldeo, shoot!"
The old Tower musket went off with a bang, and a young buffalo bellowed
in pain.
"More sorcery!" shouted the villagers. "He can turn bullets. Buldeo,
that was _thy_ buffalo."
"Now what is this?" said Mowgli, bewildered, as the stones flew thicker.
"They are not unlike the Pack, these brothers of thine," said Akela,
sitting down composedly. "It is in my head that, if bullets mean
anything, they would cast thee out."
"Wolf! Wolf's cub! Go away!" shouted the priest, waving a sprig of the
sacred _tulsi_ plant.
"Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is because I
am a wolf. Let us go, Akela."
A woman--it was Messua--ran across to the herd, and cried: "Oh, my son,
my son! They say thou art a sorcerer who can turn himself into a beast
at will. I do not believe, but go away or they will kill thee. Buldeo
says thou art a wizard, but I know thou hast avenged Nathoo's death."
"Come back, Messua!" shouted the crowd. "Come back, or we will stone
thee."
Mowgli laughed a little short ugly laugh, for a stone had hit him in the
mouth. "Run back, Messua. This is one of the foolish tales they tell
under the big tree at dusk. I have at least paid for thy son's life.
Farewell; and run quickly, for I shall send the herd in more swiftly
than their brickbats. I am no wizard, Messua. Farewell!
"Now, once more, Akela," he cried. "Bring the herd in."
The buffaloes were anxious enough to get to the village. They hardly
needed Akela's yell, but charged through the gate like a whirlwind,
scattering the crowd right and left.
"Keep count!" shouted Mowgli, scornfully. "It may be that I have stolen
one of them. Keep count, for I will do your herding no more. Fare you
well, children of men, and thank Messua that I do not come in with my
wolves and hunt you up and down your street."
He turned on his heel and walked away with the Lone Wolf; and as he
looked up at the stars he felt happy. "No more sleeping in traps for me,
Akela. Let us get Shere Khan's skin and go away. No; we will not hurt
the village, for Messua was kind to me."
When the moon rose over the plain, making it look all milky, the
horrified villagers saw Mowgli, with two wolves at his heels and a
bundle on his head, trotting across at the steady wolf's trot that eats
up the long miles like fire. Then they banged the temple bells and blew
the conches louder than ever; and Messua cried, and Buldeo embroidered
the story of his adventures in the jungle, till he ended by saying that
Akela stood up on his hind legs and talked like a man.
[Illustration: "WHEN THE MOON ROSE OVER THE PLAIN THE VILLAGERS SAW
MOWGLI TROTTING ACROSS, WITH TWO WOLVES AT HIS HEELS."]
The moon was just going down when Mowgli and the two wolves came to the
hill of the Council Rock, and they stopped at Mother Wolf's cave.
"They have cast me out from the Man Pack, Mother," shouted Mowgli, "but
I come with the hide of Shere Khan to keep my word." Mother Wolf walked
stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind her, and her eyes glowed as
she saw the skin.
"I told him on that day, when he crammed his head and shoulders into
this cave, hunting for thy life, Little Frog--I told him that the hunter
would be the hunted. It is well done."
"Little Brother, it is well done," said a deep voice in the thicket. "We
were lonely in the jungle without thee," and Bagheera came running to
Mowgli's bare feet. They clambered up the Council Rock together, and
Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone where Akela used to sit,
and pegged it down with four slivers of bamboo, and Akela lay down upon
it, and called the old call to the Council, "Look--look well, O Wolves!"
exactly as he had called when Mowgli was first brought there.
[Illustration: "THEY CLAMBERED UP ON THE COUNCIL ROCK TOGETHER, AND
MOWGLI SPREAD THE SKIN OUT ON THE FLAT STONE."]
Ever since Akela had been deposed, the Pack had been without a leader,
hunting and fighting at their own pleasure. But they answered the call
from habit, and some of them were lame from the traps they had fallen
into, and some limped from shot-wounds, and some were mangy from eating
bad food, and many were missing; but they came to the Council Rock, all
that were left of them, and saw Shere Khan's striped hide on the rock,
and the huge claws dangling at the end of the empty, dangling feet. It
was then that Mowgli made up a song without any rhymes, a song that came
up into his throat all by itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up
and down on the rattling skin, and beating time with his heels till he
had no more breath left, while Gray Brother and Akela howled between the
verses.
"Look well, O Wolves. Have I kept my word?" said Mowgli when he had
finished; and the wolves bayed "Yes," and one tattered wolf howled:
"Lead us again, O Akela. Lead us again, O Man-cub, for we be sick of
this lawlessness, and we would be the Free People once more."
"Nay," purred Bagheera, "that may not be. When ye are full-fed, the
madness may come upon ye again. Not for nothing are ye called the Free
People. Ye fought for freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves."
"Man Pack and Wolf Pack have cast me out," said Mowgli. "Now I will hunt
alone in the jungle."
"And we will hunt with thee," said the four cubs.
So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from
that day on. But he was not always alone, because years afterward he
became a man and married.
But that is a story for grown-ups.