Veil them, cover them, wall them round--
Blossom, and creeper, and weed--
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
The smell and the touch of the breed!
Fat black ash by the altar-stone,
Here is the white-foot rain,
And the does bring forth in the fields unsown,
And none shall affright them again;
And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o’erthrown
And none shall inhabit again!
You will remember that after Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan’s hide to
the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee Pack that
henceforward he would hunt in the Jungle alone; and the four children of
Mother and Father Wolf said that they would hunt with him. But it is not
easy to change one’s life all in a minute--particularly in the Jungle.
The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was
to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told
Mother Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his
adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and
down the blade of his skinning-knife,--the same he had skinned Shere
Khan with,--they said he had learned something. Then Akela and Gray
Brother had to explain their share of the great buffalo-drive in the
ravine, and Baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera
scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli
had managed his war.
It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and
from time to time, during the talk, Mother Wolf would throw up her head,
and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell
of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.
“But for Akela and Gray Brother here,” Mowgli said, at the end, “I could
have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst seen the black
herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the
Man-Pack flung stones at me!”
“I am glad I did not see that last,” said Mother Wolf stiffly. “It is
not MY custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals.
_I_ would have taken a price from the Man-Pack; but I would have spared
the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes, I would have spared her alone.”
“Peace, peace, Raksha!” said Father Wolf, lazily. “Our Frog has come
back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is
a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Men alone.” Baloo and Bagheera
both echoed: “Leave Men alone.”
Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf’s side, smiled contentedly, and said
that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man
again.
“But what,” said Akela, cocking one ear--“but what if men do not leave
thee alone, Little Brother?”
“We be FIVE,” said Gray Brother, looking round at the company, and
snapping his jaws on the last word.
“We also might attend to that hunting,” said Bagheera, with a little
switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. “But why think of men now,
Akela?”
“For this reason,” the Lone Wolf answered: “when that yellow chief’s
hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the
village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make
a mixed trail in case one should follow us. But when I had fouled the
trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking
between the trees, and hung up above me.” Said Mang, “The village of the
Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet’s nest.”
“It was a big stone that I threw,” chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused
himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet’s nest, and racing off
to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him.
“I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed
at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now _I_
know, for I have good cause,”--Akela looked down at the old dry scars
on his flank and side,--“that men do not carry guns for pleasure.
Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail--if,
indeed, he be not already on it.”
“But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?” said
Mowgli angrily.
“Thou art a man, Little Brother,” Akela returned. “It is not for US, the
Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why.”
He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep
into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human
eye could follow but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far
removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep
by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before
that wheel comes on.
“Another time,” Mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its sheath,
“speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in TWO breaths--not one.”
“Phff! That is a sharp tooth,” said Akela, snuffing at the blade’s
cut in the earth, “but living with the Man-Pack has spoiled thine eye,
Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking.”
Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could,
sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Gray Brother
followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the
wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up
wind, and, half-crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously.
He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never
reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose; and his
three months in the smoky village had set him back sadly. However, he
dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect to catch the
upper scent, which, though it is the faintest, is the truest.
“Man!” Akela growled, dropping on his haunches.
“Buldeo!” said Mowgli, sitting down. “He follows our trail, and yonder
is the sunlight on his gun. Look!”
It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a second,
on the brass clamps of the old Tower musket, but nothing in the Jungle
winks with just that flash, except when the clouds race over the sky.
Then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or even a highly-polished leaf
will flash like a heliograph. But that day was cloudless and still.
“I knew men would follow,” said Akela triumphantly. “Not for nothing
have I led the Pack.”
The four cubs said nothing, but ran down hill on their bellies, melting
into the thorn and under-brush as a mole melts into a lawn.
“Where go ye, and without word?” Mowgli called.
“H’sh! We roll his skull here before mid-day!” Gray Brother answered.
“Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat Man!” Mowgli shrieked.
“Who was a wolf but now? Who drove the knife at me for thinking he might
be Man?” said Akela, as the four wolves turned back sullenly and dropped
to heel.
“Am I to give reason for all I choose to, do?” said Mowgli furiously.
“That is Man! There speaks Man!” Bagheera muttered under his whiskers.
“Even so did men talk round the King’s cages at Oodeypore. We of the
Jungle know that Man is wisest of all. If we trusted our ears we should
know that of all things he is most foolish.” Raising his voice, he
added, “The Man-cub is right in this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one,
unless we know what the others will do, is bad hunting. Come, let us see
what this Man means toward us.”
“We will not come,” Gray Brother growled. “Hunt alone, Little Brother.
WE know our own minds. The skull would have been ready to bring by now.”
Mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends, his chest
heaving and his eyes full of tears. He strode forward to the wolves,
and, dropping on one knee, said: “Do I not know my mind? Look at me!”
They looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called them back
again and again, till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and
they trembled in every limb, while Mowgli stared and stared.
“Now,” said he, “of us five, which is leader?”
“Thou art leader, Little Brother,” said Gray Brother, and he licked
Mowgli’s foot.
“Follow, then,” said Mowgli, and the four followed at his heels with
their tails between their legs.
“This comes of living with the Man-Pack,” said Bagheera, slipping down
after them. “There is more in the Jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo.”
The old bear said nothing, but he thought many things.
Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jungle, at right angles to
Buldeo’s path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his
musket on his shoulder, running up the trail of overnight at a dog-trot.
You will remember that Mowgli had left the village with the heavy weight
of Shere Khan’s raw hide on his shoulders, while Akela and Gray Brother
trotted behind, so that the triple trail was very clearly marked.
Presently Buldeo came to where Akela, as you know, had gone back and
mixed it all up. Then he sat down, and coughed and grunted, and made
little casts round and about into the Jungle to pick it up again, and,
all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching
him. No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be
heard; and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very clumsily,
could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old man as a school
of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed him they
talked unconcernedly, for their speech began below the lowest end of the
scale that untrained human beings can hear. [The other end is bounded by
the high squeak of Mang, the Bat, which very many people cannot catch at
all. From that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.]
“This is better than any kill,” said Gray Brother, as Buldeo stooped
and peered and puffed. “He looks like a lost pig in the Jungles by the
river. What does he say?” Buldeo was muttering savagely.
Mowgli translated. “He says that packs of wolves must have danced round
me. He says that he never saw such a trail in his life. He says he is
tired.”
“He will be rested before he picks it up again,” said Bagheera coolly,
as he slipped round a tree-trunk, in the game of blindman’s-buff that
they were playing. “NOW, what does the lean thing do?”
“Eat or blow smoke out of his mouth. Men always play with their mouths,”
said Mowgli; and the silent trailers saw the old man fill and light
and puff at a water-pipe, and they took good note of the smell of the
tobacco, so as to be sure of Buldeo in the darkest night, if necessary.
Then a little knot of charcoal-burners came down the path, and naturally
halted to speak to Buldeo, whose fame as a hunter reached for at least
twenty miles round. They all sat down and smoked, and Bagheera and
the others came up and watched while Buldeo began to tell the story of
Mowgli, the Devil-child, from one end to another, with additions and
inventions. How he himself had really killed Shere Khan; and how Mowgli
had turned himself into a wolf, and fought with him all the afternoon,
and changed into a boy again and bewitched Buldeo’s rifle, so that the
bullet turned the corner, when he pointed it at Mowgli, and killed one
of Buldeo’s own buffaloes; and how the village, knowing him to be the
bravest hunter in Seeonee, had sent him out to kill this Devil-child.
But meantime the village had got hold of Messua and her husband, who
were undoubtedly the father and mother of this Devil-child, and had
barricaded them in their own hut, and presently would torture them to
make them confess they were witch and wizard, and then they would be
burned to death.
“When?” said the charcoal-burners, because they would very much like to
be present at the ceremony.
Buldeo said that nothing would be done till he returned, because the
village wished him to kill the Jungle Boy first. After that they would
dispose of Messua and her husband, and divide their lands and buffaloes
among the village. Messua’s husband had some remarkably fine buffaloes,
too. It was an excellent thing to destroy wizards, Buldeo thought; and
people who entertained Wolf-children out of the Jungle were clearly the
worst kind of witches.
But, said the charcoal-burners, what would happen if the English heard
of it? The English, they had heard, were a perfectly mad people, who
would not let honest farmers kill witches in peace.
Why, said Buldeo, the head-man of the village would report that Messua
and her husband had died of snake-bite. THAT was all arranged, and the
only thing now was to kill the Wolf-child. They did not happen to have
seen anything of such a creature?
The charcoal-burners looked round cautiously, and thanked their stars
they had not; but they had no doubt that so brave a man as Buldeo would
find him if any one could. The sun was getting rather low, and they had
an idea that they would push on to Buldeo’s village and see that wicked
witch. Buldeo said that, though it was his duty to kill the Devil-child,
he could not think of letting a party of unarmed men go through the
Jungle, which might produce the Wolf-demon at any minute, without his
escort. He, therefore, would accompany them, and if the sorcerer’s child
appeared--well, he would show them how the best hunter in Seeonee dealt
with such things. The Brahmin, he said, had given him a charm against
the creature that made everything perfectly safe.
“What says he? What says he? What says he?” the wolves repeated every
few minutes; and Mowgli translated until he came to the witch part of
the story, which was a little beyond him, and then he said that the man
and woman who had been so kind to him were trapped.
“Does Man trap Man?” said Bagheera.
“So he says. I cannot understand the talk. They are all mad together.
What have Messua and her man to do with me that they should be put in
a trap; and what is all this talk about the Red Flower? I must look
to this. Whatever they would do to Messua they will not do till Buldeo
returns. And so----” Mowgli thought hard, with his fingers playing round
the haft of the skinning-knife, while Buldeo and the charcoal-burners
went off very valiantly in single file.
“I go hot-foot back to the Man-Pack,” Mowgli said at last.
“And those?” said Gray Brother, looking hungrily after the brown backs
of the charcoal-burners.
“Sing them home,” said Mowgli, with a grin; “I do not wish them to be at
the village gates till it is dark. Can ye hold them?”
Gray Brother bared his white teeth in contempt. “We can head them round
and round in circles like tethered goats--if I know Man.”
“That I do not need. Sing to them a little, lest they be lonely on the
road, and, Gray Brother, the song need not be of the sweetest. Go with
them, Bagheera, and help make that song. When night is shut down, meet
me by the village--Gray Brother knows the place.”
“It is no light hunting to work for a Man-cub. When shall I sleep?” said
Bagheera, yawning, though his eyes showed that he was delighted with the
amusement. “Me to sing to naked men! But let us try.”
He lowered his head so that the sound would travel, and cried a long,
long, “Good hunting”--a midnight call in the afternoon, which was quite
awful enough to begin with. Mowgli heard it rumble, and rise, and fall,
and die off in a creepy sort of whine behind him, and laughed to himself
as he ran through the Jungle. He could see the charcoal-burners huddled
in a knot; old Buldeo’s gun-barrel waving, like a banana-leaf, to every
point of the compass at once. Then Gray Brother gave the Ya-la-hi!
Yalaha! call for the buck-driving, when the Pack drives the nilghai, the
big blue cow, before them, and it seemed to come from the very ends of
the earth, nearer, and nearer, and nearer, till it ended in a shriek
snapped off short. The other three answered, till even Mowgli could have
vowed that the full Pack was in full cry, and then they all broke
into the magnificent Morning-song in the Jungle, with every turn, and
flourish, and grace-note that a deep-mouthed wolf of the Pack knows.
This is a rough rendering of the song, but you must imagine what it
sounds like when it breaks the afternoon hush of the Jungle:--
One moment past our bodies cast
No shadow on the plain;
Now clear and black they stride our track,
And we run home again.
In morning hush, each rock and bush
Stands hard, and high, and raw:
Then give the Call: “Good rest to all
That keep The Jungle Law!”
Now horn and pelt our peoples melt
In covert to abide;
Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill
Our Jungle Barons glide.
Now, stark and plain, Man’s oxen strain,
That draw the new-yoked plough;
Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red
Above the lit talao.
Ho! Get to lair! The sun’s aflare
Behind the breathing grass:
And cracking through the young bamboo
The warning whispers pass.
By day made strange, the woods we range
With blinking eyes we scan;
While down the skies the wild duck cries
“The Day--the Day to Man!”
The dew is dried that drenched our hide
Or washed about our way;
And where we drank, the puddled bank
Is crisping into clay.
The traitor Dark gives up each mark
Of stretched or hooded claw;
Then hear the Call: “Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!”
But no translation can give the effect of it, or the yelping scorn the
Four threw into every word of it, as they heard the trees crash when
the men hastily climbed up into the branches, and Buldeo began repeating
incantations and charms. Then they lay down and slept, for, like all who
live by their own exertions, they were of a methodical cast of mind; and
no one can work well without sleep.
Meantime, Mowgli was putting the miles behind him, nine to the hour,
swinging on, delighted to find himself so fit after all his cramped
months among men. The one idea in his head was to get Messua and her
husband out of the trap, whatever it was; for he had a natural mistrust
of traps. Later on, he promised himself, he would pay his debts to the
village at large.
It was at twilight when he saw the well-remembered grazing-grounds, and
the dhak-tree where Gray Brother had waited for him on the morning that
he killed Shere Khan. Angry as he was at the whole breed and community
of Man, something jumped up in his throat and made him catch his breath
when he looked at the village roofs. He noticed that every one had come
in from the fields unusually early, and that, instead of getting to
their evening cooking, they gathered in a crowd under the village tree,
and chattered, and shouted.
“Men must always be making traps for men, or they are not content,” said
Mowgli. “Last night it was Mowgli--but that night seems many Rains ago.
To-night it is Messua and her man. To-morrow, and for very many nights
after, it will be Mowgli’s turn again.”
He crept along outside the wall till he came to Messua’s hut, and looked
through the window into the room. There lay Messua, gagged, and bound
hand and foot, breathing hard, and groaning: her husband was tied to the
gaily-painted bedstead. The door of the hut that opened into the street
was shut fast, and three or four people were sitting with their backs to
it.
Mowgli knew the manners and customs of the villagers very fairly. He
argued that so long as they could eat, and talk, and smoke, they would
not do anything else; but as soon as they had fed they would begin to be
dangerous. Buldeo would be coming in before long, and if his escort had
done its duty, Buldeo would have a very interesting tale to tell. So he
went in through the window, and, stooping over the man and the woman,
cut their thongs, pulling out the gags, and looked round the hut for
some milk.
Messua was half wild with pain and fear (she had been beaten and stoned
all the morning), and Mowgli put his hand over her mouth just in time
to stop a scream. Her husband was only bewildered and angry, and sat
picking dust and things out of his torn beard.
“I knew--I knew he would come,” Messua sobbed at last. “Now do I KNOW
that he is my son!” and she hugged Mowgli to her heart. Up to that time
Mowgli had been perfectly steady, but now he began to tremble all over,
and that surprised him immensely.
“Why are these thongs? Why have they tied thee?” he asked, after a
pause.
“To be put to the death for making a son of thee--what else?” said the
man sullenly. “Look! I bleed.”
Messua said nothing, but it was at her wounds that Mowgli looked, and
they heard him grit his teeth when he saw the blood.
“Whose work is this?” said he. “There is a price to pay.”
“The work of all the village. I was too rich. I had too many cattle.
THEREFORE she and I are witches, because we gave thee shelter.”
“I do not understand. Let Messua tell the tale.”
“I gave thee milk, Nathoo; dost thou remember?” Messua said timidly.
“Because thou wast my son, whom the tiger took, and because I loved thee
very dearly. They said that I was thy mother, the mother of a devil, and
therefore worthy of death.”
“And what is a devil?” said Mowgli. “Death I have seen.”
The man looked up gloomily, but Messua laughed. “See!” she said to her
husband, “I knew--I said that he was no sorcerer. He is my son--my son!”
“Son or sorcerer, what good will that do us?” the man answered. “We be
as dead already.”
“Yonder is the road to the Jungle”--Mowgli pointed through the window.
“Your hands and feet are free. Go now.”
“We do not know the Jungle, my son, as--as thou knowest,” Messua began.
“I do not think that I could walk far.”
“And the men and women would be upon our backs and drag us here again,”
said the husband.
“H’m!” said Mowgli, and he tickled the palm of his hand with the tip
of his skinning-knife; “I have no wish to do harm to any one of this
village--YET. But I do not think they will stay thee. In a little while
they will have much else to think upon. Ah!” he lifted his head and
listened to shouting and trampling outside. “So they have let Buldeo
come home at last?”
“He was sent out this morning to kill thee,” Messua cried. “Didst thou
meet him?”
“Yes--we--I met him. He has a tale to tell and while he is telling it
there is time to do much. But first I will learn what they mean. Think
where ye would go, and tell me when I come back.”
He bounded through the window and ran along again outside the wall
of the village till he came within ear-shot of the crowd round the
peepul-tree. Buldeo was lying on the ground, coughing and groaning,
and every one was asking him questions. His hair had fallen about his
shoulders; his hands and legs were skinned from climbing up trees,
and he could hardly speak, but he felt the importance of his position
keenly. From time to time he said something about devils and singing
devils, and magic enchantment, just to give the crowd a taste of what
was coming. Then he called for water.
“Bah!” said Mowgli. “Chatter--chatter! Talk, talk! Men are
blood-brothers of the Bandar-log. Now he must wash his mouth with water;
now he must blow smoke; and when all that is done he has still his story
to tell. They are very wise people--men. They will leave no one to guard
Messua till their ears are stuffed with Buldeo’s tales. And--I grow as
lazy as they!”
He shook himself and glided back to the hut. Just as he was at the
window he felt a touch on his foot.
“Mother,” said he, for he knew that tongue well, “what dost THOU here?”
“I heard my children singing through the woods, and I followed the one I
loved best. Little Frog, I have a desire to see that woman who gave thee
milk,” said Mother Wolf, all wet with the dew.
“They have bound and mean to kill her. I have cut those ties, and she
goes with her man through the Jungle.”
“I also will follow. I am old, but not yet toothless.” Mother Wolf
reared herself up on end, and looked through the window into the dark of
the hut.
In a minute she dropped noiselessly, and all she said was: “I gave thee
thy first milk; but Bagheera speaks truth: Man goes to Man at the last.”
“Maybe,” said Mowgli, with a very unpleasant look on his face; “but
to-night I am very far from that trail. Wait here, but do not let her
see.”
“THOU wast never afraid of ME, Little Frog,” said Mother Wolf, backing
into the high grass, and blotting herself out, as she knew how.
“And now,” said Mowgli cheerfully, as he swung into the hut again, “they
are all sitting round Buldeo, who is saying that which did not happen.
When his talk is finished, they say they will assuredly come here with
the Red--with fire and burn you both. And then?”
“I have spoken to my man,” said Messua. “Khanhiwara is thirty miles from
here, but at Khanhiwara we may find the English--”
“And what Pack are they?” said Mowgli.
“I do not know. They be white, and it is said that they govern all
the land, and do not suffer people to burn or beat each other without
witnesses. If we can get thither to-night, we live. Otherwise we die.”
“Live, then. No man passes the gates to-night. But what does HE do?”
Messua’s husband was on his hands and knees digging up the earth in one
corner of the hut.
“It is his little money,” said Messua. “We can take nothing else.”
“Ah, yes. The stuff that passes from hand to hand and never grows
warmer. Do they need it outside this place also?” said Mowgli.
The man stared angrily. “He is a fool, and no devil,” he muttered. “With
the money I can buy a horse. We are too bruised to walk far, and the
village will follow us in an hour.”
“I say they will NOT follow till I choose; but a horse is well thought
of, for Messua is tired.” Her husband stood up and knotted the last
of the rupees into his waist-cloth. Mowgli helped Messua through the
window, and the cool night air revived her, but the Jungle in the
starlight looked very dark and terrible.
“Ye know the trail to Khanhiwara?” Mowgli whispered.
They nodded.
“Good. Remember, now, not to be afraid. And there is no need to go
quickly. Only--only there may be some small singing in the Jungle behind
you and before.”
“Think you we would have risked a night in the Jungle through anything
less than the fear of burning? It is better to be killed by beasts than
by men,” said Messua’s husband; but Messua looked at Mowgli and smiled.
“I say,” Mowgli went on, just as though he were Baloo repeating an old
Jungle Law for the hundredth time to a foolish cub--“I say that not a
tooth in the Jungle is bared against you; not a foot in the Jungle is
lifted against you. Neither man nor beast shall stay you till you come
within eye-shot of Khanhiwara. There will be a watch about you.” He
turned quickly to Messua, saying, “HE does not believe, but thou wilt
believe?”
“Ay, surely, my son. Man, ghost, or wolf of the Jungle, I believe.”
“HE will be afraid when he hears my people singing. Thou wilt know and
understand. Go now, and slowly, for there is no need of any haste. The
gates are shut.”
Messua flung herself sobbing at Mowgli’s feet, but he lifted her very
quickly with a shiver. Then she hung about his neck and called him every
name of blessing she could think of, but her husband looked enviously
across his fields, and said: “IF we reach Khanhiwara, and I get the ear
of the English, I will bring such a lawsuit against the Brahmin and old
Buldeo and the others as shall eat the village to the bone. They shall
pay me twice over for my crops untilled and my buffaloes unfed. I will
have a great justice.”
Mowgli laughed. “I do not know what justice is, but--come next Rains.
and see what is left.”
They went off toward the Jungle, and Mother Wolf leaped from her place
of hiding.
“Follow!” said Mowgli; “and look to it that all the Jungle knows these
two are safe. Give tongue a little. I would call Bagheera.”
The long, low howl rose and fell, and Mowgli saw Messua’s husband flinch
and turn, half minded to run back to the hut.
“Go on,” Mowgli called cheerfully. “I said there might be singing. That
call will follow up to Khanhiwara. It is Favour of the Jungle.”
Messua urged her husband forward, and the darkness shut down on them and
Mother Wolf as Bagheera rose up almost under Mowgli’s feet, trembling
with delight of the night that drives the Jungle People wild.
“I am ashamed of thy brethren,” he said, purring. “What? Did they not
sing sweetly to Buldeo?” said Mowgli.
“Too well! Too well! They made even ME forget my pride, and, by the
Broken Lock that freed me, I went singing through the Jungle as though I
were out wooing in the spring! Didst thou not hear us?”
“I had other game afoot. Ask Buldeo if he liked the song. But where
are the Four? I do not wish one of the Man-Pack to leave the gates
to-night.”
“What need of the Four, then?” said Bagheera, shifting from foot to
foot, his eyes ablaze, and purring louder than ever. “I can hold them,
Little Brother. Is it killing at last? The singing and the sight of the
men climbing up the trees have made me very ready. Who is Man that we
should care for him--the naked brown digger, the hairless and toothless,
the eater of earth? I have followed him all day--at noon--in the white
sunlight. I herded him as the wolves herd buck. I am Bagheera! Bagheera!
Bagheera! As I dance with my shadow, so danced I with those men. Look!”
The great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling
overhead, struck left and right into the empty air, that sang under the
strokes, landed noiselessly, and leaped again and again, while the
half purr, half growl gathered head as steam rumbles in a boiler. “I
am Bagheera--in the jungle--in the night, and my strength is in me. Who
shall stay my stroke? Man-cub, with one blow of my paw I could beat thy
head flat as a dead frog in the summer!”
“Strike, then!” said Mowgli, in the dialect of the village, NOT the
talk of the Jungle, and the human words brought Bagheera to a full stop,
flung back on haunches that quivered under him, his head just at the
level of Mowgli’s. Once more Mowgli stared, as he had stared at the
rebellious cubs, full into the beryl-green eyes till the red glare
behind their green went out like the light of a lighthouse shut off
twenty miles across the sea; till the eyes dropped, and the big head
with them--dropped lower and lower, and the red rasp of a tongue grated
on Mowgli’s instep.
“Brother--Brother--Brother!” the boy whispered, stroking steadily and
lightly from the neck along the heaving back. “Be still, be still! It is
the fault of the night, and no fault of thine.”
“It was the smells of the night,” said Bagheera penitently. “This air
cries aloud to me. But how dost THOU know?”
Of course the air round an Indian village is full of all kinds of
smells, and to any creature who does nearly all his thinking through his
nose, smells are as maddening as music and drugs are to human beings.
Mowgli gentled the panther for a few minutes longer, and he lay down
like a cat before a fire, his paws tucked under his breast, and his eyes
half shut.
“Thou art of the Jungle and NOT of the Jungle,” he said at last. “And I
am only a black panther. But I love thee, Little Brother.”
“They are very long at their talk under the tree,” Mowgli said, without
noticing the last sentence. “Buldeo must have told many tales. They
should come soon to drag the woman and her man out of the trap and put
them into the Red Flower. They will find that trap sprung. Ho! ho!”
“Nay, listen,” said Bagheera. “The fever is out of my blood now. Let
them find ME there! Few would leave their houses after meeting me. It is
not the first time I have been in a cage; and I do not think they will
tie ME with cords.”
“Be wise, then,” said Mowgli, laughing; for he was beginning to feel as
reckless as the panther, who had glided into the hut.
“Pah!” Bagheera grunted. “This place is rank with Man, but here is just
such a bed as they gave me to lie upon in the King’s cages at Oodeypore.
Now I lie down.” Mowgli heard the strings of the cot crack under the
great brute’s weight. “By the Broken Lock that freed me, they will think
they have caught big game! Come and sit beside me, Little Brother; we
will give them ‘good hunting’ together!”
“No; I have another thought in my stomach. The Man-Pack shall not know
what share I have in the sport. Make thine own hunt. I do not wish to
see them.”
“Be it so,” said Bagheera. “Ah, now they come!”
The conference under the peepul-tree had been growing noisier and
noisier, at the far end of the village. It broke in wild yells, and
a rush up the street of men and women, waving clubs and bamboos and
sickles and knives. Buldeo and the Brahmin were at the head of it, but
the mob was close at their heels, and they cried, “The witch and the
wizard! Let us see if hot coins will make them confess! Burn the hut
over their heads! We will teach them to shelter wolf-devils! Nay, beat
them first! Torches! More torches! Buldeo, heat the gun-barrels!”
Here was some little difficulty with the catch of the door. It had been
very firmly fastened, but the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light
of the torches streamed into the room where, stretched at full length on
the bed, his paws crossed and lightly hung down over one end, black
as the Pit, and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera. There was one
half-minute of desperate silence, as the front ranks of the crowd clawed
and tore their way back from the threshold, and in that minute
Bagheera raised his head and yawned--elaborately, carefully, and
ostentatiously--as he would yawn when he wished to insult an equal.
The fringed lips drew back and up; the red tongue curled; the lower jaw
dropped and dropped till you could see half-way down the hot gullet; and
the gigantic dog-teeth stood clear to the pit of the gums till they rang
together, upper and under, with the snick of steel-faced wards shooting
home round the edges of a safe. Next instant the street was empty;
Bagheera had leaped back through the window, and stood at Mowgli’s
side, while a yelling, screaming torrent scrambled and tumbled one over
another in their panic haste to get to their own huts.
“They will not stir till day comes,” said Bagheera quietly. “And now?”
The silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to have overtaken the village;
but, as they listened, they could hear the sound of heavy grain-boxes
being dragged over earthen floors and set down against doors. Bagheera
was quite right; the village would not stir till daylight. Mowgli sat
still, and thought, and his face grew darker and darker.
“What have I done?” said Bagheera, at last coming to his feet, fawning.
“Nothing but great good. Watch them now till the day. I sleep.” Mowgli
ran off into the Jungle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, and
slept and slept the day round, and the night back again.
When he waked, Bagheera was at his side, and there was a newly-killed
buck at his feet. Bagheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to work
with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in
his hands.
“The man and the woman are come safe within eye-shot of Khanhiwara,”
Bagheera said. “Thy lair mother sent the word back by Chil, the Kite.
They found a horse before midnight of the night they were freed, and
went very quickly. Is not that well?”
“That is well,” said Mowgli.
“And thy Man-Pack in the village did not stir till the sun was high this
morning. Then they ate their food and ran back quickly to their houses.”
“Did they, by chance, see thee?”
“It may have been. I was rolling in the dust before the gate at dawn,
and I may have made also some small song to myself. Now, Little Brother,
there is nothing more to do. Come hunting with me and Baloo. He has new
hives that he wishes to show, and we all desire thee back again as of
old. Take off that look which makes even me afraid! The man and woman
will not be put into the Red Flower, and all goes well in the Jungle. Is
it not true? Let us forget the Man-Pack.”
“They shall be forgotten in a little while. Where does Hathi feed
to-night?”
“Where he chooses. Who can answer for the Silent One? But why? What is
there Hathi can do which we cannot?”
“Bid him and his three sons come here to me.”
“But, indeed, and truly, Little Brother, it is not--it is not seemly
to say ‘Come,’ and ‘Go,’ to Hathi. Remember, he is the Master of the
Jungle, and before the Man-Pack changed the look on thy face, he taught
thee the Master-words of the Jungle.”
“That is all one. I have a Master-word for him now. Bid him come to
Mowgli, the Frog: and if he does not hear at first, bid him come because
of the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore.”
“The Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore,” Bagheera repeated two or three
times to make sure. “I go. Hathi can but be angry at the worst, and
I would give a moon’s hunting to hear a Master-word that compels the
Silent One.”
He went away, leaving Mowgli stabbing furiously with his skinning-knife
into the earth. Mowgli had never seen human blood in his life before
till he had seen, and--what meant much more to him--smelled Messua’s
blood on the thongs that bound her. And Messua had been kind to
him, and, so far as he knew anything about love, he loved Messua as
completely as he hated the rest of mankind. But deeply as he loathed
them, their talk, their cruelty, and their cowardice, not for anything
the Jungle had to offer could he bring himself to take a human life, and
have that terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. His plan
was simpler, but much more thorough; and he laughed to himself when he
thought that it was one of old Buldeo’s tales told under the peepul-tree
in the evening that had put the idea into his head.
“It WAS a Master-word,” Bagheera whispered in his ear. “They were
feeding by the river, and they obeyed as though they were bullocks. Look
where they come now!”
Hathi and his three sons had arrived, in their usual way, without a
sound. The mud of the river was still fresh on their flanks, and Hathi
was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a young plantain-tree that he
had gouged up with his tusks. But every line in his vast body showed to
Bagheera, who could see things when he came across them, that it was not
the Master of the Jungle speaking to a Man-cub, but one who was afraid
coming before one who was not. His three sons rolled side by side,
behind their father.
Mowgli hardly lifted his head as Hathi gave him “Good hunting.” He kept
him swinging and rocking, and shifting from one foot to another, for
a long time before he spoke; and when he opened his mouth it was to
Bagheera, not to the elephants.
“I will tell a tale that was told to me by the hunter ye hunted to-day,”
said Mowgli. “It concerns an elephant, old and wise, who fell into a
trap, and the sharpened stake in the pit scarred him from a little above
his heel to the crest of his shoulder, leaving a white mark.” Mowgli
threw out his hand, and as Hathi wheeled the moonlight showed a long
white scar on his slaty side, as though he had been struck with a
red-hot whip. “Men came to take him from the trap,” Mowgli continued,
“but he broke his ropes, for he was strong, and went away till his
wound was healed. Then came he, angry, by night to the fields of
those hunters. And I remember now that he had three sons. These things
happened many, many Rains ago, and very far away--among the fields of
Bhurtpore. What came to those fields at the next reaping, Hathi?”
“They were reaped by me and by my three sons,” said Hathi.
“And to the ploughing that follows the reaping?” said Mowgli.
“There was no ploughing,” said Hathi.
“And to the men that live by the green crops on the ground?” said
Mowgli.
“They went away.”
“And to the huts in which the men slept?” said Mowgli.
“We tore the roofs to pieces, and the Jungle swallowed up the walls,”
said Hathi.
“And what more?” said Mowgli.
“As much good ground as I can walk over in two nights from the east to
the west, and from the north to the south as much as I can walk over in
three nights, the Jungle took. We let in the Jungle upon five villages;
and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the
soft crop-grounds, there is not one man to-day who takes his food from
the ground. That was the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, which I and
my three sons did; and now I ask, Man-cub, how the news of it came to
thee?” said Hathi.
“A man told me, and now I see even Buldeo can speak truth. It was well
done, Hathi with the white mark; but the second time it shall be done
better, for the reason that there is a man to direct. Thou knowest the
village of the Man-Pack that cast me out? They are idle, senseless, and
cruel; they play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for
food, but for sport. When they are full-fed they would throw their own
breed into the Red Flower. This I have seen. It is not well that they
should live here any more. I hate them!”
“Kill, then,” said the youngest of Hathi’s three sons, picking up a tuft
of grass, dusting it against his fore-legs, and throwing it away, while
his little red eyes glanced furtively from side to side.
“What good are white bones to me?” Mowgli answered angrily. “Am I the
cub of a wolf to play in the sun with a raw head? I have killed Shere
Khan, and his hide rots on the Council Rock; but--but I do not know
whither Shere Khan is gone, and my stomach is still empty. Now I
will take that which I can see and touch. Let in the Jungle upon that
village, Hathi!”
Bagheera shivered, and cowered down. He could understand, if the worst
came to the worst, a quick rush down the village street, and a right and
left blow into a crowd, or a crafty killing of men as they ploughed in
the twilight; but this scheme for deliberately blotting out an entire
village from the eyes of man and beast frightened him. Now he saw why
Mowgli had sent for Hathi. No one but the long-lived elephant could plan
and carry through such a war.
“Let them run as the men ran from the fields of Bhurtpore, till we have
the rain-water for the only plough, and the noise of the rain on the
thick leaves for the pattering of their spindles--till Bagheera and I
lair in the house of the Brahmin, and the buck drink at the tank behind
the temple! Let in the Jungle, Hathi!”
“But I--but we have no quarrel with them, and it needs the red rage
of great pain ere we tear down the places where men sleep,” said Hathi
doubtfully.
“Are ye the only eaters of grass in the Jungle? Drive in your peoples.
Let the deer and the pig and the nilghai look to it. Ye need never show
a hand’s-breadth of hide till the fields are naked. Let in the Jungle,
Hathi!”
“There will be no killing? My tusks were red at the Sack of the Fields
of Bhurtpore, and I would not wake that smell again.”
“Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean earth. Let
them go and find a fresh lair. They cannot stay here. I have seen and
smelled the blood of the woman that gave me food--the woman whom they
would have killed but for me. Only the smell of the new grass on their
door-steps can take away that smell. It burns in my mouth. Let in the
Jungle, Hathi!”
“Ah!” said Hathi. “So did the scar of the stake burn on my hide till we
watched the villages die under in the spring growth. Now I see. Thy war
shall be our war. We will let in the jungle!”
Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath--he was shaking all over with
rage and hate before the place where the elephants had stood was empty,
and Bagheera was looking at him with terror.
“By the Broken Lock that freed me!” said the Black Panther at last. “Art
THOU the naked thing I spoke for in the Pack when all was young?
Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes, speak for me--speak for
Baloo--speak for us all! We are cubs before thee! Snapped twigs under
foot! Fawns that have lost their doe!”
The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset Mowgli altogether, and he
laughed and caught his breath, and sobbed and laughed again, till he had
to jump into a pool to make himself stop. Then he swam round and round,
ducking in and out of the bars of the moonlight like the frog, his
namesake.
By this time Hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one point of
the compass, and were striding silently down the valleys a mile away.
They went on and on for two days’ march--that is to say, a long sixty
miles--through the Jungle; and every step they took, and every wave of
their trunks, was known and noted and talked over by Mang and Chil and
the Monkey People and all the birds. Then they began to feed, and fed
quietly for a week or so. Hathi and his sons are like Kaa, the Rock
Python. They never hurry till they have to.
At the end of that time--and none knew who had started it--a rumour went
through the Jungle that there was better food and water to be found in
such and such a valley. The pig--who, of course, will go to the ends of
the earth for a full meal--moved first by companies, scuffling over the
rocks, and the deer followed, with the small wild foxes that live on
the dead and dying of the herds; and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved
parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps came after
the nilghai. The least little thing would have turned the scattered,
straggling droves that grazed and sauntered and drank and grazed again;
but whenever there was an alarm some one would rise up and soothe them.
At one time it would be Ikki the Porcupine, full of news of good feed
just a little farther on; at another Mang would cry cheerily and flap
down a glade to show it was all empty; or Baloo, his mouth full of
roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line and half frighten, half
romp it clumsily back to the proper road. Very many creatures broke back
or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go forward. At
the end of another ten days or so the situation was this. The deer and
the pig and the nilghai were milling round and round in a circle of
eight or ten miles radius, while the Eaters of Flesh skirmished round
its edge. And the centre of that circle was the village, and round the
village the crops were ripening, and in the crops sat men on what they
call machans--platforms like pigeon-perches, made of sticks at the top
of four poles--to scare away birds and other stealers. Then the deer
were coaxed no more. The Eaters of Flesh were close behind them, and
forced them forward and inward.
It was a dark night when Hathi and his three sons slipped down from the
Jungle, and broke off the poles of the machans with their trunks; they
fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom falls, and the men that
tumbled from them heard the deep gurgling of the elephants in their
ears. Then the vanguard of the bewildered armies of the deer broke down
and flooded into the village grazing-grounds and the ploughed fields;
and the sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig came with them, and what the deer
left the pig spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of wolves would
shake the herds, and they would rush to and fro desperately, treading
down the young barley, and cutting flat the banks of the irrigating
channels. Before the dawn broke the pressure on the outside of the
circle gave way at one point. The Eaters of Flesh had fallen back and
left an open path to the south, and drove upon drove of buck fled along
it. Others, who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal
next night.
But the work was practically done. When the villagers looked in the
morning they saw their crops were lost. And that meant death if they did
not get away, for they lived year in and year out as near to starvation
as the Jungle was near to them. When the buffaloes were sent to graze
the hungry brutes found that the deer had cleared the grazing-grounds,
and so wandered into the Jungle and drifted off with their wild mates;
and when twilight fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the
village lay in their stables with their heads beaten in. Only Bagheera
could have given those strokes, and only Bagheera would have thought of
insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street.
The villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that night, so
Hathi and his three sons went gleaning among what was left; and where
Hathi gleans there is no need to follow. The men decided to live on
their stored seed-corn until the rains had fallen, and then to take
work as servants till they could catch up with the lost year; but as
the grain-dealer was thinking of his well-filled crates of corn, and the
prices he would levy at the sale of it, Hathi’s sharp tusks were picking
out the corner of his mud-house, and smashing open the big wicker chest,
leeped with cow-dung, where the precious stuff lay.
When that last loss was discovered, it was the Brahmin’s turn to speak.
He had prayed to his own Gods without answer. It might be, he said,
that, unconsciously, the village had offended some one of the Gods of
the Jungle, for, beyond doubt, the Jungle was against them. So they sent
for the head-man of the nearest tribe of wandering Gonds--little, wise,
and very black hunters, living in the deep Jungle, whose fathers came of
the oldest race in India--the aboriginal owners of the land. They made
the Gond welcome with what they had, and he stood on one leg, his bow in
his hand, and two or three poisoned arrows stuck through his top-knot,
looking half afraid and half contemptuously at the anxious villagers
and their ruined fields. They wished to know whether his Gods--the Old
Gods--were angry with them and what sacrifices should be offered. The
Gond said nothing, but picked up a trail of the Karela, the vine that
bears the bitter wild gourd, and laced it to and fro across the temple
door in the face of the staring red Hindu image. Then he pushed with his
hand in the open air along the road to Khanhiwara, and went back to his
Jungle, and watched the Jungle People drifting through it. He knew that
when the Jungle moves only white men can hope to turn it aside.
There was no need to ask his meaning. The wild gourd would grow where
they had worshipped their God, and the sooner they saved themselves the
better.
But it is hard to tear a village from its moorings. They stayed on as
long as any summer food was left to them, and they tried to gather nuts
in the Jungle, but shadows with glaring eyes watched them, and rolled
before them even at mid-day; and when they ran back afraid to their
walls, on the tree-trunks they had passed not five minutes before the
bark would be stripped and chiselled with the stroke of some great
taloned paw. The more they kept to their village, the bolder grew the
wild things that gambolled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the
Waingunga. They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the
empty byres that backed on to the Jungle; the wild pig trampled them
down, and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and threw their elbows
over the new-won ground, and the coarse grass bristled behind the vines
like the lances of a goblin army following a retreat. The unmarried men
ran away first, and carried the news far and near that the village was
doomed. Who could fight, they said, against the Jungle, or the Gods
of the Jungle, when the very village cobra had left his hole in the
platform under the peepul-tree? So their little commerce with the
outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across the open grew fewer
and fainter. At last the nightly trumpetings of Hathi and his three sons
ceased to trouble them; for they had no more to be robbed of. The crop
on the ground and the seed in the ground had been taken. The outlying
fields were already losing their shape, and it was time to throw
themselves on the charity of the English at Khanhiwara.
Native fashion, they delayed their departure from one day to another
till the first Rains caught them and the unmended roofs let in a flood,
and the grazing-ground stood ankle deep, and all life came on with a
rush after the heat of the summer. Then they waded out--men, women,
and children--through the blinding hot rain of the morning, but turned
naturally for one farewell look at their homes.
They heard, as the last burdened family filed through the gate, a crash
of falling beams and thatch behind the walls. They saw a shiny,
snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering sodden thatch. It
disappeared, and there was another crash, followed by a squeal. Hathi
had been plucking off the roofs of the huts as you pluck water-lilies,
and a rebounding beam had pricked him. He needed only this to unchain
his full strength, for of all things in the Jungle the wild elephant
enraged is the most wantonly destructive. He kicked backward at a mud
wall that crumbled at the stroke, and, crumbling, melted to yellow
mud under the torrent of rain. Then he wheeled and squealed, and tore
through the narrow streets, leaning against the huts right and left,
shivering the crazy doors, and crumpling up the caves; while his
three sons raged behind as they had raged at the Sack of the Fields of
Bhurtpore.
“The Jungle will swallow these shells,” said a quiet voice in the
wreckage. “It is the outer wall that must lie down,” and Mowgli, with
the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a
wall that was settling like a tired buffalo.
“All in good time,” panted Hathi. “Oh, but my tusks were red at
Bhurtpore; To the outer wall, children! With the head! Together! Now!”
The four pushed side by side; the outer wall bulged, split, and fell,
and the villagers, dumb with horror, saw the savage, clay-streaked
heads of the wreckers in the ragged gap. Then they fled, houseless and
foodless, down the valley, as their village, shredded and tossed and
trampled, melted behind them.
A month later the place was a dimpled mound, covered with soft, green
young stuff; and by the end of the Rains there was the roaring jungle in
full blast on the spot that had been under plough not six months before.