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The Jungle Book 1 page

By Rudyard Kipling

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Mowgli’s Brothers

Now Rann the Kite brings home the night

That Mang the Bat sets free—

The herds are shut in byre and hut

For loosed till dawn are we.

This is the hour of pride and power,

Talon and tush and claw.

Oh, hear the cal !—Good hunting all

That keep the Jungle Law!

Night-Song in the Jungle

It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the

Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest,

scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one af-

ter the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.

Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her

four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into

the mouth of the cave where they all lived. ‘Augrh!’ said Fa-

ther Wolf. ‘It is time to hunt again.’ He was going to spring

down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the

threshold and whined: ‘Good luck go with you, O Chief of

the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with

noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this

world.’

 

The Jungle Book

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the

wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about mak-

ing mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of

leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid

of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the

jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was

ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting

everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when

little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful

thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydro-

phobia, but they call it dewanee—the madness— and run.

‘Enter, then, and look,’ said Father Wolf stiffly, ‘but there

is no food here.’

‘For a wolf, no,’ said Tabaqui, ‘but for so mean a person

as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-

log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?’ He scuttled to

the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with

some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.

‘All thanks for this good meal,’ he said, licking his lips.

‘How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their

eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have re-

membered that the children of kings are men from the

beginning.’

Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there

is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their

faces. It pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look

uncomfortable.

Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had

made, and then he said spitefully:

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‘Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting

grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon,

so he has told me.’

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga



River, twenty miles away.

‘He has no right!’ Father Wolf began angrily—‘By the

Law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters

without due warning. He will frighten every head of game

within ten miles, and I—I have to kill for two, these days.’

‘His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for

nothing,’ said Mother Wolf quietly. ‘He has been lame in

one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed cattle.

Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him,

and he has come here to make our villagers angry. They will

scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and

our children must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed,

we are very grateful to Shere Khan!’

‘Shall I tell him of your gratitude?’ said Tabaqui.

‘Out!’ snapped Father Wolf. ‘Out and hunt with thy mas-

ter. Thou hast done harm enough for one night.’

‘I go,’ said Tabaqui quietly. ‘Ye can hear Shere Khan be-

low in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message.’

Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran

down to a little river he heard the dry, angry, snarly, sing-

song whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not

care if all the jungle knows it.

‘The fool!’ said Father Wolf. ‘To begin a night’s work

with that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat

Waingunga bullocks?’

 

The Jungle Book

‘H’sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,’

said Mother Wolf. ‘It is Man.’

The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that

seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was

the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping

in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very

mouth of the tiger.

‘Man!’ said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth.

‘Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks

that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!’

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything with-

out a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when

he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he

must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe.

The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner

or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns,

and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and

torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason

the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest

and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsports-

manlike to touch him. They say too—and it is true —that

man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.

The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated

‘Aaarh!’ of the tiger’s charge.

Then there was a howl—an untigerish howl—from Shere

Khan. ‘He has missed,’ said Mother Wolf. ‘What is it?’

Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan

muttering and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in

the scrub.

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‘The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a wood-

cutter’s campfire, and has burned his feet,’ said Father Wolf

with a grunt. ‘Tabaqui is with him.’

‘Something is coming uphill,’ said Mother Wolf, twitch-

ing one ear. ‘Get ready.’

The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf

dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap.

Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the

most wonderful thing in the world—the wolf checked in

mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was

he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The re-

sult was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five

feet, landing almost where he left ground.

‘Man!’ he snapped. ‘A man’s cub. Look!’

Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch,

stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft

and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf’s cave at

night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face, and laughed.

‘Is that a man’s cub?’ said Mother Wolf. ‘I have never

seen one. Bring it here.’

A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if neces-

sary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father

Wolf’s jaws closed right on the child’s back not a tooth even

scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs.

‘How little! How naked, and—how bold!’ said Mother

Wolf softly. The baby was pushing his way between the cubs

to get close to the warm hide. ‘Ahai! He is taking his meal

with the others. And so this is a man’s cub. Now, was there

ever a wolf that could boast of a man’s cub among her chil-

 

The Jungle Book

dren?’

‘I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in

our Pack or in my time,’ said Father Wolf. ‘He is altogether

without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot.

But see, he looks up and is not afraid.’

The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave,

for Shere Khan’s great square head and shoulders were

thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui, behind him, was squeak-

ing: ‘My lord, my lord, it went in here!’

‘Shere Khan does us great honor,’ said Father Wolf, but

his eyes were very angry. ‘What does Shere Khan need?’

‘My quarry. A man’s cub went this way,’ said Shere Khan.

‘Its parents have run off. Give it to me.’

Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter’s campfire, as

Father Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his

burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the

cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where

he was, Shere Khan’s shoulders and forepaws were cramped

for want of room, as a man’s would be if he tried to fight in

a barrel.

‘The Wolves are a free people,’ said Father Wolf. ‘They

take orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from any

striped cattle-killer. The man’s cub is ours—to kill if we

choose.’

‘Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of

choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into

your dog’s den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who

speak!’

The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf

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shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes,

like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing

eyes of Shere Khan.

‘And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man’s

cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He

shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack;

and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-

eater— fish-killer—he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by

the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thou

goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than

ever thou camest into the world! Go!’

Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgot-

ten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from

five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not

called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might

have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against

Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the

advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So

he backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was

clear he shouted:

‘Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the

Pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine,

and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed

thieves!’

Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the

cubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely:

‘Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be

shown to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?’

‘Keep him!’ she gasped. ‘He came naked, by night, alone

 

The Jungle Book

and very hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed

one of my babes to one side already. And that lame butcher

would have killed him and would have run off to the Wain-

gunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs

in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still,

little frog. O thou Mowgli —for Mowgli the Frog I will call

thee—the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan

as he has hunted thee.’

‘But what will our Pack say?’ said Father Wolf.

The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any

wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he be-

longs to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on

their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which

is generally held once a month at full moon, in order that

the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection

the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they

have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown

wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death

where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a

minute you will see that this must be so.

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and

then on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mow-

gli and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—a hilltop covered

with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could

hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack

by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock,

and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and

color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a

buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they

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could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had

fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he had

been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and

customs of men. There was very little talking at the Rock.

The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of the circle

where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a

senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him care-

fully, and return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes

a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight

to be sure that he had not been overlooked. Akela from his

rock would cry: ‘Ye know the Law—ye know the Law. Look

well, O Wolves!’ And the anxious mothers would take up

the call: ‘Look—look well, O Wolves!’

At last—and Mother Wolf’s neck bristles lifted as the

time came—Father Wolf pushed ‘Mowgli the Frog,’ as they

called him, into the center, where he sat laughing and play-

ing with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.

Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on

with the monotonous cry: ‘Look well!’ A muffled roar came

up from behind the rocks—the voice of Shere Khan cry-

ing: ‘The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have the Free

People to do with a man’s cub?’ Akela never even twitched

his ears. All he said was: ‘Look well, O Wolves! What have

the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free

People? Look well!’

There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in

his fourth year flung back Shere Khan’s question to Akela:

‘What have the Free People to do with a man’s cub?’ Now,

the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute

The Jungle Book

as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must

be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are

not his father and mother.

‘Who speaks for this cub?’ said Akela. ‘Among the Free

People who speaks?’ There was no answer and Mother Wolf

got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things

came to fighting.

Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack

Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the

wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come

and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots

and honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.

‘The man’s cub—the man’s cub?’ he said. ‘I speak for the

man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of

words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and

be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.’

‘We need yet another,’ said Akela. ‘Baloo has spoken, and

he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides

Baloo?’

A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Ba-

gheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the

panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pat-

tern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody

cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui,

as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded

elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping

from a tree, and a skin softer than down.

‘O Akela, and ye the Free People,’ he purred, ‘I have no

right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if

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there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a

new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And

the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price.

Am I right?’

‘Good! Good!’ said the young wolves, who are always

hungry. ‘Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a

price. It is the Law.’

‘Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your

leave.’

‘Speak then,’ cried twenty voices.

‘To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make bet-

ter sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his

behalf. Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and a fat

one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept

the man’s cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?’

There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: ‘What

matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the

sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with

the Pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted.’

And then came Akela’s deep bay, crying: ‘Look well—look

well, O Wolves!’

Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he

did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one

by one. At last they all went down the hill for the dead bull,

and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s own wolves

were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was

very angry that Mowgli had not been handed over to him.

‘Ay, roar well,’ said Bagheera, under his whiskers, ‘for the

time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar

The Jungle Book

to another tune, or I know nothing of man.’

‘It was well done,’ said Akela. ‘Men and their cubs are

very wise. He may be a help in time.’

‘Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead

the Pack forever,’ said Bagheera.

Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that

comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes

from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is

killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up—to be

killed in his turn.

‘Take him away,’ he said to Father Wolf, ‘and train him as

befits one of the Free People.’

And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee

Wolf Pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo’s good word.

Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole

years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that Mow-

gli led among the wolves, because if it were written out it

would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs,

though they, of course, were grown wolves almost before

he was a child. And Father Wolf taught him his business,

and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in

the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of

the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it

roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little

fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the

work of his office means to a business man. When he was

not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and

went to sleep again. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in

the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him

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that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat)

he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how

to do. Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, ‘Come

along, Little Brother,’ and at first Mowgli would cling like

the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the

branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took his place

at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he

discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would

be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun.

At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the

pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns

and burs in their coats. He would go down the hillside into

the cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the

villagers in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because

Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop gate so cun-

ningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it,

and told him that it was a trap. He loved better than any-

thing else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of

the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night

see how Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and

left as he felt hungry, and so did Mowgli—with one excep-

tion. As soon as he was old enough to understand things,

Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because

he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull’s life.

‘All the jungle is thine,’ said Bagheera, ‘and thou canst kill

everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the

sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat

any cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.’ Mow-

gli obeyed faithfully.

The Jungle Book

And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who

does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has

nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.

Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was

not a creature to be trusted, and that some day he must kill

Shere Khan. But though a young wolf would have remem-

bered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot it because he

was only a boy—though he would have called himself a wolf

if he had been able to speak in any human tongue.

Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle,

for as Akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come

to be great friends with the younger wolves of the Pack, who

followed him for scraps, a thing Akela would never have al-

lowed if he had dared to push his authority to the proper

bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder

that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dy-

ing wolf and a man’s cub. ‘They tell me,’ Shere Khan would

say, ‘that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes.’

And the young wolves would growl and bristle.

Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew

something of this, and once or twice he told Mowgli in

so many words that Shere Khan would kill him some day.

Mowgli would laugh and answer: ‘I have the Pack and I have

thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or

two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?’

It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Ba-

gheera— born of something that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki

the Porcupine had told him; but he said to Mowgli when

they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head on

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Bagheera’s beautiful black skin, ‘Little Brother, how often

have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?’

‘As many times as there are nuts on that palm,’ said Mow-

gli, who, naturally, could not count. ‘What of it? I am sleepy,

Bagheera, and Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk—like

Mao, the Peacock.’

‘But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know

it; the Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know.

Tabaqui has told thee too.’

‘Ho! ho!’ said Mowgli. ‘Tabaqui came to me not long

ago with some rude talk that I was a naked man’s cub and

not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaqui by the tail and

swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him better

manners.’

‘That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-

maker, he would have told thee of something that concerned

thee closely. Open those eyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan

dare not kill thee in the jungle. But remember, Akela is very

old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck,

and then he will be leader no more. Many of the wolves

that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Coun-

cil first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere

Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with

the Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a man.’

‘And what is a man that he should not run with his broth-

ers?’ said Mowgli. ‘I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed

the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from

whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my

brothers!’

The Jungle Book

Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut

his eyes. ‘Little Brother,’ said he, ‘feel under my jaw.’

Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under

Bagheera’s silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were

all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald spot.

‘There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Ba-

gheera, carry that mark—the mark of the collar; and yet,

Little Brother, I was born among men, and it was among

men that my mother died—in the cages of the king’s palace

at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I paid the price

for thee at the Council when thou wast a little naked cub.

Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle.

They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I

felt that I was Bagheera—the Panther— and no man’s play-

thing, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw

and came away. And because I had learned the ways of men,

I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it

not so?’

‘Yes,’ said Mowgli, ‘all the jungle fear Bagheera—all ex-

cept Mowgli.’

‘Oh, thou art a man’s cub,’ said the Black Panther very

tenderly. ‘And even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must

go back to men at last—to the men who are thy brothers—if

thou art not killed in the Council.’

‘But why—but why should any wish to kill me?’ said

Mowgli.

‘Look at me,’ said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him

steadily between the eyes. The big panther turned his head

away in half a minute.

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‘That is why,’ he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. ‘Not

even I can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among

men, and I love thee, Little Brother. The others they hate

thee because their eyes cannot meet thine; because thou art

wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from their feet—

because thou art a man.’

‘I did not know these things,’ said Mowgli sullenly, and

he frowned under his heavy black eyebrows.

‘What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give

tongue. By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a

man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela miss-

es his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin

the buck—the Pack will turn against him and against thee.

They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then—and

then—I have it!’ said Bagheera, leaping up. ‘Go thou down

quickly to the men’s huts in the valley, and take some of the

Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time

comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Ba-

loo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.’

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in


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