The Jungle Book 3 page

all sorts of instincts, and used to make little huts of fallen

branches without thinking how he came to do it. The Mon-

key-People, watching in the trees, considered his play most

wonderful. This time, they said, they were really going to

have a leader and become the wisest people in the jungle

—so wise that everyone else would notice and envy them.

Therefore they followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mow-

gli through the jungle very quietly till it was time for the

midday nap, and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of

himself, slept between the Panther and the Bear, resolving

to have no more to do with the Monkey People.

The next thing he remembered was feeling hands on

his legs and arms—hard, strong, little hands—and then a

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swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down

through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with

his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk with ev-

ery tooth bared. The Bandar-log howled with triumph and

scuffled away to the upper branches where Bagheera dared

not follow, shouting: ‘He has noticed us! Bagheera has no-

ticed us. All the Jungle-People admire us for our skill and

our cunning.’ Then they began their flight; and the flight of

the Monkey-People through tree-land is one of the things

nobody can describe. They have their regular roads and

crossroads, up hills and down hills, all laid out from fifty

to seventy or a hundred feet above ground, and by these

they can travel even at night if necessary. Two of the stron-

gest monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung

off with him through the treetops, twenty feet at a bound.

Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but

the boy’s weight held them back. Sick and giddy as Mowgli

was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the

glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the

terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over noth-

ing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth.

His escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the thin-

nest topmost branches crackle and bend under them, and

then with a cough and a whoop would fling themselves into

the air outward and downward, and bring up, hanging by

their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree.

Sometimes he could see for miles and miles across the still

green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles

across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash

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him across the face, and he and his two guards would be al-

most down to earth again. So, bounding and crashing and

whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log swept

along the tree-roads with Mowgli their prisoner.

For a time he was afraid of being dropped. Then he grew

angry but knew better than to struggle, and then he began

to think. The first thing was to send back word to Baloo and

Bagheera, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew

his friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look

down, for he could only see the topsides of the branches,

so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann

the Kite balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the

jungle waiting for things to die. Rann saw that the mon-

keys were carrying something, and dropped a few hundred

yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He

whistled with surprise when he saw Mowgli being dragged

up to a treetop and heard him give the Kite call for—‘We be

of one blood, thou and I.’ The waves of the branches closed

over the boy, but Chil balanced away to the next tree in time

to see the little brown face come up again. ‘Mark my trail!’

Mowgli shouted. ‘Tell Baloo of the Seeonee Pack and Ba-

gheera of the Council Rock.’

‘In whose name, Brother?’ Rann had never seen Mowgli

before, though of course he had heard of him.

‘Mowgli, the Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my tra-

il!’ The last words were shrieked as he was being swung

through the air, but Rann nodded and rose up till he looked

no bigger than a speck of dust, and there he hung, watching

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with his telescope eyes the swaying of the treetops as Mow-

gli’s escort whirled along.

‘They never go far,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘They never do

what they set out to do. Always pecking at new things are

the Bandar-log. This time, if I have any eye-sight, they have

pecked down trouble for themselves, for Baloo is no fledg-

ling and Bagheera can, as I know, kill more than goats.’

So he rocked on his wings, his feet gathered up under

him, and waited.

Meantime, Baloo and Bagheera were furious with rage

and grief. Bagheera climbed as he had never climbed be-

fore, but the thin branches broke beneath his weight, and he

slipped down, his claws full of bark.

‘Why didst thou not warn the man-cub?’ he roared to

poor Baloo, who had set off at a clumsy trot in the hope of

overtaking the monkeys. ‘What was the use of half slaying

him with blows if thou didst not warn him?’

‘Haste! O haste! We—we may catch them yet!’ Baloo

panted.

‘At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher

of the Law—cub-beater—a mile of that rolling to and fro

would burst thee open. Sit still and think! Make a plan. This

is no time for chasing. They may drop him if we follow too

close.’

‘Arrula! Whoo! They may have dropped him already, be-

ing tired of carrying him. Who can trust the Bandar-log?

Put dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat! Roll

me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to

death, and bury me with the Hyaena, for I am most misera-

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ble of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O Mowgli, Mowgli! Why did

I not warn thee against the Monkey-Folk instead of break-

ing thy head? Now perhaps I may have knocked the day’s

lesson out of his mind, and he will be alone in the jungle

without the Master Words.’

Baloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and

fro moaning.

‘At least he gave me all the Words correctly a little time

ago,’ said Bagheera impatiently. ‘Baloo, thou hast neither

memory nor respect. What would the jungle think if I, the

Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki the Porcupine,

and howled?’

‘What do I care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead

by now.’

‘Unless and until they drop him from the branches in

sport, or kill him out of idleness, I have no fear for the man-

cub. He is wise and well taught, and above all he has the eyes

that make the Jungle-People afraid. But (and it is a great

evil) he is in the power of the Bandar-log, and they, because

they live in trees, have no fear of any of our people.’ Ba-

gheera licked one forepaw thoughtfully.

‘Fool that I am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that

I am,’ said Baloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk, ‘it is true

what Hathi the Wild Elephant says: ‘To each his own fear’;

and they, the Bandar-log, fear Kaa the Rock Snake. He can

climb as well as they can. He steals the young monkeys in

the night. The whisper of his name makes their wicked tails

cold. Let us go to Kaa.’

‘What will he do for us? He is not of our tribe, being foot-

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less—and with most evil eyes,’ said Bagheera.

‘He is very old and very cunning. Above all, he is always

hungry,’ said Baloo hopefully. ‘Promise him many goats.’

‘He sleeps for a full month after he has once eaten. He

may be asleep now, and even were he awake what if he

would rather kill his own goats?’ Bagheera, who did not

know much about Kaa, was naturally suspicious.

‘Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might

make him see reason.’ Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown

shoulder against the Panther, and they went off to look for

Kaa the Rock Python.

They found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the

afternoon sun, admiring his beautiful new coat, for he had

been in retirement for the last ten days changing his skin,

and now he was very splendid—darting his big blunt-nosed

head along the ground, and twisting the thirty feet of his

body into fantastic knots and curves, and licking his lips as

he thought of his dinner to come.

‘He has not eaten,’ said Baloo, with a grunt of relief, as

soon as he saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow

jacket. ‘Be careful, Bagheera! He is always a little blind after

he has changed his skin, and very quick to strike.’

Kaa was not a poison snake—in fact he rather despised

the poison snakes as cowards—but his strength lay in his

hug, and when he had once lapped his huge coils round

anybody there was no more to be said. ‘Good hunting!’

cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches. Like all snakes of

his breed Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at

first. Then he curled up ready for any accident, his head low-

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ered.

‘Good hunting for us all,’ he answered. ‘Oho, Baloo, what

dost thou do here? Good hunting, Bagheera. One of us at

least needs food. Is there any news of game afoot? A doe

now, or even a young buck? I am as empty as a dried well.’

‘We are hunting,’ said Baloo carelessly. He knew that you

must not hurry Kaa. He is too big.

‘Give me permission to come with you,’ said Kaa. ‘A blow

more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I

have to wait and wait for days in a wood-path and climb

half a night on the mere chance of a young ape. Psshaw! The

branches are not what they were when I was young. Rotten

twigs and dry boughs are they all.’

‘Maybe thy great weight has something to do with the

matter,’ said Baloo.

‘I am a fair length—a fair length,’ said Kaa with a little

pride. ‘But for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown tim-

ber. I came very near to falling on my last hunt—very near

indeed—and the noise of my slipping, for my tail was not

tight wrapped around the tree, waked the Bandar-log, and

they called me most evil names.’

‘Footless, yellow earth-worm,’ said Bagheera under his

whiskers, as though he were trying to remember some-

thing.

‘Sssss! Have they ever called me that?’ said Kaa.

‘Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us

last moon, but we never noticed them. They will say any-

thing—even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and wilt not

face anything bigger than a kid, because (they are indeed

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shameless, these Bandar-log)—because thou art afraid of

the he-goat’s horns,’ Bagheera went on sweetly.

Now a snake, especially a wary old python like Kaa, very

seldom shows that he is angry, but Baloo and Bagheera

could see the big swallowing muscles on either side of Kaa’s

throat ripple and bulge.

‘The Bandar-log have shifted their grounds,’ he said

quietly. ‘When I came up into the sun today I heard them

whooping among the tree-tops.’

‘It—it is the Bandar-log that we follow now,’ said Baloo,

but the words stuck in his throat, for that was the first time

in his memory that one of the Jungle-People had owned to

being interested in the doings of the monkeys.

‘Beyond doubt then it is no small thing that takes two

such hunters—leaders in their own jungle I am certain—on

the trail of the Bandar-log,’ Kaa replied courteously, as he

swelled with curiosity.

‘Indeed,’ Baloo began, ‘I am no more than the old and

sometimes very foolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee

wolf-cubs, and Bagheera here—‘

‘Is Bagheera,’ said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut

with a snap, for he did not believe in being humble. ‘The

trouble is this, Kaa. Those nut-stealers and pickers of palm

leaves have stolen away our man-cub of whom thou hast

perhaps heard.’

‘I heard some news from Ikki (his quills make him pre-

sumptuous) of a man-thing that was entered into a wolf

pack, but I did not believe. Ikki is full of stories half heard

and very badly told.’

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‘But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was,’ said Ba-

loo. ‘The best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs—my own

pupil, who shall make the name of Baloo famous through

all the jungles; and besides, I—we—love him, Kaa.’

‘Ts! Ts!’ said Kaa, weaving his head to and fro. ‘I also

have known what love is. There are tales I could tell that—‘

‘That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise

properly,’ said Bagheera quickly. ‘Our man-cub is in the

hands of the Bandar-log now, and we know that of all the

Jungle-People they fear Kaa alone.’

‘They fear me alone. They have good reason,’ said Kaa.

‘Chattering, foolish, vain—vain, foolish, and chattering, are

the monkeys. But a man-thing in their hands is in no good

luck. They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them

down. They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great

things with it, and then they snap it in two. That man-thing

is not to be envied. They called me also—‘yellow fish’ was

it not?’

‘Worm—worm—earth-worm,’ said Bagheera, ‘as well as

other things which I cannot now say for shame.’

‘We must remind them to speak well of their master.

Aaa-ssp! We must help their wandering memories. Now,

whither went they with the cub?’

‘The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe,’

said Baloo. ‘We had thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa.’

‘I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do

not hunt the Bandar-log, or frogs—or green scum on a wa-

ter-hole, for that matter.’

‘Up, Up! Up, Up! Hillo! Illo! Illo, look up, Baloo of the

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Seeonee Wolf Pack!’

Baloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and

there was Rann the Kite, sweeping down with the sun shin-

ing on the upturned flanges of his wings. It was near Rann’s

bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle looking for

the Bear and had missed him in the thick foliage.

‘What is it?’ said Baloo.

‘I have seen Mowgli among the Bandar-log. He bade me

tell you. I watched. The Bandar-log have taken him beyond

the river to the monkey city—to the Cold Lairs. They may

stay there for a night, or ten nights, or an hour. I have told

the bats to watch through the dark time. That is my mes-

sage. Good hunting, all you below!’

‘Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann,’ cried Ba-

gheera. ‘I will remember thee in my next kill, and put aside

the head for thee alone, O best of kites!’

‘It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master

Word. I could have done no less,’ and Rann circled up again

to his roost.

‘He has not forgotten to use his tongue,’ said Baloo with

a chuckle of pride. ‘To think of one so young remembering

the Master Word for the birds too while he was being pulled

across trees!’

‘It was most firmly driven into him,’ said Bagheera. ‘But I

am proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.’

They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle

People ever went there, because what they called the Cold

Lairs was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jun-

gle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have once used.

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The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes do not. Besides,

the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to

live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come

within eyeshot of it except in times of drought, when the

half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water.

‘It is half a night’s journey—at full speed,’ said Bagheera,

and Baloo looked very serious. ‘I will go as fast as I can,’ he

said anxiously.

‘We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on

the quick-foot—Kaa and I.’

‘Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four,’ said

Kaa shortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit

down panting, and so they left him to come on later, while

Bagheera hurried forward, at the quick panther-canter.

Kaa said nothing, but, strive as Bagheera might, the huge

Rock-python held level with him. When they came to a hill

stream, Bagheera gained, because he bounded across while

Kaa swam, his head and two feet of his neck clearing the

water, but on level ground Kaa made up the distance.

‘By the Broken Lock that freed me,’ said Bagheera, when

twilight had fallen, ‘thou art no slow goer!’

‘I am hungry,’ said Kaa. ‘Besides, they called me speck-

led frog.’

‘Worm—earth-worm, and yellow to boot.’

‘All one. Let us go on,’ and Kaa seemed to pour himself

along the ground, finding the shortest road with his steady

eyes, and keeping to it.

In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking

of Mowgli’s friends at all. They had brought the boy to the

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Lost City, and were very much pleased with themselves for

the time. Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before, and

though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very won-

derful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a

little hill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led

up to the ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung

to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of

the walls; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed,

and wild creepers hung out of the windows of the towers on

the walls in bushy hanging clumps.

A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble

of the courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained

with red and green, and the very cobblestones in the court-

yard where the king’s elephants used to live had been thrust

up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace

you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that

made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with

blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol

in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at

street corners where the public wells once stood, and the

shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their

sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and pretend-

ed to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the

forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were

made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on

the hall of the king’s council chamber, and scratch for fleas

and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the

roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks

in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and

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fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play

up and down the terraces of the king’s garden, where they

would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see

the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and

dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark

rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and

what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or

crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did.

They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and

then they fought over it, and then they would all rush to-

gether in mobs and shout: ‘There is no one in the jungle so

wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Ban-

dar-log.’ Then all would begin again till they grew tired of

the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-

People would notice them.

Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jun-

gle, did not like or understand this kind of life. The monkeys

dragged him into the Cold Lairs late in the afternoon, and

instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli would have done after a

long journey, they joined hands and danced about and sang

their foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a speech and

told his companions that Mowgli’s capture marked a new

thing in the history of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was go-

ing to show them how to weave sticks and canes together as

a protection against rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some

creepers and began to work them in and out, and the mon-

keys tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost

interest and began to pull their friends’ tails or jump up and

down on all fours, coughing.

The Jungle Book

‘I wish to eat,’ said Mowgli. ‘I am a stranger in this part

of the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here.’

Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him

nuts and wild pawpaws. But they fell to fighting on the road,

and it was too much trouble to go back with what was left

of the fruit. Mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry,

and he roamed through the empty city giving the Strangers’

Hunting Call from time to time, but no one answered him,

and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place in-

deed. ‘All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true,’

he thought to himself. ‘They have no Law, no Hunting Call,

and no leaders—nothing but foolish words and little pick-

ing thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will

be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jun-

gle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is better than chasing

silly rose leaves with the Bandar-log.’

No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the mon-

keys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how

happy he was, and pinching him to make him grateful. He

set his teeth and said nothing, but went with the shouting

monkeys to a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs

that were half-full of rain water. There was a ruined sum-

mer-house of white marble in the center of the terrace, built

for queens dead a hundred years ago. The domed roof had

half fallen in and blocked up the underground passage from

the palace by which the queens used to enter. But the walls

were made of screens of marble tracery—beautiful milk-

white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians and jasper

and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill

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it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the

ground like black velvet embroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hun-

gry as he was, Mowgli could not help laughing when the

Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great

and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish

he was to wish to leave them. ‘We are great. We are free. We

are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the

jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true,’ they shouted.

‘Now as you are a new listener and can carry our words back

to the Jungle-People so that they may notice us in future,

we will tell you all about our most excellent selves.’ Mowgli

made no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds

and hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speak-

ers singing the praises of the Bandar-log, and whenever a

speaker stopped for want of breath they would all shout

together: ‘This is true; we all say so.’ Mowgli nodded and

blinked, and said ‘Yes’ when they asked him a question, and

his head spun with the noise. ‘Tabaqui the Jackal must have

bitten all these people,’ he said to himself, ‘and now they

have madness. Certainly this is dewanee, the madness. Do

they never go to sleep? Now there is a cloud coming to cover

that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to

run away in the darkness. But I am tired.’

That same cloud was being watched by two good friends

in the ruined ditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and

Kaa, knowing well how dangerous the Monkey-People were

in large numbers, did not wish to run any risks. The mon-

keys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, and few

in the jungle care for those odds.

The Jungle Book

‘I will go to the west wall,’ Kaa whispered, ‘and come

down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. They

will not throw themselves upon my back in their hundreds,

but—‘

‘I know it,’ said Bagheera. ‘Would that Baloo were here,

but we must do what we can. When that cloud covers the

moon I shall go to the terrace. They hold some sort of coun-

cil there over the boy.’

‘Good hunting,’ said Kaa grimly, and glided away to

the west wall. That happened to be the least ruined of any,

and the big snake was delayed awhile before he could find

a way up the stones. The cloud hid the moon, and as Mow-

gli wondered what would come next he heard Bagheera’s

light feet on the terrace. The Black Panther had raced up the

slope almost without a sound and was striking—he knew

better than to waste time in biting—right and left among

the monkeys, who were seated round Mowgli in circles fifty

and sixty deep. There was a howl of fright and rage, and

then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling kicking bodies be-

neath him, a monkey shouted: ‘There is only one here! Kill

him! Kill.’ A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching,

tearing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five or six

laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the sum-

merhouse and pushed him through the hole of the broken

dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised,

for the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo

had taught him to fall, and landed on his feet.

‘Stay there,’ shouted the monkeys, ‘till we have killed thy

friends, and later we will play with thee—if the Poison-Peo-

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ple leave thee alive.’

‘We be of one blood, ye and I,’ said Mowgli, quickly giv-

ing the Snake’s Call. He could hear rustling and hissing in

the rubbish all round him and gave the Call a second time,

to make sure.

‘Even ssso! Down hoods all!’ said half a dozen low voic-

es (every ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling

place of snakes, and the old summerhouse was alive with

cobras). ‘Stand still, Little Brother, for thy feet may do us

harm.’

Mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through

the open work and listening to the furious din of the fight

round the Black Panther—the yells and chatterings and

scufflings, and Bagheera’s deep, hoarse cough as he backed

and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his

enemies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was

fighting for his life.

‘Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come

alone,’ Mowgli thought. And then he called aloud: ‘To the

tank, Bagheera. Roll to the water tanks. Roll and plunge!

Get to the water!’

Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was

safe gave him new courage. He worked his way desperately,

inch by inch, straight for the reservoirs, halting in silence.

Then from the ruined wall nearest the jungle rose up the

rumbling war-shout of Baloo. The old Bear had done his

best, but he could not come before. ‘Bagheera,’ he shouted,

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