The Jungle Book 4 page

‘I am here. I climb! I haste! Ahuwora! The stones slip under

my feet! Wait my coming, O most infamous Bandar-log!’

The Jungle Book

He panted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in

a wave of monkeys, but he threw himself squarely on his

haunches, and, spreading out his forepaws, hugged as many

as he could hold, and then began to hit with a regular bat-

bat-bat, like the flipping strokes of a paddle wheel. A crash

and a splash told Mowgli that Bagheera had fought his way

to the tank where the monkeys could not follow. The Pan-

ther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of the water,

while the monkeys stood three deep on the red steps, danc-

ing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from

all sides if he came out to help Baloo. It was then that Ba-

gheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in despair gave the

Snake’s Call for protection—‘We be of one blood, ye and

I’— for he believed that Kaa had turned tail at the last min-

ute. Even Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the

edge of the terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the

Black Panther asking for help.

Kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall,

landing with a wrench that dislodged a coping stone into

the ditch. He had no intention of losing any advantage of

the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself once or twice,

to be sure that every foot of his long body was in working

order. All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the

monkeys yelled in the tank round Bagheera, and Mang the

Bat, flying to and fro, carried the news of the great battle

over the jungle, till even Hathi the Wild Elephant trumpet-

ed, and, far away, scattered bands of the Monkey-Folk woke

and came leaping along the tree-roads to help their com-

rades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused

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all the day birds for miles round. Then Kaa came straight,

quickly, and anxious to kill. The fighting strength of a py-

thon is in the driving blow of his head backed by all the

strength and weight of his body. If you can imagine a lance,

or a battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half a ton

driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you

can roughly imagine what Kaa was like when he fought. A

python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he

hits him fairly in the chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as

you know. His first stroke was delivered into the heart of

the crowd round Baloo. It was sent home with shut mouth

in silence, and there was no need of a second. The monkeys

scattered with cries of—‘Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run!’

Generations of monkeys had been scared into good be-

havior by the stories their elders told them of Kaa, the night

thief, who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss

grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived;

of old Kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead

branch or a rotten stump that the wisest were deceived, till

the branch caught them. Kaa was everything that the mon-

keys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits

of his power, none of them could look him in the face, and

none had ever come alive out of his hug. And so they ran,

stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the

houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was

much thicker than Bagheera’s, but he had suffered sorely in

the fight. Then Kaa opened his mouth for the first time and

spoke one long hissing word, and the far-away monkeys,

hurrying to the defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed where

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they were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and

crackled under them. The monkeys on the walls and the

empty houses stopped their cries, and in the stillness that

fell upon the city Mowgli heard Bagheera shaking his wet

sides as he came up from the tank. Then the clamor broke

out again. The monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They

clung around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked

as they skipped along the battlements, while Mowgli, danc-

ing in the summerhouse, put his eye to the screenwork and

hooted owl-fashion between his front teeth, to show his de-

rision and contempt.

‘Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more,’ Ba-

gheera gasped. ‘Let us take the man-cub and go. They may

attack again.’

‘They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!’ Kaa

hissed, and the city was silent once more. ‘I could not come

before, Brother, but I think I heard thee call’—this was to

Bagheera.

‘I—I may have cried out in the battle,’ Bagheera an-

swered. ‘Baloo, art thou hurt?

‘I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred

little bearlings,’ said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after

the other. ‘Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our

lives—Bagheera and I.’

‘No matter. Where is the manling?’

‘Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out,’ cried Mowgli. The

curve of the broken dome was above his head.

‘Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He

will crush our young,’ said the cobras inside.

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‘Hah!’ said Kaa with a chuckle, ‘he has friends every-

where, this manling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O

Poison People. I break down the wall.’

Kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in

the marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three

light taps with his head to get the distance, and then lifting

up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half

a dozen full-power smashing blows, nose-first. The screen-

work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and rubbish, and

Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself be-

tween Baloo and Bagheera—an arm around each big neck.

‘Art thou hurt?’ said Baloo, hugging him softly.

‘I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they

have handled ye grievously, my Brothers! Ye bleed.’

‘Others also,’ said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking

at the monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.

‘It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride

of all little frogs!’ whimpered Baloo.

‘Of that we shall judge later,’ said Bagheera, in a dry voice

that Mowgli did not at all like. ‘But here is Kaa to whom we

owe the battle and thou owest thy life. Thank him according

to our customs, Mowgli.’

Mowgli turned and saw the great Python’s head swaying

a foot above his own.

‘So this is the manling,’ said Kaa. ‘Very soft is his skin,

and he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling,

that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when

I have newly changed my coat.’

‘We be one blood, thou and I,’ Mowgli answered. ‘I take

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my life from thee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever

thou art hungry, O Kaa.’

‘All thanks, Little Brother,’ said Kaa, though his eyes

twinkled. ‘And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I

may follow when next he goes abroad.’

‘I kill nothing,—I am too little,—but I drive goats toward

such as can use them. When thou art empty come to me and

see if I speak the truth. I have some skill in these [he held

out his hands], and if ever thou art in a trap, I may pay the

debt which I owe to thee, to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here.

Good hunting to ye all, my masters.’

‘Well said,’ growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned

thanks very prettily. The Python dropped his head lightly for

a minute on Mowgli’s shoulder. ‘A brave heart and a courte-

ous tongue,’ said he. ‘They shall carry thee far through the

jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends.

Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not

well that thou shouldst see.’

The moon was sinking behind the hills and the lines of

trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and bat-

tlements looked like ragged shaky fringes of things. Baloo

went down to the tank for a drink and Bagheera began to

put his fur in order, as Kaa glided out into the center of the

terrace and brought his jaws together with a ringing snap

that drew all the monkeys’ eyes upon him.

‘The moon sets,’ he said. ‘Is there yet light enough to

see?’

From the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-

tops— ‘We see, O Kaa.’

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‘Good. Begins now the dance—the Dance of the Hunger

of Kaa. Sit still and watch.’

He turned twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving his head

from right to left. Then he began making loops and figures

of eight with his body, and soft, oozy triangles that melt-

ed into squares and five-sided figures, and coiled mounds,

never resting, never hurrying, and never stopping his low

humming song. It grew darker and darker, till at last the

dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but they could hear

the rustle of the scales.

Baloo and Bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their

throats, their neck hair bristling, and Mowgli watched and

wondered.

‘Bandar-log,’ said the voice of Kaa at last, ‘can ye stir foot

or hand without my order? Speak!’

‘Without thy order we cannot stir foot or hand, O Kaa!’

‘Good! Come all one pace nearer to me.’

The lines of the monkeys swayed forward helplessly, and

Baloo and Bagheera took one stiff step forward with them.

‘Nearer!’ hissed Kaa, and they all moved again.

Mowgli laid his hands on Baloo and Bagheera to get

them away, and the two great beasts started as though they

had been waked from a dream.

‘Keep thy hand on my shoulder,’ Bagheera whispered.

‘Keep it there, or I must go back—must go back to Kaa.

Aah!’

‘It is only old Kaa making circles on the dust,’ said Mow-

gli. ‘Let us go.’ And the three slipped off through a gap in

the walls to the jungle.

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‘Whoof!’ said Baloo, when he stood under the still trees

again. ‘Never more will I make an ally of Kaa,’ and he shook

himself all over.

‘He knows more than we,’ said Bagheera, trembling. ‘In

a little time, had I stayed, I should have walked down his

throat.’

‘Many will walk by that road before the moon rises

again,’ said Baloo. ‘He will have good hunting—after his

own fashion.’

‘But what was the meaning of it all?’ said Mowgli, who

did not know anything of a python’s powers of fascination.

‘I saw no more than a big snake making foolish circles till

the dark came. And his nose was all sore. Ho! Ho!’

‘Mowgli,’ said Bagheera angrily, ‘his nose was sore on thy

account, as my ears and sides and paws, and Baloo’s neck

and shoulders are bitten on thy account. Neither Baloo nor

Bagheera will be able to hunt with pleasure for many days.’

‘It is nothing,’ said Baloo; ‘we have the man-cub again.’

‘True, but he has cost us heavily in time which might

have been spent in good hunting, in wounds, in hair—I am

half plucked along my back—and last of all, in honor. For,

remember, Mowgli, I, who am the Black Panther, was forced

to call upon Kaa for protection, and Baloo and I were both

made stupid as little birds by the Hunger Dance. All this,

man-cub, came of thy playing with the Bandar-log.’

‘True, it is true,’ said Mowgli sorrowfully. ‘I am an evil

man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me.’

‘Mf! What says the Law of the Jungle, Baloo?’

Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trou-

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ble, but he could not tamper with the Law, so he mumbled:

‘Sorrow never stays punishment. But remember, Bagheera,

he is very little.’

‘I will remember. But he has done mischief, and blows

must be dealt now. Mowgli, hast thou anything to say?’

‘Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou are wounded. It

is just.’

Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps from a pan-

ther’s point of view (they would hardly have waked one of

his own cubs), but for a seven-year-old boy they amounted

to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid. When it

was all over Mowgli sneezed, and picked himself up with-

out a word.

‘Now,’ said Bagheera, ‘jump on my back, Little Brother,

and we will go home.’

One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment set-

tles all scores. There is no nagging afterward.

Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s back and slept

so deeply that he never waked when he was put down in the

home-cave.

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Road-Song of the

Bandar-Log

Here we go in a flung festoon,

Half-way up to the jealous moon!

Don’t you envy our pranceful bands?

Don’t you wish you had extra hands?

Wouldn’t you like if your tails were—so—

Curved in the shape of a Cupid’s bow?

Now you’re angry, but—never mind,

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!

Here we sit in a branchy row,

Thinking of beautiful things we know;

Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,

All complete, in a minute or two—

Something noble and wise and good,

Done by merely wishing we could.

We’ve forgotten, but—never mind,

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!

All the talk we ever have heard

Uttered by bat or beast or bird—

Hide or fin or scale or feather—

Jabber it quickly and all together!

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Excel ent! Wonderful! Once again!

Now we are talking just like men!

Let’s pretend we are ... never mind,

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!

This is the way of the Monkey-kind.

Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,

That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.

By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,

Be sure, be sure, we’re going to do some splendid things!

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‘Tiger! Tiger!’

What of the hunting, hunter bold?

Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kil ?

Brother, he crops in the jungle stil .

Where is the power that made your pride?

Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

Where is the haste that ye hurry by?

Brother, I go to my lair—to die.

Now we must go back to the first tale. When Mowgli left

the wolf’s cave after the fight with the Pack at the Council

Rock, he went down to the plowed lands where the villag-

ers lived, but he would not stop there because it was too

near to the jungle, and he knew that he had made at least

one bad enemy at the Council. So he hurried on, keeping

to the rough road that ran down the valley, and followed

it at a steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came

to a country that he did not know. The valley opened out

into a great plain dotted over with rocks and cut up by ra-

vines. At one end stood a little village, and at the other the

thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds,

and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe.

All over the plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and

when the little boys in charge of the herds saw Mowgli they

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shouted and ran away, and the yellow pariah dogs that hang

about every Indian village barked. Mowgli walked on, for

he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the village gate

he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate

at twilight, pushed to one side.

‘Umph!’ he said, for he had come across more than one

such barricade in his night rambles after things to eat. ‘So

men are afraid of the People of the Jungle here also.’ He

sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stood

up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that

he wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one

street of the village shouting for the priest, who was a big,

fat man dressed in white, with a red and yellow mark on his

forehead. The priest came to the gate, and with him at least

a hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted and

pointed at Mowgli.

‘They have no manners, these Men Folk,’ said Mowgli to

himself. ‘Only the gray ape would behave as they do.’ So he

threw back his long hair and frowned at the crowd.

‘What is there to be afraid of?’ said the priest. ‘Look at

the marks on his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves.

He is but a wolf-child run away from the jungle.’

Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped

Mowgli harder than they intended, and there were white

scars all over his arms and legs. But he would have been the

last person in the world to call these bites, for he knew what

real biting meant.

‘Arre! Arre!’ said two or three women together. ‘To be

bitten by wolves, poor child! He is a handsome boy. He has

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eyes like red fire. By my honor, Messua, he is not unlike thy

boy that was taken by the tiger.’

‘Let me look,’ said a woman with heavy copper rings on

her wrists and ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the

palm of her hand. ‘Indeed he is not. He is thinner, but he has

the very look of my boy.’

The priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua

was wife to the richest villager in the place. So he looked up

at the sky for a minute and said solemnly: ‘What the jun-

gle has taken the jungle has restored. Take the boy into thy

house, my sister, and forget not to honor the priest who sees

so far into the lives of men.’

‘By the Bull that bought me,’ said Mowgli to himself, ‘but

all this talking is like another looking-over by the Pack!

Well, if I am a man, a man I must become.’

The crowd parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to

her hut, where there was a red lacquered bedstead, a great

earthen grain chest with funny raised patterns on it, half

a dozen copper cooking pots, an image of a Hindu god in

a little alcove, and on the wall a real looking glass, such as

they sell at the country fairs.

She gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and

then she laid her hand on his head and looked into his eyes;

for she thought perhaps that he might be her real son come

back from the jungle where the tiger had taken him. So she

said, ‘Nathoo, O Nathoo!’ Mowgli did not show that he

knew the name. ‘Dost thou not remember the day when I

gave thee thy new shoes?’ She touched his foot, and it was

almost as hard as horn. ‘No,’ she said sorrowfully, ‘those

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feet have never worn shoes, but thou art very like my Nat-

hoo, and thou shalt be my son.’

Mowgli was uneasy, because he had never been under a

roof before. But as he looked at the thatch, he saw that he

could tear it out any time if he wanted to get away, and that

the window had no fastenings. ‘What is the good of a man,’

he said to himself at last, ‘if he does not understand man’s

talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us

in the jungle. I must speak their talk.’

It was not for fun that he had learned while he was with

the wolves to imitate the challenge of bucks in the jungle

and the grunt of the little wild pig. So, as soon as Messua

pronounced a word Mowgli would imitate it almost per-

fectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many

things in the hut.

There was a difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would

not sleep under anything that looked so like a panther trap

as that hut, and when they shut the door he went through

the window. ‘Give him his will,’ said Messua’s husband. ‘Re-

member he can never till now have slept on a bed. If he is

indeed sent in the place of our son he will not run away.’

So Mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at

the edge of the field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft

gray nose poked him under the chin.

‘Phew!’ said Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Moth-

er Wolf’s cubs). ‘This is a poor reward for following thee

twenty miles. Thou smellest of wood smoke and cattle—al-

together like a man already. Wake, Little Brother; I bring

news.’

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‘Are all well in the jungle?’ said Mowgli, hugging him.

‘All except the wolves that were burned with the Red

Flower. Now, listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far

off till his coat grows again, for he is badly singed. When he

returns he swears that he will lay thy bones in the Wain-

gunga.’

‘There are two words to that. I also have made a little

promise. But news is always good. I am tired to-night,—

very tired with new things, Gray Brother,—but bring me

the news always.’

‘Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not

make thee forget?’ said Gray Brother anxiously.

‘Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in

our cave. But also I will always remember that I have been

cast out of the Pack.’

‘And that thou mayest be cast out of another pack. Men

are only men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of

frogs in a pond. When I come down here again, I will wait

for thee in the bamboos at the edge of the grazing-ground.’

For three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever

left the village gate, he was so busy learning the ways and

customs of men. First he had to wear a cloth round him,

which annoyed him horribly; and then he had to learn

about money, which he did not in the least understand, and

about plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then the

little children in the village made him very angry. Luckily,

the Law of the Jungle had taught him to keep his temper,

for in the jungle life and food depend on keeping your tem-

per; but when they made fun of him because he would not

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play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some

word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to

kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them up and

breaking them in two.

He did not know his own strength in the least. In the

jungle he knew he was weak compared with the beasts, but

in the village people said that he was as strong as a bull.

And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference

that caste makes between man and man. When the potter’s

donkey slipped in the clay pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the

tail, and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the

market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for the

potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When

the priest scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on

the donkey too, and the priest told Messua’s husband that

Mowgli had better be set to work as soon as possible; and

the village head-man told Mowgli that he would have to

go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while

they grazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and

that night, because he had been appointed a servant of the

village, as it were, he went off to a circle that met every eve-

ning on a masonry platform under a great fig-tree. It was

the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and

the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old

Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and

smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches,

and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived,

and he had his little platter of milk every night because he

was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and talk-

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ed, and pulled at the big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into

the night. They told wonderful tales of gods and men and

ghosts; and Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the

ways of beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of the children sit-

ting outside the circle bulged out of their heads. Most of the

tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at their

door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and

now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within

sight of the village gates.

Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they

were talking of, had to cover his face not to show that he was

laughing, while Buldeo, the Tower musket across his knees,

climbed on from one wonderful story to another, and Mow-

gli’s shoulders shook.

Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried

away Messua’s son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was in-

habited by the ghost of a wicked, old money-lender, who

had died some years ago. ‘And I know that this is true,’ he

said, ‘because Purun Dass always limped from the blow

that he got in a riot when his account books were burned,

and the tiger that I speak of he limps, too, for the tracks of

his pads are unequal.’

‘True, true, that must be the truth,’ said the gray-beards,

nodding together.

‘Are all these tales such cobwebs and moon talk?’ said

Mowgli. ‘That tiger limps because he was born lame, as ev-

eryone knows. To talk of the soul of a money-lender in a

beast that never had the courage of a jackal is child’s talk.’

Buldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and

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the head-man stared.

‘Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?’ said Buldeo. ‘If thou art

so wise, better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Gov-

ernment has set a hundred rupees on his life. Better still,

talk not when thy elders speak.’

Mowgli rose to go. ‘All the evening I have lain here lis-

tening,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘and, except once

or twice, Buldeo has not said one word of truth concerning

the jungle, which is at his very doors. How, then, shall I be-

lieve the tales of ghosts and gods and goblins which he says

he has seen?’

‘It is full time that boy went to herding,’ said the

head-man, while Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli’s

impertinence.

The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to

take the cattle and buffaloes out to graze in the early morn-

ing, and bring them back at night. The very cattle that

would trample a white man to death allow themselves to be

banged and bullied and shouted at by children that hardly

come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with the

herds they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob

of cattle. But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards,

they are sometimes carried off. Mowgli went through the

village street in the dawn, sitting on the back of Rama, the

great herd bull. The slaty-blue buffaloes, with their long,

backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out their

byres, one by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it

very clear to the children with him that he was the master.

He beat the buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 857