Chapter Chapter 3 · “Tiger! Tiger!”

“Tiger! Tiger!”

What of the hunting, hunter bold?

Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill?

Brother, he crops in the jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride?

Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

Where is the haste that ye hurry by?

Brother, I go to my lair--to die.

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 villagers lived, but he would not stop there

because it was too near to the jungle, and he knew that he had made at

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

the rough road that ran down the valley, and followed it at a steady

jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that he

did not know. The valley opened out into a great plain dotted over with

rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, and at

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

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

plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in

charge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow

pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked. Mowgli walked

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

saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at twilight,

pushed to one side.

“Umph!” he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in

his night rambles after things to eat. “So men are afraid of the People

of the Jungle here also.” He sat down by the gate, and when a man came

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

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

village shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in

white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to

the gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked

and shouted and pointed at Mowgli.

“They have no manners, these Men Folk,” said Mowgli to himself. “Only

the gray ape would behave as they do.” So he threw back his long hair

and frowned at the crowd.

“What is there to be afraid of?” said the priest. “Look at the marks on

his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child

run away from the jungle.”

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

than they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and

legs. But he would have been the last person in the world to call these

bites, for he knew what real biting meant.

“Arre! Arre!” said two or three women together. “To be bitten by wolves,

poor child! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire. By my

honor, Messua, he is not unlike thy boy that was taken by the tiger.”

“Let me look,” said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and

ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the palm of her hand. “Indeed he

is not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy.”

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

richest villager in the place. So he looked up at the sky for a minute

and said solemnly: “What the jungle has taken the jungle has restored.

Take the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to honor the

priest who sees so far into the lives of men.”

“By the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli to himself, “but all this

talking is like another looking-over by the Pack! Well, if I am a man, a

man I must become.”

The crowd parted as the woman beckoned Mowgli to her hut, where there

was a red lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain chest with 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 feet have never worn shoes, but thou art

very like my Nathoo, and thou shalt be my son.”

Mowgli was uneasy, because he had never been under a roof before. But as

he looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if he

wanted to get away, and that the window had no fastenings. “What is the

good of a man,” he said to himself at last, “if he does not understand

man’s talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the

jungle. I must 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 perfectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many

things in the hut.

There was a difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would not sleep under

anything that looked so like a panther trap as that hut, and when they

shut the door he went through the window. “Give him his will,” said

Messua’s husband. “Remember he can never till now have slept on a bed.

If he is indeed sent in the place of our son he will not run away.”

So Mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge of

the field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked him

under the chin.

“Phew!” said Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Mother Wolf’s cubs).

“This is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou smellest

of wood smoke and cattle--altogether like a man already. Wake, Little

Brother; I bring news.”

“Are all well in the jungle?” said Mowgli, hugging him.

“All except the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now,

listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows

again, for he is badly singed. When he returns he swears that he will

lay thy bones in the Waingunga.”

“There are two words to that. I also have made a little promise. But

news is always good. I am tired to-night,--very tired with new things,

Gray Brother,--but bring me the news always.”

“Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make thee

forget?” said Gray Brother anxiously.

“Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in our cave. But

also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the Pack.”

“And that thou mayest be cast out of another pack. Men are only men,

Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. When

I come down here again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at the edge

of the grazing-ground.”

For three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the village

gate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had

to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had

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

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

in the village made him very angry. Luckily, the Law of the Jungle had

taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle life and food depend on

keeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would not

play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the

knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him

from picking them up and breaking them in two.

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

was weak compared with the beasts, but in the village people said 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 evening on a masonry platform under a great

fig-tree. It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and

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

village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys

sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the

platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk

every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree

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

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

Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the

jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged

out of their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle

was always at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their

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

sight of the village gates.

Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of,

had to cover his face not to show that he was laughing, while Buldeo,

the Tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story

to another, and Mowgli’s shoulders shook.

Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away Messua’s son

was a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked,

old money-lender, who had died some years ago. “And I know that this is

true,” he said, “because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he

got in a riot when his account books were burned, and the tiger that I

speak of he limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are unequal.”

“True, true, that must be the truth,” said the gray-beards, nodding

together.

“Are all these tales such cobwebs and moontalk?” said Mowgli. “That

tiger limps because he was born lame, as everyone 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 the head-man

stared.

“Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?” said Buldeo. “If thou art so

wise, better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government has set

a hundred rupees on his life. Better still, talk not when thy elders

speak.”

Mowgli rose to go. “All the evening I have lain here listening,” he

called back over his shoulder, “and, except once or twice, Buldeo has

not said one word of truth concerning the jungle, which is at his very

doors. How, then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and gods and

goblins which he says he has seen?”

“It is full time that boy went to herding,” said the head-man, while

Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli’s impertinence.

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

and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back

at night. 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 told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the

cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be

very careful not to stray away from the herd.

An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little

ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The buffaloes

generally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing

or basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them on to the edge

of the plain where the Waingunga came out of the jungle; then he dropped

from Rama’s neck, trotted off to a bamboo clump, and found Gray Brother.

“Ah,” said Gray Brother, “I have waited here very many days. What is the

meaning of this cattle-herding work?”

“It is an order,” said Mowgli. “I am a village herd for a while. What

news of Shere Khan?”

“He has come back to this country, and has waited here a long time for

thee. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. But he means to

kill thee.”

“Very good,” said Mowgli. “So long as he is away do thou or one of the

four brothers sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come out of

the village. When he comes back wait for me in the ravine by the _dhâk_

tree in the center of the plain. We need not walk into Shere Khan’s

mouth.”

Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while

the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest

things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move

on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes

very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after

another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and

staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and then they lie like

logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd children

hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead,

and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep

down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and

the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be

a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and

wake and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put

grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying mantises and make them fight;

or string a necklace of red and black jungle nuts; or watch a lizard

basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they

sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and

the day seems longer than most people’s whole lives, and perhaps they

make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and

put reeds into the men’s hands, and pretend that they are kings and the

figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. Then

evening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of

the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other,

and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village

lights.

Day after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and

day after day he would see Gray Brother’s back a mile and a half away

across the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day

after day he would lie on the grass listening to the noises round him,

and dreaming of old days in the jungle. If Shere Khan had made a false

step with his lame paw up in the jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would

have heard him in those long, still mornings.

At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal place,

and he laughed and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the dhk tree,

which was all covered with golden-red flowers. There sat Gray Brother,

every bristle on his back lifted.

“He has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He crossed the

ranges last night with Tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail,” said the Wolf,

panting.

Mowgli frowned. “I am not afraid of Shere Khan, but Tabaqui is very

cunning.”

“Have no fear,” said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little. “I met

Tabaqui in the dawn. Now he is telling all his wisdom to the kites, but

he told me everything before I broke his back. Shere Khan’s plan is to

wait for thee at the village gate this evening--for thee and for no one

else. He is lying up now, in the big dry ravine of the Waingunga.”

“Has he eaten today, or does he hunt empty?” said Mowgli, for the answer

meant life and death to him.

“He killed at dawn,--a pig,--and he has drunk too. Remember, Shere Khan

could never fast, even for the sake of revenge.”

“Oh! Fool, fool! What a cub’s cub it is! Eaten and drunk too, and he

thinks that I shall wait till he has slept! Now, where does he lie up?

If there were but ten of us we might pull him down as he lies. These

buffaloes will not charge unless they wind him, and I cannot speak their

language. Can we get behind his track so that they may smell it?”

“He swam far down the Waingunga to cut that off,” said Gray Brother.

“Tabaqui told him that, I know. He would never have thought of it

alone.” Mowgli stood with his finger in his mouth, thinking. “The big

ravine of the Waingunga. That opens out on the plain not half a mile

from here. I can take the herd round through the jungle to the head of

the ravine and then sweep down--but he would slink out at the foot. We

must block that end. Gray Brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for

me?”

“Not I, perhaps--but I have brought a wise helper.” Gray Brother trotted

off and dropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a huge gray head that

Mowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry

of all the jungle--the hunting howl of a wolf at midday.

“Akela! Akela!” said Mowgli, clapping his hands. “I might have known

that thou wouldst not forget me. We have a big work in hand. Cut the

herd in two, Akela. Keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls and

the plow buffaloes by themselves.”

The two wolves ran, ladies’-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which

snorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps. In one,

the cow-buffaloes stood with their calves in the center, and glared

and pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and

trample the life out of him. In the other, the bulls and the young bulls

snorted and stamped, but though they looked more imposing they were much

less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. No six men could have

divided the herd so neatly.

“What orders!” panted Akela. “They are trying to join again.”

Mowgli slipped on to Rama’s back. “Drive the bulls away to the left,

Akela. Gray Brother, when we are gone, hold the cows together, and drive

them into the foot of the ravine.”

“How far?” said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.

“Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump,” shouted Mowgli.

“Keep them there till we come down.” The bulls swept off as Akela bayed,

and Gray Brother stopped in front of the cows. They charged down on him,

and he ran just before them to the foot of the ravine, as Akela drove

the bulls far to the left.

“Well done! Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful,

now--careful, Akela. A snap too much and the bulls will charge. Hujah!

This is wilder work than driving black-buck. Didst thou think these

creatures could move so swiftly?” Mowgli called.

“I have--have hunted these too in my time,” gasped Akela in the dust.

“Shall I turn them into the jungle?”

“Ay! Turn. Swiftly turn them! Rama is mad with rage. Oh, if I could only

tell him what I need of him to-day.”

The bulls were turned, to the right this time, and crashed into the

standing thicket. The other herd children, watching with the cattle half

a mile away, hurried to the village as fast as their legs could carry

them, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run away.

But Mowgli’s plan was simple enough. All he wanted to do was to make a

big circle uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the

bulls down it and catch Shere Khan between the bulls and the cows; for

he knew that after a meal and a full drink Shere Khan would not be in

any condition to fight or to clamber up the sides of the ravine. He was

soothing the buffaloes now by voice, and Akela had dropped far to the

rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the rear-guard. It was a

long, long circle, for they did not wish to get too near the ravine and

give Shere Khan warning. At last Mowgli rounded up the bewildered herd

at the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down to

the ravine itself. From that height you could see across the tops of the

trees down to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides

of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they

ran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung

over them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out.

“Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding up his hand. “They have not

winded him yet. Let them breathe. I must tell Shere Khan who comes. We

have him in the trap.”

He put his hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine--it was almost

like shouting down a tunnel--and the echoes jumped from rock to rock.

After a long time there came back the drawling, sleepy snarl of a

full-fed tiger just wakened.

“Who calls?” said Shere Khan, and a splendid peacock fluttered up out of

the ravine screeching.

“I, Mowgli. Cattle thief, it is time to come to the Council Rock!

Down--hurry them down, Akela! Down, Rama, down!”

The herd paused for an instant at the edge of the slope, but Akela gave

tongue in the full hunting-yell, and they pitched over one after the

other, just as steamers shoot rapids, the sand and stones spurting up

round them. Once started, there was no chance of stopping, and before

they were fairly in the bed of the ravine Rama winded Shere Khan and

bellowed.

“Ha! Ha!” said Mowgli, on his back. “Now thou knowest!” and the torrent

of black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the

ravine just as boulders go down in floodtime; the weaker buffaloes being

shouldered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through the

creepers. They knew what the business was before them--the terrible

charge of the buffalo herd against which no tiger can hope to stand.

Shere Khan heard the thunder of their hoofs, picked himself up, and

lumbered down the ravine, looking from side to side for some way of

escape, but the walls of the ravine were straight and he had to hold on,

heavy with his dinner and his drink, willing to do anything rather than

fight. The herd splashed through the pool he had just left, bellowing

till the narrow cut rang. Mowgli heard an answering bellow from the foot

of the ravine, saw Shere Khan turn (the tiger knew if the worst came

to the worst it was better to meet the bulls than the cows with their

calves), and then Rama tripped, stumbled, and went on again over

something soft, and, with the bulls at his heels, crashed full into the

other herd, while the weaker buffaloes were lifted clean off their feet

by the shock of the meeting. That charge carried both herds out into the

plain, goring and stamping and snorting. Mowgli watched his time, and

slipped off Rama’s neck, laying about him right and left with his stick.

“Quick, Akela! Break them up. Scatter them, or they will be fighting one

another. Drive them away, Akela. Hai, Rama! Hai, hai, hai! my children.

Softly now, softly! It is all over.”

Akela and Gray Brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes’ legs,

and though the herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, Mowgli

managed to turn Rama, and the others followed him to the wallows.

Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were

coming for him already.

“Brothers, that was a dog’s death,” said Mowgli, feeling for the knife

he always carried in a sheath round his neck now that he lived with men.

“But he would never have shown fight. His hide will look well on the

Council Rock. We must get to work swiftly.”

A boy trained among men would never have dreamed of skinning a ten-foot

tiger alone, but Mowgli knew better than anyone else how an animal’s

skin is fitted on, and how it can be taken off. But it was hard work,

and Mowgli slashed and tore and grunted for an hour, while the wolves

lolled out their tongues, or came forward and tugged as he ordered them.

Presently a hand fell on his shoulder, and looking up he saw Buldeo with

the Tower musket. The children had told the village about the buffalo

stampede, and Buldeo went out angrily, only too anxious to correct

Mowgli for not taking better care of the herd. The wolves dropped out of

sight as soon as they saw the man coming.

“What is this folly?” said Buldeo angrily. “To think that thou canst

skin a tiger! Where did the buffaloes kill him? It is the Lame Tiger

too, and there is a hundred rupees on his head. Well, well, we will

overlook thy letting the herd run off, and perhaps I will give thee one

of the rupees of the reward when I have taken the skin to Khanhiwara.”

He fumbled in his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to

singe Shere Khan’s whiskers. Most native hunters always singe a tiger’s

whiskers to prevent his ghost from haunting them.

“Hum!” said Mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin of a

forepaw. “So thou wilt take the hide to Khanhiwara for the reward, and

perhaps give me one rupee? Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for

my own use. Heh! Old man, take away that fire!”

“What talk is this to the chief hunter of the village? Thy luck and the

stupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. The tiger has

just fed, or he would have gone twenty miles by this time. Thou canst

not even skin him properly, little beggar brat, and forsooth I, Buldeo,

must be told not to singe his whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give thee one

anna of the reward, but only a very big beating. Leave the carcass!”

“By the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli, who was trying to get at the

shoulder, “must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon? Here, Akela,

this man plagues me.”

Buldeo, who was still stooping over Shere Khan’s head, found himself

sprawling on the grass, with a gray wolf standing over him, while Mowgli

went on skinning as though he were alone in all India.

“Ye-es,” he said, between his teeth. “Thou art altogether right, Buldeo.

Thou wilt never give me one anna of the reward. There is an old war

between this lame tiger and myself--a very old war, and--I have won.”

To do Buldeo justice, if he had been ten years younger he would have

taken his chance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf

who obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating

tigers was not a common animal. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind,

thought Buldeo, and he wondered whether the amulet round his neck would

protect him. He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see

Mowgli turn into a tiger too.

“Maharaj! Great King,” he said at last in a husky whisper.

“Yes,” said Mowgli, without turning his head, chuckling a little.

“I am an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a

herdsboy. May I rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to

pieces?”

“Go, and peace go with thee. Only, another time do not meddle with my

game. Let him go, Akela.”

Buldeo hobbled away to the village as fast as he could, looking back

over his shoulder in case Mowgli should change into something terrible.

When he got to the village he told a tale of magic and enchantment and

sorcery that made the priest look very grave.

Mowgli went on with his work, but it was nearly twilight before he and

the wolves had drawn the great gay skin clear of the body.

“Now we must hide this and take the buffaloes home! Help me to herd

them, Akela.”

The herd rounded up in the misty twilight, and when they got near the

village Mowgli saw lights, and heard the conches and bells in the temple

blowing and banging. Half the village seemed to be waiting for him

by the gate. “That is because I have killed Shere Khan,” he said

to himself. But a shower of stones whistled about his ears, and the

villagers shouted: “Sorcerer! Wolf’s brat! Jungle demon! Go away! Get

hence quickly or the priest will turn thee into a wolf again. Shoot,

Buldeo, shoot!”

The old Tower musket went off with a bang, and a young buffalo bellowed

in pain.

“More sorcery!” shouted the villagers. “He can turn bullets. Buldeo,

that was thy buffalo.”

“Now what is this?” said Mowgli, bewildered, as the stones flew thicker.

“They are not unlike the Pack, these brothers of thine,” said Akela,

sitting down composedly. “It is in my head that, if bullets mean

anything, they would cast thee out.”

“Wolf! Wolf’s cub! Go away!” shouted the priest, waving a sprig of the

sacred tulsi plant.

“Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is because I

am a wolf. Let us go, Akela.”

A woman--it was Messua--ran across to the herd, and cried: “Oh, my son,

my son! They say thou art a sorcerer who can turn himself into a beast

at will. I do not believe, but go away or they will kill thee. Buldeo

says thou art a wizard, but I know thou hast avenged Nathoo’s death.”

“Come back, Messua!” shouted the crowd. “Come back, or we will stone

thee.”

Mowgli laughed a little short ugly laugh, for a stone had hit him in

the mouth. “Run back, Messua. This is one of the foolish tales they tell

under the big tree at dusk. I have at least paid for thy son’s life.

Farewell; and run quickly, for I shall send the herd in more swiftly

than their brickbats. I am no wizard, Messua. Farewell!”

“Now, once more, Akela,” he cried. “Bring the herd in.”

The buffaloes were anxious enough to get to the village. They hardly

needed Akela’s yell, but charged through the gate like a whirlwind,

scattering the crowd right and left.

“Keep count!” shouted Mowgli scornfully. “It may be that I have stolen

one of them. Keep count, for I will do your herding no more. Fare you

well, children of men, and thank Messua that I do not come in with my

wolves and hunt you up and down your street.”

He turned on his heel and walked away with the Lone Wolf, and as he

looked up at the stars he felt happy. “No more sleeping in traps for me,

Akela. Let us get Shere Khan’s skin and go away. No, we will not hurt

the village, for Messua was kind to me.”

When the moon rose over the plain, making it look all milky, the

horrified villagers saw Mowgli, with two wolves at his heels and a

bundle on his head, trotting across at the steady wolf’s trot that eats

up the long miles like fire. Then they banged the temple bells and blew

the conches louder than ever. And Messua cried, and Buldeo embroidered

the story of his adventures in the jungle, till he ended by saying that

Akela stood up on his hind legs and talked like a man.

The moon was just going down when Mowgli and the two wolves came to the

hill of the Council Rock, and they stopped at Mother Wolf’s cave.

“They have cast me out from the Man-Pack, Mother,” shouted Mowgli, “but

I come with the hide of Shere Khan to keep my word.”

Mother Wolf walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind her, and

her eyes glowed as she saw the skin.

“I told him on that day, when he crammed his head and shoulders into

this cave, hunting for thy life, Little Frog--I told him that the hunter

would be the hunted. It is well done.”

“Little Brother, it is well done,” said a deep voice in the thicket.

“We were lonely in the jungle without thee,” and Bagheera came running

to Mowgli’s bare feet. They clambered up the Council Rock together, and

Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone where Akela used to sit,

and pegged it down with four slivers of bamboo, and Akela lay down upon

it, and called the old call to the Council, “Look--look well, O Wolves,”

exactly as he had called when Mowgli was first brought there.

Ever since Akela had been deposed, the Pack had been without a leader,

hunting and fighting at their own pleasure. But they answered the call

from habit; and some of them were lame from the traps they had fallen

into, and some limped from shot wounds, and some were mangy from eating

bad food, and many were missing. But they came to the Council Rock, all

that were left of them, and saw Shere Khan’s striped hide on the rock,

and the huge claws dangling at the end of the empty dangling feet. It

was then that Mowgli made up a song that came up into his throat all

by itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down on the rattling

skin, and beating time with his heels till he had no more breath left,

while Gray Brother and Akela howled between the verses.

“Look well, O Wolves. Have I kept my word?” said Mowgli. And the wolves

bayed “Yes,” and one tattered wolf howled:

“Lead us again, O Akela. Lead us again, O Man-cub, for we be sick of

this lawlessness, and we would be the Free People once more.”

“Nay,” purred Bagheera, “that may not be. When ye are full-fed, the

madness may come upon you again. Not for nothing are ye called the Free

People. Ye fought for freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves.”

“Man-Pack and Wolf-Pack have cast me out,” said Mowgli. “Now I will hunt

alone in the jungle.”

“And we will hunt with thee,” said the four cubs.

So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from

that day on. But he was not always alone, because, years afterward, he

became a man and married.

But that is a story for grown-ups.

Mowgli’s Song

THAT HE SANG AT THE COUNCIL ROCK WHEN HE

DANCED ON SHERE KHAN’S HIDE

The Song of Mowgli—I, Mowgli, am singing. Let the jungle listen to the

things I have done.

Shere Khan said he would kill—would kill! At the gates in the twilight

he would kill Mowgli, the Frog!

He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou drink

again? Sleep and dream of the kill.

I am alone on the grazing-grounds. Gray Brother, come to me! Come to

me, Lone Wolf, for there is big game afoot!

Bring up the great bull buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd bulls with the

angry eyes. Drive them to and fro as I order.

Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, oh, wake! Here come I, and the

bulls are behind.

Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with his foot. Waters of the

Waingunga, whither went Shere Khan?

He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Peacock, that he should fly.

He is not Mang the Bat, to hang in the branches. Little bamboos that

creak together, tell me where he ran?

_Ow!_ He is there. _Ahoo!_ He is there. Under the feet of Rama lies the

Lame One! Up, Shere Khan!

Up and kill! Here is meat; break the necks of the bulls!

_Hsh!_ He is asleep. We will not wake him, for his strength is very

great. The kites have come down to see it. The black ants have come up

to know it. There is a great assembly in his honor.

_Alala!_ I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites will see that I am

naked. I am ashamed to meet all these people.

Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I may

go to the Council Rock.

By the Bull that bought me I made a promise—a little promise. Only thy

coat is lacking before I keep my word.

With the knife, with the knife that men use, with the knife of the

hunter, I will stoop down for my gift.

Waters of the Waingunga, Shere Khan gives me his coat for the love that

he bears me. Pull, Gray Brother! Pull, Akela! Heavy is the hide of

Shere Khan.

The Man Pack are angry. They throw stones and talk child’s talk. My

mouth is bleeding. Let me run away.

Through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly with me, my

brothers. We will leave the lights of the village and go to the low

moon.

Waters of the Waingunga, the Man-Pack have cast me out. I did them no

harm, but they were afraid of me. Why?

Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jungle is shut to me and the

village gates are shut. Why?

As Mang flies between the beasts and birds, so fly I between the

village and the jungle. Why?

I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my heart is very heavy. My mouth

is cut and wounded with the stones from the village, but my heart is

very light, because I have come back to the jungle. Why?

These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the

spring. The water comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it falls.

Why?

I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under my feet.

All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere Khan. Look—look well, O

Wolves!

_Ahae!_ My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand.