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 call! -- Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
Night-Song in the Jungle.


MOWGLI'S BROTHERS




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 after the other to get rid
of the sleepy feeling in the 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 Father Wolf, "it is time to hunt again"; and he
was going to spring downhill 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 the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in
this world."

It was the jackal -- Tabaqui, the Dish-licker -- and the
wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making
mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of
leather from the village rubbish-heaps. They are afraid of him
too, because Tabaqui, more than any one else in the jungle, is
apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of
any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his
way. Even the tiger hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for
madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild
creature. We call it hydrophobia, 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 remembered that
the children of kings are men from the beginning."

Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any one else that there is
nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces; and
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:

"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting-grounds.
He will hunt among these hills during 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
fair 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 master.
Thou hast done harm enough for one night."

"I go," said Tabaqui, quietly. "Ye can hear Shere Khan
below in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message."

Father Wolf listened, and in the dark valley that ran down
to a little river, he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong
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?"

"H'sh! It is neither bullock nor buck that he hunts
to-night," said Mother Wolf; "it is Man." The whine had changed
to a sort of humming purr that seemed to roll from every quarter
of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders wood-cutters,
and gipsies 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 without
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 unsportsmanlike 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.

"The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a
wood-cutters' camp-fire, so he has burned his feet," said Father
Wolf, with a grunt. "Tabaqui is with him."

"Something is coming uphill," said Mother Wolf, twitching
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 result 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 thing 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 necessary,
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 children?"

"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 squeaking: "My Lord, my
Lord, it went in here!"

"Shere Khan does us great honour," 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 wood-cutter'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 fore paws 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
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 answer. 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, 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 forgotten 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 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 Waingunga 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 belongs 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 Mowgli
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 colour, from
badger-coloured veterans who could handle a buck alone, to
young black three-year-olds who thought they 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 one another 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 carefully, 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
playing 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 crying, "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 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 up on 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
Bagheera, the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the
panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern
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
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 better
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 clamour 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 playing with 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 comes when this naked thing will make thee roar 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 Mowgli 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
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 cunningly
hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him
it was a trap.

He loved better than anything 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 exception. 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." Mowgli obeyed faithfully.

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 remembered 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 allowed 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 dying 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; and 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 Bagheera
-- 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 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
Mowgli, 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 dares not kill thee in the jungle for fear of those that
love thee; 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 Council 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
brothers?" 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!"

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, Bagheera,
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 plaything, 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
except 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.

"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 misses 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 Baloo or those of the Pack that
love thee. Get the Red Flower."

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the
jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in
deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.

"The Red Flower?" said Mowgli. "That grows outside their
huts in the twilight. I will get some."

"There speaks the man's cub," said Bagheera, proudly.
"Remember that it grows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and
keep it by thee for time of need."

"Good!" said Mowgli. "I go. But art thou sure, O my
Bagheera" -- he slipped his arm round the splendid neck, and
looked deep into the big eyes -- "art thou sure that all this is
Shere Khan's doing?"

"By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little
Brother."

"Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan
full tale for this, and it may be a little over" said Mowgli;
and he bounded away.

"That is a man. That is all a man," said Bagheera to
himself, lying down again. "Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker
hunting than that frog-hunt of thine ten years ago!"

Mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard,
and his heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening
mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down the valley. The cubs
were out, but Mother Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his
breathing that something was troubling her frog.

"What is it, Son?" she said.

"Some bat's chatter of Shere Khan," he called back. "I hunt
among the ploughed fields to-night"; and he plunged downward
through the bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley.
There he checked, for he heard the yell of the Pack hunting,
heard the bellow of a hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck
turned at bay. Then there were wicked, bitter howls from the
young wolves: "Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show his
strength. Room for the leader of our Pack! Spring, Akela!"

The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for
Mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the
Sambhur knocked him over with his fore foot.

He did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the
yells grew fainter behind him as he ran into the crop-lands
where the villagers lived.

"Bagheera spoke truth," he panted, as he nestled down
in some cattle-fodder by the window of a hut. "To-morrow is one
day for Akela and for me."

Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched
the fire on the hearth. He saw the husbandman's wife get up and
feed it in the night with black lumps; and when the morning came
and the mists were all white and cold, he saw the man's child
pick up a wicker pot plastered inside with earth, fill it with
lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and go out
to tend the cows in the byre.

"Is that all?" said Mowgli. "If a cub can do it there is
nothing to fear"; so he strode around the corner and met the
boy, took the pot from his hand and disappeared into the mist
while the boy howled with fear.

"They are very like me," said Mowgli, blowing into the pot,
as he had seen the woman do. "This thing will die if I do not
give it things to eat"; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on
the red stuff. Half-way up the hill he met Bagheera with the
morning dew shining like moonstones on his coat.

"Akela has missed," said the panther. "They would have
killed him last night, but they needed thee also. They were
looking for thee on the hill."

"I was among the ploughed lands. I am ready. Look!" Mowgli
held up the fire-pot.

"Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that
stuff, and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it.
Art thou not afraid?"

"No. Why should I fear? I remember -- now if it is not a
dream -- how, before I was a wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower,
and it was warm and pleasant."

All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire-pot
and dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He
found a branch that satisfied him, and in the evening when
Tabaqui came to the cave and told him, rudely enough, that he
was wanted at the Council Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran
away. Then Mowgli went to the Council, still laughing.

Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign
that the leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with
his following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly,
being flattered. Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the fire-pot
was between MowglI's knees. When they were all gathered
together, Shere Khan began to speak -- a thing he would never
have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.

"He has no right," whispered Bagheera. "Say so. He is a
dog's son. He will be frightened."

Mowgli sprang to his feet. "Free People," he cried, "does
Shere Khan lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our
leadership?"

"Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to
speak -- "Shere Khan began.

"By whom?" said Mowgli. "Are we all jackals, to fawn on
this cattle-butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack
alone."

There were yells of "Silence, thou man's cub!" "Let him
speak; he has kept our law!" And at last the seniors of the Pack
thundered: "Let the Dead Wolf speak!"

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called
the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule.

Akela raised his old head wearily:

"Free people, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve
seasons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time
not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill.
Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to
an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverly done.
Your right is to kill me here on the Council Rock now. Therefore
I ask, 'Who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf?' For it is my
right, by the Law of the Jungle, that ye come one by one."

There was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight
Akela to the death. Then Shere Khan roared: "Bah! What have we
to do with this toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the
man-cub who has lived too long. Free People, he was my meat from
the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He
has troubled the jungle for ten seasons. Give me the man-cub, or
I will hunt here always, and not give you one bone! He is a man
-- a man's child, and from the marrow of my bones I hate him!"

Then more than half the Pack yelled: "A man -- a man! What
has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place."

"And turn all the people of the villages against us?"
snarled Shere Khan. "No; give him to me. He is a man, and none
of us can look him between the eyes."

Akela lifted his head again, and said: "He has eaten our
food; he has slept with us; he has driven game for us; he has
broken no word of the Law of the Jungle."

"Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The
worth of a bull is little, but Bagheera's honour is something
that he will perhaps fight for," said Bagheera in his gentlest voice.

"A bull paid ten years ago!" the Pack snarled. "What do we
care for bones ten years old?"

"Or for a pledge?" said Bagheera, his white teeth bared
under his lip. "Well are ye called the Free People!"

"No man's cub can run with the people of the jungle!"
roared Shere Khan. "Give him to me."

"He is our brother in all but blood," Akela went on; "and
ye would kill him here. In truth, I have lived too long. Some of
ye are eaters of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under
Shere Khan's teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children
from the villager's doorstep. Therefore I know ye to be cowards,
and it is to cowards I speak. It is certain that I must die, and
my life is of no worth or I would offer that in the man-cub's
place. But for the sake of the Honour of the Pack, -- a little
matter that, by being without a leader, ye have forgotten, -- I
promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I will
not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye. I
will die without fighting. That will at least save the Pack
three lives. More I cannot do; but, if ye will, I can save ye
the shame that comes of killing a brother against whom there is
no fault -- a brother spoken for and bought into the Pack
according to the Law of the Jungle."

"He is a man -- a man -- a man!" snarled the Pack; and most
of the wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was
beginning to switch.

"Now the business is in thy hands," said Bagheera to
Mowgli. "We can do no more except fight."

Mowgli stood upright -- the fire-pot in his hands. Then he
stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council;
but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolf-like, the
wolves had never told him how they hated him.

"Listen, you!" he cried. "There is no need for this dog's
jabber. Ye have told me so often to-night that I am a man
(though indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life's
end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my
brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye will
do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. That matter is
with me; and that we may see the matter more plainly, I, the
man, have brought here a little of the Red Flower which ye,
dogs, fear."

He flung the fire-pot on the ground, and some of the red
coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up as all the Council
drew back in terror before the leaping flames.

Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs
lit and crackled, and whirled it above his head among the
cowering wolves.

"Thou art the master," said Bagheera, in an undertone.
"Save Akela from the death. He was ever thy friend."

Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in
his life, gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all
naked, his long black hair tossing over his shoulders in the
light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and
quiver.

"Good!" said Mowgli, staring around slowly, and thrusting
out his lower lip. "I see that ye are dogs. I go from you to my
own people -- if they be my own people. The jungle is shut to
me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship; but I
will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your
brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I
will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me." He kicked the
fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. "There shall be no
war between any of us and the Pack. But here is a debt to pay
before I go." He strode forward to where Shere Khan sat blinking
stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin.
Bagheera followed close, in case of accidents. "Up, dog!" Mowgli
cried. "Up, when a man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze!"

Shere Khan's ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut
his eyes, for the blazing branch was very near.

"This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council
because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus,
then, do we beat dogs when we are men! Stir a whisker, Lungri,
and I ram the Red Flower down thy gullet!" He beat Shere Khan
over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and
whined in an agony of fear.

"Pah! Singed jungle-cat -- go now! But remember when next
I come to the Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be
with Shere Khan's hide on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free
to live as he pleases. Ye will not kill him, because that is not
my will. Nor do I think that ye will sit here any longer,
lolling out your tongues as though ye were somebodies, instead
of dogs whom I drive out -- thus! Go!"

The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch,
and Mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the
wolves ran howling with the spark burning their fur. At last
there were only Akela, Bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had
taken MowglI's part. Then something began to hurt Mowgli inside
him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caught
his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.

"What is it? What is it?" he said. "I do not wish to leave
the jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying,
Bagheera?"

"No, Little Brother. Those are only tears such as men use,"
said Bagheera. "Now I know thou art a man, and a man's cub no
longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them
fall, Mowgli; they are only tears." So Mowgli sat and cried as
though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his
life before.

"Now," he said, "I will go to men. But first I must say
farewell to my mother"; and he went to the cave where she lived
with Father Wolf, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs
howled miserably.

"Ye will not forget me?" said Mowgli.

"Never while we can follow a trail," said the cubs. "Come
to the foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to
thee; and we will come into the croplands to play with thee by
night."

"Come soon!" said Father Wolf. "Oh, wise little Frog, come
again soon; for we be old, thy mother and I."

"Come soon," said Mother Wolf, "little naked son of mine;
for, listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved
my cubs."

"I will surely come," said Mowgli; "and when I come it will
be to lay out Shere Khan's hide upon the Council Rock. Do not
forget me! Tell them in the jungle never to forget me!"

The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the
hillside alone to the crops to meet those mysterious things that
are called men.





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