Book: The Second Jungle Book

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"Chil does not leave a dead ox, nor the dhole the blood-trail,"
said Kaa.

"Then I will make him a new blood-trail, of his own blood, if
I can, and give him dirt to eat. Thou wilt stay here, Kaa,
till I come again with my dholes?"

"Ay, but what if they kill thee in the Jungle, or the Little
People kill thee before thou canst leap down to the river?"

"When to-morrow comes we will kill for to-morrow," said Mowgli,
quoting a Jungle saying; and again, "When I am dead it is time
to sing the Death Song. Good hunting, Kaa!"

He loosed his arm from the python's neck and went down the gorge
like a log in a freshet, paddling toward the far bank, where he
found slack-water, and laughing aloud from sheer happiness.
There was nothing Mowgli liked better than, as he himself said,
"to pull the whiskers of Death," and make the Jungle know that
he was their overlord. He had often, with Baloo's help, robbed
bees' nests in single trees, and he knew that the Little People
hated the smell of wild garlic. So he gathered a small bundle of
it, tied it up with a bark string, and then followed Won-tolla's
blood-trail, as it ran southerly from the Lairs, for some five
miles, looking at the trees with his head on one side, and
chuckling as he looked.

"Mowgli the Frog have I been," said he to himself; "Mowgli the
Wolf have I said that I am. Now Mowgli the Ape must I be before
I am Mowgli the Buck. At the end I shall be Mowgli the Man.
Ho!" and he slid his thumb along the eighteen-inch blade of
his knife.

Won-tolla's trail, all rank with dark blood-spots, ran under
a forest of thick trees that grew close together and stretched
away north-eastward, gradually growing thinner and thinner to
within two miles of the Bee Rocks. From the last tree to the low
scrub of the Bee Rocks was open country, where there was hardly
cover enough to hide a wolf. Mowgli trotted along under the
trees, judging distances between branch and branch, occasionally
climbing up a trunk and taking a trial leap from one tree to
another till he came to the open ground, which he studied very
carefully for an hour. Then he turned, picked up Won-tolla's
trail where he had left it, settled himself in a tree with an
outrunning branch some eight feet from the ground, and sat
still, sharpening his knife on the sole of his foot and singing
to himself.

A little before mid-day, when the sun was very warm, he heard
the patter of feet and smelt the abominable smell of the dhole-
pack as they trotted pitilessly along Won-tolla's trail.
Seen from above, the red dhole does not look half the size of
a wolf, but Mowgli knew how strong his feet and jaws were.
He watched the sharp bay head of the leader snuffing along the
trail, and gave him "Good hunting!"

The brute looked up, and his companions halted behind him,
scores and scores of red dogs with low-hung tails, heavy
shoulders, weak quarters, and bloody mouths. The dholes are
a very silent people as a rule, and they have no manners even
in their own Jungle. Fully two hundred must have gathered
below him, but he could see that the leaders sniffed hungrily
on Won-tolla's trail, and tried to drag the Pack forward.
That would never do, or they would be at the Lairs in
broad daylight, and Mowgli meant to hold them under his
tree till dusk.

"By whose leave do ye come here?" said Mowgli.

"All Jungles are our Jungle," was the reply, and the dhole that
gave it bared his white teeth. Mowgli looked down with a smile,
and imitated perfectly the sharp chitter-chatter of Chikai,
the leaping rat of the Dekkan, meaning the dholes to understand
that he considered them no better than Chikai. The Pack closed
up round the tree-trunk and the leader bayed savagely, calling
Mowgli a tree-ape. For an answer Mowgli stretched down one naked
leg and wriggled his bare toes just above the leader's head.
That was enough, and more than enough, to wake the Pack to
stupid rage. Those who have hair between their toes do not care
to be reminded of it. Mowgli caught his foot away as the leader
leaped up, and said sweetly: Dog, red dog! Go back to the Dekkan
and eat lizards. Go to Chikai thy brother--dog, dog--red,
red dog! There is hair between every toe!" He twiddled his toes
a second time.

"Come down ere we starve thee out, hairless ape!" yelled the
Pack, and this was exactly what Mowgli wanted. He laid himself
down along the branch, his cheek to the bark, his right arm
free, and there he told the Pack what he thought and knew about
them, their manners, their customs, their mates, and their
puppies. There is no speech in the world so rancorous and so
stinging as the language the Jungle People use to show scorn and
contempt. When you come to think of it you will see how this
must be so. As Mowgli told Kaa, he had many little thorns under
his tongue, and slowly and deliberately he drove the dholes from
silence to growls, from growls to yells, and from yells to
hoarse slavery ravings. They tried to answer his taunts, but a
cub might as well have tried to answer Kaa in a rage; and all
the while Mowgli's right hand lay crooked at his side, ready for
action, his feet locked round the branch. The big bay leader had
leaped many times in the air, but Mowgli dared not risk a false
blow. At last, made furious beyond his natural strength,
he bounded up seven or eight feet clear of the ground.
Then Mowgli's hand shot out like the head of a tree-snake,
and gripped him by the scruff of his neck, and the branch shook
with the jar as his weight fell back, almost wrenching Mowgli to
the ground. But he never loosed his grip, and inch by inch he
hauled the beast, hanging like a drowned jackal, up on the
branch. With his left hand he reached for his knife and cut off
the red, bushy tail, flinging the dhole back to earth again.
That was all he needed. The Pack would not go forward on
Won-tolla's trail now till they had killed Mowgli or Mowgli had
killed them. He saw them settle down in circles with a quiver of
the haunches that meant they were going to stay, and so he
climbed to a higher crotch, settled his back comfortably,
and went to sleep.

After three or four hours he waked and counted the Pack.
They were all there, silent, husky, and dry, with eyes of steel.
The sun was beginning to sink. In half an hour the Little People
of the Rocks would be ending their labours, and, as you know,
the dhole does not fight best in the twilight.

"I did not need such faithful watchers," he said politely,
standing up on a branch, "but I will remember this. Ye be true
dholes, but to my thinking over much of one kind. For that
reason I do not give the big lizard-eater his tail again.
Art thou not pleased, Red Dog?"

"I myself will tear out thy stomach!" yelled the leader,
scratching at the foot of the tree.

"Nay, but consider, wise rat of the Dekkan. There will now be
many litters of little tailless red dogs, yea, with raw red
stumps that sting when the sand is hot. Go home, Red Dog,
and cry that an ape has done this. Ye will not go? Come, then,
with me, and I will make you very wise!"

He moved, Bandar-log fashion, into the next tree, and so on into
the next and the next, the Pack following with lifted hungry
heads. Now and then he would pretend to fall, and the Pack would
tumble one over the other in their haste to be at the death.
It was a curious sight--the boy with the knife that shone in the
low sunlight as it sifted through the upper branches, and the
silent Pack with their red coats all aflame, huddling and
following below. When he came to the last tree he took the
garlic and rubbed himself all over carefully, and the dholes
yelled with scorn. "Ape with a wolf's tongue, dost thou think to
cover thy scent?" they said. "We follow to the death."

"Take thy tail," said Mowgli, flinging it back along the course
he had taken. The Pack instinctively rushed after it.
"And follow now--to the death."

He had slipped down the tree-trunk, and headed like the wind
in bare feet for the Bee Rocks, before the dholes saw what
he would do.

They gave one deep howl, and settled down to the long, lobbing
canter that can at the last run down anything that runs.
Mowgli knew their pack-pace to be much slower than that of the
wolves, or he would never have risked a two-mile run in full
sight. They were sure that the boy was theirs at last, and he
was sure that he held them to play with as he pleased. All his
trouble was to keep them sufficiently hot behind him to prevent
their turning off too soon. He ran cleanly, evenly, and
springily; the tailless leader not five yards behind him;
and the Pack tailing out over perhaps a quarter of a mile of
ground, crazy and blind with the rage of slaughter. So he kept
his distance by ear, reserving his last effort for the rush
across the Bee Rocks.

The Little People had gone to sleep in the early twilight,
for it was not the season of late blossoming flowers; but as
Mowgli's first foot- falls rang hollow on the hollow ground he
heard a sound as though all the earth were humming. Then he ran
as he had never run in his life before, spurned aside one--two--
three of the piles of stones into the dark, sweet-smelling
gullies; heard a roar like the roar of the sea in a cave;
saw with the tail of his eye the air grow dark behind him;
saw the current of the Waingunga far below, and a flat, diamond-
shaped head in the water; leaped outward with all his strength,
the tailless dhole snapping at his shoulder in mid-air, and
dropped feet first to the safety of the river, breathless and
triumphant. There was not a sting upon him, for the smell of the
garlic had checked the Little People for just the few seconds
that he was among them. When he rose Kaa's coils were steadying
him and things were bounding over the edge of the cliff--great
lumps, it seemed, of clustered bees falling like plummets;
but before any lump touched water the bees flew upward and the
body of a dhole whirled down-stream. Overhead they could hear
furious short yells that were drowned in a roar like breakers--
the roar of the wings of the Little People of the Rocks. Some of
the dholes, too, had fallen into the gullies that communicated
with the underground caves, and there choked and fought and
snapped among the tumbled honeycombs, and at last, borne up,
even when they were dead, on the heaving waves of bees beneath
them, shot out of some hole in the river-face, to roll over on
the black rubbish-heaps. There were dholes who had leaped short
into the trees on the cliffs, and the bees blotted out their
shapes; but the greater number of them, maddened by the stings,
had flung themselves into the river; and, as Kaa said, the
Waingunga was hungry water.

Kaa held Mowgli fast till the boy had recovered his breath.

"We may not stay here," he said. "The Little People are roused
indeed. Come!"

Swimming low and diving as often as he could, Mowgli went down
the river, knife in hand.

"Slowly, slowly," said Kaa. "One tooth does not kill a hundred
unless it be a cobra's, and many of the dholes took water
swiftly when they saw the Little People rise."

"The more work for my knife, then. Phai! How the, Little People
follow!" Mowgli sank again. The face of the water was blanketed
with wild bees, buzzing sullenly and stinging all they found.

"Nothing was ever yet lost by silence," said Kaa--no sting could
penetrate his scales--"and thou hast all the long night for the
hunting. Hear them howl!"

Nearly half the pack had seen the trap their fellows rushed
into, and turning sharp aside had flung themselves into the
water where the gorge broke down in steep banks. Their cries of
rage and their threats against the "tree-ape" who had brought
them to their shame mixed with the yells and growls of those who
had been punished by the Little People. To remain ashore was
death, and every dhole knew it. Their pack was swept along the
current, down to the deep eddies of the Peace Pool, but even
there the angry Little People followed and forced them to the
water again. Mowgli could hear the voice of the tailless leader
bidding his people hold on and kill out every wolf in Seeonee.
But he did not waste his time in listening.

"One kills in the dark behind us!" snapped a dhole. "Here is
tainted water!"

Mowgli had dived forward like an otter, twitched a struggling
dhole under water before he could open his mouth, and dark rings
rose as the body plopped up, turning on its side. The dholes
tried to turn, but the current prevented them, and the Little
People darted at the heads and ears, and they could hear the
challenge of the Seeonee Pack growing louder and deeper in the
gathering darkness. Again Mowgli dived, and again a dhole went
under, and rose dead, and again the clamour broke out at the
rear of the pack; some howling that it was best to go ashore,
others calling on their leader to lead them back to the Dekkan,
and others bidding Mowgli show himself and he killed.

"They come to the fight with two stomachs and several voices,"
said Kaa. "The rest is with thy brethren below yonder, The
Little People go back to sleep. They have chased us far. Now I,
too, turn back, for I am not of one skin with any wolf.
Good hunting, Little Brother, and remember the dhole bites low."

A wolf came running along the bank on three legs, leaping up and
down, laying his head sideways close to the ground, hunching his
back, and breaking high into the air, as though he were playing
with his cubs. It was Won-tolla, the Outlier, and he said never
a word, but continued his horrible sport beside the dholes.
They had been long in the water now, and were swimming wearily,
their coats drenched and heavy, their bushy tails dragging like
sponges, so tired and shaken that they, too, were silent,
watching the pair of blazing eyes that moved abreast.

"This is no good hunting," said one, panting.

"Good hunting!" said Mowgli, as he rose boldly at the brute's
side, and sent the long knife home behind the shoulder, pushing
hard to avoid his dying snap.

"Art thou there, Man-cub?" said Won-tolla across the water.

"Ask of the dead, Outlier," Mowgli replied. "Have none come
down-stream? I have filled these dogs' mouths with dirt;
I have tricked them in the broad daylight, and their leader
lacks his tail, but here be some few for thee still.
Whither shall I drive them?"

"I will wait," said Won-tolla. "The night is before me."

Nearer and nearer came the bay of the Seeonee wolves. "For the
Pack, for the Full Pack it is met!" and a bend in the river
drove the dholes forward among the sands and shoals opposite
the Lairs.

Then they saw their mistake. They should have landed half a mile
higher up, and rushed the wolves on dry ground. Now it was too
late. The bank was lined with burning eyes, and except for the
horrible pheeal that had never stopped since sundown, there was
no sound in the Jungle. It seemed as though Won-tolla were
fawning on them to come ashore; and "Turn and take hold!" said
the leader of the dholes. The entire Pack flung themselves at
the shore, threshing and squattering through the shoal water,
till the face of the Waingunga was all white and torn, and the
great ripples went from side to side, like bow-waves from a
boat. Mowgli followed the rush, stabbing and slicing as the
dholes, huddled together, rushed up the river-beach in one wave.

Then the long fight began, heaving and straining and splitting
and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red,
wet sands, and over and between the tangled tree-roots,
and through and among the bushes, and in and out of the grass
clumps; for even now the dholes were two to one. But they met
wolves fighting for all that made the Pack, and not only the
short, high, deep-chested, white-tusked hunters of the Pack,
but the anxious-eyed lahinis--the she-wolves of the lair, as the
saying is--fighting for their litters, with here and there a
yearling wolf, his first coat still half woolly, tugging and
grappling by their sides. A wolf, you must know, flies at the
throat or snaps at the flank, while a dhole, by preference,
bites at the belly; so when the dholes were struggling out of
the water and had to raise their heads, the odds were with the
wolves. On dry land the wolves suffered; but in the water or
ashore, Mowgli's knife came and went without ceasing. The Four
had worried their way to his side. Gray Brother, crouched
between the boy's knees, was protecting his stomach, while the
others guarded his back and either side, or stood over him when
the shock of a leaping, yelling dhole who had thrown himself
full on the steady blade bore him down. For the rest, it was one
tangled confusion--a locked and swaying mob that moved from
right to left and from left to right along the bank; and also
ground round and round slowly on its own centre. Here would be a
heaving mound, like a water-blister in a whirlpool, which would
break like a water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled
dogs, each striving to get back to the centre; here would be a
single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, laboriously
dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling
cub would he held up by the pressure round him, though he had
been killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage,
rolled over and over, snapping, and passing on; and in the
middle of the thickest press, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole,
forgetting everything else, would be manoeuvring for first hold
till they were whirled away by a rush of furious fighters.
Once Mowgli passed Akela, a dhole on either flank, and his all
but toothless jaws closed over the loins of a third; and once he
saw Phao, his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging the
unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could finish him.
But the bulk of the fight was blind flurry and smother in the
dark; hit, trip, and tumble, yelp, groan, and worry-worry-worry,
round him and behind him and above him. As the night wore on,
the quick, giddy-go-round motion increased. The dholes were
cowed and afraid to attack the stronger wolves, but did not yet
dare to run away. Mowgli felt that the end was coming soon, and
contented himself with striking merely to cripple. The yearlings
were growing bolder; there was time now and again to breathe,
and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker of the knife
would sometimes turn a dog aside.

"The meat is very near the bone," Gray Brother yelled. He was
bleeding from a score of flesh-wounds.

"But the bone is yet to he cracked," said Mowgli. "Eowawa!
THUS do we do in the Jungle!" The red blade ran like a flame
along the side of a dhole whose hind-quarters were hidden by
the weight of a clinging wolf.

"My kill!" snorted the wolf through his wrinkled nostrils.
"Leave him to me."

"Is thy stomach still empty, Outlier?" said Mowgli. Won-tolla
was fearfully punished, but his grip had paralysed the dhole,
who could not turn round and reach him.

"By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli, with a bitter laugh,
"it is the tailless one!" And indeed it was the big bay-
coloured leader.

"It is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis," Mowgli went on
philosophically, wiping the blood out of his eyes, "unless one
has also killed the Outlier; and it is in my stomach that this
Won-tolla kills thee."

A dhole leaped to his leader's aid; but before his teeth had
found Won-tolla's flank, Mowgli's knife was in his throat,
and Gray Brother took what was left.

"And thus do we do in the Jungle," said Mowgli.

Won-tolla said not a word, only his jaws were closing and
closing on the backbone as his life ebbed. The dhole shuddered,
his head dropped, and he lay still, and Won-tolla dropped
above him.

"Huh! The Blood Debt is paid," said Mowgli. "Sing the song,
Won-tolla."

"He hunts no more," said Gray Brother; "and Akela, too, is
silent this long time."

"The bone is cracked!" thundered Phao, son of Phaona. "They go!
Kill, kill out, O hunters of the Free People!"

Dhole after dhole was slinking away from those dark and bloody
sands to the river, to the thick Jungle, up-stream or down-
stream as he saw the road clear.

"The debt! The debt!" shouted Mowgli. "Pay the debt! They have
slain the Lone Wolf! Let not a dog go!"

He was flying to the river, knife in hand, to check any dhole
who dared to take water, when, from under a mound of nine dead,
rose Akela's head and fore-quarters, and Mowgli dropped on his
knees beside the Lone Wolf.

"Said I not it would be my last fight?" Akela gasped. "It is
good hunting. And thou, Little Brother?"

"I live, having killed many."

"Even so. I die, and I would--I would die by thee,
Little Brother."

Mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his knees, and put his
arms round the torn neck.

"It is long since the old days of Shere Khan, and a Man-cub that
rolled naked in the dust."

"Nay, nay, I am a wolf. I am of one skin with the Free People,"
Mowgli cried. "It is no will of mine that I am a man."

"Thou art a man, Little Brother, wolfling of my watching.
Thou art a man, or else the Pack had fled before the dhole.
My life I owe to thee, and to-day thou hast saved the Pack even
as once I saved thee. Hast thou forgotten? All debts are paid
now. Go to thine own people. I tell thee again, eye of my eye,
this hunting is ended. Go to thine own people."

"I will never go. I will hunt alone in the Jungle. I have
said it."

"After the summer come the Rains, and after the Rains comes the
spring. Go back before thou art driven."

"Who will drive me?"

"Mowgli will drive Mowgli. Go back to thy people. Go to Man."

"When Mowgli drives Mowgli I will go," Mowgli answered.

"There is no more to say," said Akela. "Little Brother,
canst thou raise me to my feet? I also was a leader of the
Free People."

Very carefully and gently Mowgli lifted the bodies aside,
and raised Akela to his feet, both arms round him, and the Lone
Wolf drew a long breath, and began the Death Song that a leader
of the Pack should sing when he dies. It gathered strength as he
went on, lifting and lifting, and ringing far across the river,
till it came to the last "Good hunting!" and Akela shook himself
clear of Mowgli for an instant, and, leaping into the air,
fell backward dead upon his last and most terrible kill.

Mowgli sat with his head on his knees, careless of anything
else, while the remnant of the flying dholes were being
overtaken and run down by the merciless lahinis. Little by
little the cries died away, and the wolves returned limping,
as their wounds stiffened, to take stock of the losses.
Fifteen of the Pack, as well as half a dozen lahinis, lay dead
by the river, and of the others not one was unmarked. And Mowgli
sat through it all till the cold daybreak, when Phao's wet,
red muzzle was dropped in his hand, and Mowgli drew back to show
the gaunt body of Akela.

"Good hunting!" said Phao, as though Akela were still alive,
and then over his bitten shoulder to the others: "Howl, dogs!
A Wolf has died to-night!"

But of all the Pack of two hundred fighting dholes, whose boast
was that all jungles were their Jungle, and that no living thing
could stand before them, not one returned to the Dekkan to carry
that word.


CHIL'S SONG

[This is the song that Chil sang as the kites dropped down one
after another to the river-bed, when the great fight was
finished. Chil is good friends with everybody, but he is a
cold-blooded kind of creature at heart, because he knows that
almost everybody in the Jungle comes to him in the long-run.]

These were my companions going forth by night--
(For Chil! Look you, for Chil!)
Now come I to whistle them the ending of the fight.
(Chil! Vanguards of Chil!}
Word they gave me overhead of quarry newly slain,
Word I gave them underfoot of buck upon the plain.
Here's an end of every trail--they shall not speak again!

They that called the hunting-cry--they that followed fast--
(For Chil! Look you, for Chil!)
They that bade the sambhur wheel, or pinned him as he passed--
(Chil! Vanguards of Chil!)
They that lagged behind the scent--they that ran before,
They that shunned the level horn--they that overbore.
Here's an end of every trail--they shall not follow more.
These were my companions. Pity 'twas they died!
(For Chil! Look you, for Chil!)
Now come I to comfort them that knew them in their pride.
(Chil! Vanguards of Chil!)
Tattered flank and sunken eye, open mouth and red,
Locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their dead.
Here's an end of every trail--and here my hosts are fed.




THE SPRING RUNNING

Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle!
He that was our Brother goes away.
Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,--
Answer, who shall turn him--who shall stay?

Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle:
He that was our Brother sorrows sore!
Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!)
To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more.

The second year after the great fight with Red Dog and the death
of Akela, Mowgli must have been nearly seventeen years old.
He looked older, for hard exercise, the best of good eating,
and baths whenever he felt in the least hot or dusty, had given
him strength and growth far beyond his age. He could swing by
one hand from a top branch for half an hour at a time, when he
had occasion to look along the tree-roads. He could stop a young
buck in mid-gallop and throw him sideways by the head. He could
even jerk over the big, blue wild boars that lived in the
Marshes of the North. The Jungle People who used to fear him
for his wits feared him now for his strength, and when he
moved quietly on his own affairs the mere whisper of his coming
cleared the wood-paths. And yet the look in his eyes was always
gentle. Even when he fought, his eyes never blazed as Bagheera's
did. They only grew more and more interested and excited;
and that was one of the things that Bagheera himself did
not understand.

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