Book: The Second Jungle Book

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When the year turned, the roofs of the huts were all little
squares of purest gold, for it was on the roofs that they
laid out their cobs of the corn to dry. Hiving and harvest,
rice-sowing and husking, passed before his eyes, all embroidered
down there on the many-sided plots of fields, and he thought of
them all, and wondered what they all led to at the long last.

Even in populated India a man cannot a day sit still before the
wild things run over him as though he were a rock; and in that
wilderness very soon the wild things, who knew Kali's Shrine
well, came back to look at the intruder. The langurs, the big
gray-whiskered monkeys of the Himalayas, were, naturally, the
first, for they are alive with curiosity; and when they had
upset the begging-bowl, and rolled it round the floor, and
tried their teeth on the brass-handled crutch, and made faces
at the antelope skin, they decided that the human being who
sat so still was harmless. At evening, they would leap down
from the pines, and beg with their hands for things to eat,
and then swing off in graceful curves. They liked the warmth
of the fire, too, and huddled round it till Purun Bhagat had
to push them aside to throw on more fuel; and in the morning,
as often as not, he would find a furry ape sharing his blanket.
All day long, one or other of the tribe would sit by his side,
staring out at the snows, crooning and looking unspeakably wise
and sorrowful.

After the monkeys came the barasingh, that big deer which is
like our red deer, but stronger. He wished to rub off the velvet
of his horns against the cold stones of Kali's statue, and
stamped his feet when he saw the man at the shrine. But Purun
Bhagat never moved, and, little by little, the royal stag edged
up and nuzzled his shoulder. Purun Bhagat slid one cool hand
along the hot antlers, and the touch soothed the fretted beast,
who bowed his head, and Purun Bhagat very softly rubbed and
ravelled off the velvet. Afterward, the barasingh brought his
doe and fawn--gentle things that mumbled on the holy man's
blanket--or would come alone at night, his eyes green in the
fire-flicker, to take his share of fresh walnuts. At last, the
musk-deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the deerlets,
came, too, her big rabbity ears erect; even brindled, silent
mushick-nabha must needs find out what the light in the shrine
meant, and drop out her moose-like nose into Purun Bhagat's lap,
coming and going with the shadows of the fire. Purun Bhagat
called them all "my brothers," and his low call of "Bhai! Bhai!"
would draw them from the forest at noon if they were within ear
shot. The Himalayan black bear, moody and suspicious--Sona, who
has the V-shaped white mark under his chin--passed that way more
than once; and since the Bhagat showed no fear, Sona showed no
anger, but watched him, and came closer, and begged a share of
the caresses, and a dole of bread or wild berries. Often, in the
still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb to the very crest of
the pass to watch the red day walking along the peaks of the
snows, he would find Sona shuffling and grunting at his heels,
thrusting, a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing
it away with a WHOOF of impatience; or his early steps would
wake Sona where he lay curled up, and the great brute, rising
erect, would think to fight, till he heard the Bhagat's voice
and knew his best friend.

Nearly all hermits and holy men who live apart from the big
cities have the reputation of being able to work miracles with
the wild things, but all the miracle lies in keeping still, in
never making a hasty movement, and, for a long time, at least,
in never looking directly at a visitor. The villagers saw the
outline of the barasingh stalking like a shadow through the
dark forest behind the shrine; saw the minaul, the Himalayan
pheasant, blazing in her best colours before Kali's statue;
and the langurs on their haunches, inside, playing with the
walnut shells. Some of the children, too, had heard Sona singing
to himself, bear-fashion, behind the fallen rocks, and the
Bhagat's reputation as miracle-worker stood firm.

Yet nothing was farther from his mind than miracles. He believed
that all things were one big Miracle, and when a man knows that
much he knows something to go upon. He knew for a certainty that
there was nothing great and nothing little in this world: and
day and night he strove to think out his way into the heart of
things, back to the place whence his soul had come.

So thinking, his untrimmed hair fell down about his shoulders,
the stone slab at the side of the antelope skin was dented into
a little hole by the foot of his brass-handled crutch, and the
place between the tree-trunks, where the begging-bowl rested day
after day, sunk and wore into a hollow almost as smooth as the
brown shell itself; and each beast knew his exact place at the
fire. The fields changed their colours with the seasons; the
threshing-floors filled and emptied, and filled again and again;
and again and again, when winter came, the langurs frisked among
the branches feathered with light snow, till the mother-monkeys
brought their sad-eyed little babies up from the warmer valleys
with the spring. There were few changes in the village. The
priest was older, and many of the little children who used to
come with the begging-dish sent their own children now; and when
you asked of the villagers how long their holy man had lived in
Kali's Shrine at the head of the pass, they answered, "Always."

Then came such summer rains as had not been known in the Hills
for many seasons. Through three good months the valley was
wrapped in cloud and soaking mist--steady, unrelenting downfall,
breaking off into thunder-shower after thunder-shower. Kali's
Shrine stood above the clouds, for the most part, and there was
a whole month in which the Bhagat never caught a glimpse of his
village. It was packed away under a white floor of cloud that
swayed and shifted and rolled on itself and bulged upward, but
never broke from its piers--the streaming flanks of the valley.

All that time he heard nothing but the sound of a million little
waters, overhead from the trees, and underfoot along the ground,
soaking through the pine-needles, dripping from the tongues of
draggled fern, and spouting in newly-torn muddy channels down
the slopes. Then the sun came out, and drew forth the good
incense of the deodars and the rhododendrons, and that far-off,
clean smell which the Hill people call "the smell of the snows."
The hot sunshine lasted for a week, and then the rains gathered
together for their last downpour, and the water fell in sheets
that flayed off the skin of the ground and leaped back in mud.
Purun Bhagat heaped his fire high that night, for he was sure
his brothers would need warmth; but never a beast came to the
shrine, though he called and called till he dropped asleep,
wondering what had happened in the woods.

It was in the black heart of the night, the rain drumming like a
thousand drums, that he was roused by a plucking at his blanket,
and, stretching out, felt the little hand of a langur. "It is
better here than in the trees," he said sleepily, loosening a
fold of blanket; "take it and be warm." The monkey caught his
hand and pulled hard. "Is it food, then?" said Purun Bhagat.
"Wait awhile, and I will prepare some." As he kneeled to throw
fuel on the fire the langur ran to the door of the shrine,
crooned and ran back again, plucking at the man's knee.

"What is it? What is thy trouble, Brother?" said Purun Bhagat,
for the langur's eyes were full of things that he could not
tell. "Unless one of thy caste be in a trap--and none set traps
here--I will not go into that weather. Look, Brother, even the
barasingh comes for shelter!"

The deer's antlers clashed as he strode into the shrine, clashed
against the grinning statue of Kali. He lowered them in Purun
Bhagat's direction and stamped uneasily, hissing through his
half-shut nostrils.

"Hai! Hai! Hai!" said the Bhagat, snapping his fingers, "Is THIS
payment for a night's lodging?" But the deer pushed him toward
the door, and as he did so Purun Bhagat heard the sound of
something opening with a sigh, and saw two slabs of the floor
draw away from each other, while the sticky earth below smacked
its lips.

"Now I see," said Purun Bhagat. "No blame to my brothers that
they did not sit by the fire to-night. The mountain is falling.
And yet-- why should I go?" His eye fell on the empty begging-
bowl, and his face changed. "They have given me good food daily
since--since I came, and, if I am not swift, to-morrow there
will not be one mouth in the valley. Indeed, I must go and warn
them below. Back there, Brother! Let me get to the fire."

The barasingh backed unwillingly as Purun Bhagat drove a pine
torch deep into the flame, twirling it till it was well lit.
"Ah! ye came to warn me," he said, rising. "Better than that we
shall do; better than that. Out, now, and lend me thy neck,
Brother, for I have but two feet."

He clutched the bristling withers of the barasingh with his
right hand, held the torch away with his left, and stepped out
of the shrine into the desperate night. There was no breath of
wind, but the rain nearly drowned the flare as the great deer
hurried down the slope, sliding on his haunches. As soon as they
were clear of the forest more of the Bhagat's brothers joined
them. He heard, though he could not see, the langurs pressing
about him, and behind them the uhh! uhh! of Sona. The rain
matted his long white hair into ropes; the water splashed
beneath his bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his frail
old body, but he stepped down steadily, leaning against the
barasingh. He was no longer a holy man, but Sir Purun Dass,
K.C.I.E., Prime Minister of no small State, a man accustomed
to command, going out to save life. Down the steep, plashy path
they poured all together, the Bhagat and his brothers, down and
down till the deer's feet clicked and stumbled on the wall of a
threshing-floor, and he snorted because he smelt Man. Now they
were at the head of the one crooked village street, and the
Bhagat beat with his crutch on the barred windows of the
blacksmith's house, as his torch blazed up in the shelter of
the eaves. "Up and out!" cried Purun Bhagat; and he did not
know his own voice, for it was years since he had spoken aloud
to a man. "The hill falls! The hill is falling! Up and out, oh,
you within!"

"It is our Bhagat," said the blacksmith's wife. He stands among
his beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call."

It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the
narrow way, surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona
puffed impatiently.

The people hurried into the street--they were no more than
seventy souls all told--and in the glare of the torches they
saw their Bhagat holding back the terrified barasingh, while
the monkeys plucked piteously at his skirts, and Sona sat on
his haunches and roared.

"Across the valley and up the next hill!" shouted Purun Bhagat.
"Leave none behind! We follow!"

Then the people ran as only Hill folk can run, for they knew
that in a landslip you must climb for the highest ground across
the valley. They fled, splashing through the little river at
the bottom, and panted up the terraced fields on the far side,
while the Bhagat and his brethren followed. Up and up the
opposite mountain they climbed, calling to each other by name--
the roll-call of the village--and at their heels toiled the big
barasingh, weighted by the failing strength of Purun Bhagat.
At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pinewood, five
hundred feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him
of the coming slide, told him he would he safe here.

Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the
rain and that fierce climb were killing him; but first he called
to the scattered torches ahead, "Stay and count your numbers";
then, whispering to the deer as he saw the lights gather in a
cluster: "Stay with me, Brother. Stay--till--I--go!"

There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter
that grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of
hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was hit
in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady,
deep, and true as the deep C of the organ drowned everything for
perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the pines quivered
to it. It died away, and the sound of the rain falling on miles
of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled drum of water on
soft earth. That told its own tale.

Never a villager--not even the priest--was bold enough to speak
to the Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the
pines and waited till the day. When it came they looked across
the valley and saw that what had been forest, and terraced
field, and track-threaded grazing-ground was one raw, red,
fan-shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down on the scarp.
That red ran high up the hill of their refuge, damming back the
little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-coloured
lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine
itself, and the forest behind, there was no trace. For one mile
in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side
had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.

And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray
before their Bhagat. They saw the barasingh standing over him,
who fled when they came near, and they heard the langurs wailing
in the branches, and Sona moaning up the hill; but their Bhagat
was dead, sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his
crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the north-east.

The priest said: "Behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this
very attitude must all Sunnyasis be buried! Therefore where he
now is we will build the temple to our holy man."

They built the temple before a year was ended--a little stone-
and-earth shrine--and they called the hill the Bhagat's hill,
and they worship there with lights and flowers and offerings to
this day. But they do not know that the saint of their worship
is the late Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., D.C.L., Ph.D., etc., once
Prime Minister of the progressive and enlightened State of
Mohiniwala, and honorary or corresponding member of more learned
and scientific societies than will ever do any good in this
world or the next.



A SONG OF KABIR

Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!
Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!
He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!

Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet,
The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat;
His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd--
He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed!

He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear
(There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir);
The Red Mist of Doing has thinned to a cloud--
He has taken the Path for bairagi avowed!

To learn and discern of his brother the clod,
Of his brother the brute, and his brother the God.
He has gone from the council and put on the shroud
("Can ye hear?" saith Kabir), a bairagi avowed!



LETTING IN THE JUNGLE

Veil them, cover them, wall them round--
Blossom, and creeper, and weed--
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
The smell and the touch of the breed!

Fat black ash by the altar-stone,
Here is the white-foot rain,
And the does bring forth in the fields unsown,
And none shall affright them again;
And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown
And none shall inhabit again!


You will remember that after Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan's hide
to the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee
Pack that henceforward he would hunt in the Jungle alone; and
the four children of Mother and Father Wolf said that they would
hunt with him. But it is not easy to change one's life all in
a minute--particularly in the Jungle. The first thing Mowgli
did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was to go to the
home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told Mother
Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his
adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker
up and down the blade of his skinning-knife,--the same he had
skinned Shere Khan with,--they said he had learned something.
Then Akela and Gray Brother had to explain their share of the
great buffalo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the
hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched himself all
over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli had managed
his war.

It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep,
and from time to time, during the talk, Mother Wolf would throw
up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind
brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.

"But for Akela and Gray Brother here," Mowgli said, at the end,
"I could have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst
seen the black herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through
the gates when the Man-Pack flung stones at me!"

"I am glad I did not see that last," said Mother Wolf stiffly.
"It is not MY custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro
like jackals. _I_ would have taken a price from the Man-Pack;
but I would have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes,
I would have spared her alone."

"Peace, peace, Raksha!" said Father Wolf, lazily. "Our Frog has
come back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet;
and what is a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Men alone.
"Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: "Leave Men alone."

Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf's side, smiled contentedly, and
said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or
smell Man again.

"But what," said Akela, cocking one ear--"but what if men do not
leave thee alone, Little Brother?"

"We be FIVE," said Gray Brother, looking round at the company,
and snapping his jaws on the last word.

"We also might attend to that hunting," said Bagheera, with a
little switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. "But why
think of men now, Akela?"

"For this reason," the Lone Wolf answered: "when that yellow
chief's hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our
trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and
lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one should follow us.
But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it
again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung
up above me. Said Mang, "The village of the Man-Pack, where they
cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest."

"It was a big stone that I threw," chuckled Mowgli, who had often
amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's
nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets
caught him.

"I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower
blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it
carrying guns. Now _I_ know, for I have good cause,"--Akela
looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,--"that
men do not carry guns for pleasure. Presently, Little Brother,
a man with a gun follows our trail--if, indeed, he be not
already on it."

"But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they
need?" said Mowgli angrily.

"Thou art a man, Little Brother," Akela returned. "It is not
for US, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do,
or why."

He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut
deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an
average human eye could follow but Akela was a wolf; and even a
dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor,
can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his
flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on.

"Another time," Mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its
sheath, "speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in TWO breaths--
not one."

"Phff! That is a sharp tooth," said Akela, snuffing at the
blade's cut in the earth, "but living with the Man-Pack has
spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed a buck
while thou wast striking."

Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he
could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body.
Gray Brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little
to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right,
while Akela bounded fifty yards up wind, and, half-crouching,
stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously. He could smell things
as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the
hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose; and his three
months in the smoky village had set him back sadly. However,
he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect
to catch the upper scent, which, though it is the faintest,
is the truest.

"Man!" Akela growled, dropping on his haunches.

"Buldeo!" said Mowgli, sitting down. "He follows our trail, and
yonder is the sunlight on his gun. Look!"

It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a
second, on the brass clamps of the old Tower musket, but nothing
in the Jungle winks with just that flash, except when the clouds
race over the sky. Then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or
even a highly-polished leaf will flash like a heliograph. But
that day was cloudless and still.

"I knew men would follow," said Akela triumphantly. "Not for
nothing have I led the Pack."

The four cubs said nothing, but ran down hill on their
bellies, melting into the thorn and under-brush as a mole
melts into a lawn.

"Where go ye, and without word?" Mowgli called.

"H'sh! We roll his skull here before mid-day!" Gray Brother
answered.

"Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat Man!" Mowgli shrieked.

"Who was a wolf but now? Who drove the knife at me for thinking
he might be Man?" said Akela, as the four wolves turned back
sullenly and dropped to heel.

"Am I to give reason for all I choose to, do?" said Mowgli
furiously.

"That is Man! There speaks Man!" Bagheera muttered under his
whiskers. "Even so did men talk round the King's cages at
Oodeypore. We of the Jungle know that Man is wisest of all.
If we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he
is most foolish." Raising his voice, he added, "The Man-cub is
right in this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one, unless we know
what the others will do, is bad hunting. Come, let us see what
this Man means toward us."

"We will not come," Gray Brother growled. "Hunt alone, Little
Brother. WE know our own minds. The skull would have been ready
to bring by now."

Mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends,
his chest heaving and his eyes full of tears. He strode forward
to the wolves, and, dropping on one knee, said: "Do I not know
my mind? Look at me!"

They looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called
them back again and again, till their hair stood up all over
their bodies, and they trembled in every limb, while Mowgli
stared and stared.

"Now," said he, "of us five, which is leader?"

"Thou art leader, Little Brother," said Gray Brother, and he
licked Mowgli's foot.

"Follow, then," said Mowgli, and the four followed at his heels
with their tails between their legs.

"This comes of living with the Man-Pack," said Bagheera,
slipping down after them. "There is more in the Jungle now
than Jungle Law, Baloo."

The old bear said nothing, but he thought many things.

Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jungle, at right
angles to Buldeo's path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw
the old man, his musket on his shoulder, running up the trail
of overnight at a dog-trot.

You will remember that Mowgli had left the village with the
heavy weight of Shere Khan's raw hide on his shoulders, while
Akela and Gray Brother trotted behind, so that the triple trail
was very clearly marked. Presently Buldeo came to where Akela,
as you know, had gone back and mixed it all up. Then he sat
down, and coughed and grunted, and made little casts round and
about into the Jungle to pick it up again, and, all the time he
could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him.
No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be
heard; and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very
clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old
man as a school of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and
as they ringed him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech
began below the lowest end of the scale that untrained human
beings can hear. [The other end is bounded by the high squeak of
Mang, the Bat, which very many people cannot catch at all. From
that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.]

"This is better than any kill," said Gray Brother, as Buldeo
stooped and peered and puffed. "He looks like a lost pig in
the Jungles by the river. What does he say?" Buldeo was
muttering savagely.

Mowgli translated. "He says that packs of wolves must have
danced round me. He says that he never saw such a trail in
his life. He says he is tired."

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