Book: The Second Jungle Book

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"And thy Man-Pack in the village did not stir till the sun was
high this morning. Then they ate their food and ran back quickly
to their houses."

"Did they, by chance, see thee?"

"It may have been. I was rolling in the dust before the gate at
dawn, and I may have made also some small song to myself. Now,
Little Brother, there is nothing more to do. Come hunting with me
and Baloo. He has new hives that he wishes to show, and we
all desire thee back again as of old. Take off that look which
makes even me afraid! The man and woman will not be put into the
Red Flower, and all goes well in the Jungle. Is it not true?
Let us forget the Man-Pack."

"They shall he forgotten in a little while. Where does Hathi
feed to-night?"

"Where he chooses. Who can answer for the Silent One? But why?
What is there Hathi can do which we cannot?"

"Bid him and his three sons come here to me."

"But, indeed, and truly, Little Brother, it is not--it is not
seemly to say 'Come,' and 'Go,' to Hathi. Remember, he is the
Master of the Jungle, and before the Man-Pack changed the look
on thy face, he taught thee the Master-words of the Jungle."

"That is all one. I have a Master-word for him now. Bid him come
to Mowgli, the Frog: and if he does not hear at first, bid him
come because of the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore."

"The Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore," Bagheera repeated two or
three times to make sure. "I go. Hathi can but be angry at the
worst, and I would give a moon's hunting to hear a Master-word
that compels the Silent One."

He went away, leaving Mowgli stabbing furiously with his
skinning-knife into the earth. Mowgli had never seen human blood
in his life before till he had seen, and--what meant much more
to him--smelled Messua's blood on the thongs that bound her.
And Messua had been kind to him, and, so far as he knew anything
about love, he loved Messua as completely as he hated the rest
of mankind. But deeply as he loathed them, their talk, their
cruelty, and their cowardice, not for anything the Jungle had to
offer could he bring himself to take a human life, and have that
terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. His plan was
simpler, but much more thorough; and he laughed to himself when
he thought that it was one of old Buldeo's tales told under the
peepul-tree in the evening that had put the idea into his head.

"It WAS a Master-word," Bagheera whispered in his ear.
"They were feeding by the river, and they obeyed as though
they were bullocks. Look where they come now!"

Hathi and his three sons had arrived, in their usual way,
without a sound. The mud of the river was still fresh on their
flanks, and Hathi was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a
young plantain-tree that he had gouged up with his tusks.
But every line in his vast body showed to Bagheera, who could
see things when he came across them, that it was not the Master
of the Jungle speaking to a Man-cub, but one who was afraid
coming before one who was not. His three sons rolled side by
side, behind their father.

Mowgli hardly lifted his head as Hathi gave him "Good hunting."
He kept him swinging and rocking, and shifting from one foot to
another, for a long time before he spoke; and when he opened his
mouth it was to Bagheera, not to the elephants.

"I will tell a tale that was told to me by the hunter ye hunted
to-day," said Mowgli. "It concerns an elephant, old and wise,
who fell into a trap, and the sharpened stake in the pit scarred
him from a little above his heel to the crest of his shoulder,
leaving a white mark." Mowgli threw out his hand, and as Hathi
wheeled the moonlight showed a long white scar on his slaty
side, as though he had been struck with a red-hot whip.
"Men came to take him from the trap," Mowgli continued, "but he
broke his ropes, for he was strong, and went away till his wound
was healed. Then came he, angry, by night to the fields of those
hunters. And I remember now that he had three sons. These things
happened many, many Rains ago, and very far away--among the
fields of Bhurtpore. What came to those fields at the next
reaping, Hathi?"

"They were reaped by me and by my three sons," said Hathi.

"And to the ploughing that follows the reaping?" said Mowgli.

"There was no ploughing," said Hathi.

"And to the men that live by the green crops on the ground?"
said Mowgli.

"They went away."

"And to the huts in which the men slept?" said Mowgli.

"We tore the roofs to pieces, and the Jungle swallowed up the
walls," said Hathi.

"And what more?" said Mowgli.

"As much good ground as I can walk over in two nights from the
east to the west, and from the north to the south as much as I
can walk over in three nights, the Jungle took. We let in the
Jungle upon five villages; and in those villages, and in their
lands, the grazing-ground and the soft crop-grounds, there is
not one man to-day who takes his food from the ground. That was
the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, which I and my three sons
did; and now I ask, Man-cub, how the news of it came to thee?"
said Hathi.

"A man told me, and now I see even Buldeo can speak truth.
It was well done, Hathi with the white mark; but the second time
it shall be done better, for the reason that there is a man to
direct. Thou knowest the village of the Man-Pack that cast me
out? They are idle, senseless, and cruel; they play with their
mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport.
When they are full-fed they would throw their own breed into the
Red Flower. This I have seen. It is not well that they should
live here any more. I hate them!"

"Kill, then," said the youngest of Hathi's three sons, picking
up a tuft of grass, dusting it against his fore-legs, and
throwing it away, while his little red eyes glanced furtively
from side to side.

"What good are white bones to me?" Mowgli answered angrily.
"Am I the cub of a wolf to play in the sun with a raw head?
I have killed Shere Khan, and his hide rots on the Council Rock;
but--but I do not know whither Shere Khan is gone, and my
stomach is still empty. Now I will take that which I can see
and touch. Let in the Jungle upon that village, Hathi!"

Bagheera shivered, and cowered down. He could understand, if the
worst came to the worst, a quick rush down the village street,
and a right and left blow into a crowd, or a crafty killing of
men as they ploughed in the twilight; but this scheme for
deliberately blotting out an entire village from the eyes of man
and beast frightened him. Now he saw why Mowgli had sent for
Hathi. No one but the long-lived elephant could plan and carry
through such a war.

"Let them run as the men ran from the fields of Bhurtpore,
till we have the rain-water for the only plough, and the noise
of the rain on the thick leaves for the pattering of their
spindles--till Bagheera and I lair in the house of the Brahmin,
and the buck drink at the tank behind the temple! Let in the
Jungle, Hathi!"

"But I--but we have no quarrel with them, and it needs the red
rage of great pain ere we tear down the places where men sleep,"
said Hathi doubtfully.

"Are ye the only eaters of grass in the Jungle? Drive in your
peoples. Let the deer and the pig and the nilghai look to it.
Ye need never show a hand's-breadth of hide till the fields are
naked. Let in the Jungle, Hathi!"

"There will be no killing? My tusks were red at the Sack of the
Fields of Bhurtpore, and I would not wake that smell again."

"Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean
earth. Let them go and find a fresh lair. They cannot stay here.
I have seen and smelled the blood of the woman that gave me
food--the woman whom they would have killed but for me. Only the
smell of the new grass on their door-steps can take away that
smell. It burns in my mouth. Let in the Jungle, Hathi!"

"Ah!" said Hathi. "So did the scar of the stake burn on my hide
till we watched the villages die under in the spring growth. Now
I see. Thy war shall he our war. We will let in the jungle!"

Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath--he was shaking all
over with rage and hate before the place where the elephants had
stood was empty, and Bagheera was looking at him with terror.

"By the Broken Lock that freed me!" said the Black Panther at
last. "Art THOU the naked thing I spoke for in the Pack when all
was young? Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes, speak
for me--speak for Baloo--speak for us all! We are cubs before
thee! Snapped twigs under foot! Fawns that have lost their doe!"

The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset Mowgli altogether,
and he laughed and caught his breath, and sobbed and laughed
again, till he had to jump into a pool to make himself stop.
Then he swam round and round, ducking in and out of the bars of
the moonlight like the frog, his namesake.

By this time Hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one
point of the compass, and were striding silently down the
valleys a mile away. They went on and on for two days' march--
that is to say, a long sixty miles--through the Jungle; and
every step they took, and every wave of their trunks, was known
and noted and talked over by Mang and Chil and the Monkey People
and all the birds. Then they began to feed, and fed quietly for
a week or so. Hathi and his sons are like Kaa, the Rock Python.
They never hurry till they have to.

At the end of that time--and none knew who had started it--a
rumour went through the Jungle that there was better food and
water to be found in such and such a valley. The pig--who, of
course, will go to the ends of the earth for a full meal--moved
first by companies, scuffling over the rocks, and the deer
followed, with the small wild foxes that live on the dead and
dying of the herds; and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved
parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps
came after the nilghai. The least little thing would have turned
the scattered, straggling droves that grazed and sauntered and
drank and grazed again; but whenever there was an alarm some one
would rise up and soothe them. At one time it would be Ikki the
Porcupine, full of news of good feed just a little farther on;
at another Mang would cry cheerily and flap down a glade to show
it was all empty; or Baloo, his mouth full of roots, would
shamble alongside a wavering line and half frighten, half romp
it clumsily back to the proper road. Very many creatures broke
back or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go
forward. At the end of another ten days or so the situation was
this. The deer and the pig and the nilghai were milling round
and round in a circle of eight or ten miles radius, while the
Eaters of Flesh skirmished round its edge. And the centre of
that circle was the village, and round the village the crops
were ripening, and in the crops sat men on what they call
machans--platforms like pigeon-perches, made of sticks at the
top of four poles--to scare away birds and other stealers.
Then the deer were coaxed no more. The Eaters of Flesh were
close behind them, and forced them forward and inward.

It was a dark night when Hathi and his three sons slipped down
from the Jungle, and broke off the poles of the machans with
their trunks; they fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom
falls, and the men that tumbled from them heard the deep
gurgling of the elephants in their ears. Then the vanguard of
the bewildered armies of the deer broke down and flooded into
the village grazing-grounds and the ploughed fields; and the
sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig came with them, and what the
deer left the pig spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of
wolves would shake the herds, and they would rush to and fro
desperately, treading down the young barley, and cutting flat
the banks of the irrigating channels. Before the dawn broke the
pressure on the outside of the circle gave way at one point.
The Eaters of Flesh had fallen back and left an open path to
the south, and drove upon drove of buck fled along it. Others,
who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal
next night.

But the work was practically done. When the villagers looked in
the morning they saw their crops were lost. And that meant death
if they did not get away, for they lived year in and year out as
near to starvation as the Jungle was near to them. When the
buffaloes were sent to graze the hungry brutes found that the
deer had cleared the grazing-grounds, and so wandered into the
Jungle and drifted off with their wild mates; and when twilight
fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the village lay
in their stables with their heads beaten in. Only Bagheera could
have given those strokes, and only Bagheera would have thought of
insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street.

The villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that
night, so Hathi and his three sons went gleaning among what was
left; and where Hathi gleans there is no need to follow. The men
decided to live on their stored seed-corn until the rains had
fallen, and then to take work as servants till they could catch
up with the lost year; but as the grain-dealer was thinking of
his well-filled crates of corn, and the prices he would levy at
the sale of it, Hathi's sharp tusks were picking out the corner
of his mud-house, and smashing open the big wicker chest, leeped
with cow-dung, where the precious stuff lay.

When that last loss was discovered, it was the Brahmin's turn to
speak. He had prayed to his own Gods without answer. It might
be, he said, that, unconsciously, the village had offended some
one of the Gods of the Jungle, for, beyond doubt, the Jungle was
against them. So they sent for the head-man of the nearest tribe
of wandering Gonds--little, wise, and very black hunters, living
in the deep Jungle, whose fathers came of the oldest race in
India--the aboriginal owners of the land. They made the Gond
welcome with what they had, and he stood on one leg, his bow in
his hand, and two or three poisoned arrows stuck through his
top-knot, looking half afraid and half contemptuously at the
anxious villagers and their ruined fields. They wished to know
whether his Gods--the Old Gods--were angry with them and what
sacrifices should be offered. The Gond said nothing, but picked
up a trail of the Karela, the vine that bears the bitter wild
gourd, and laced it to and fro across the temple door in the
face of the staring red Hindu image. Then he pushed with his
hand in the open air along the road to Khanhiwara, and went back
to his Jungle, and watched the Jungle People drifting through
it. He knew that when the Jungle moves only white men can hope
to turn it aside.

There was no need to ask his meaning. The wild gourd would grow
where they had worshipped their God, and the sooner they saved
themselves the better.

But it is hard to tear a village from its moorings. They stayed
on as long as any summer food was left to them, and they tried
to gather nuts in the Jungle, but shadows with glaring eyes
watched them, and rolled before them even at mid-day; and when
they ran back afraid to their walls, on the tree-trunks they had
passed not five minutes before the bark would be stripped and
chiselled with the stroke of some great taloned paw. The more
they kept to their village, the bolder grew the wild things that
gambolled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Waingunga.
They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the
empty byres that backed on to the Jungle; the wild pig trampled
them down, and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and threw
their elbows over the new-won ground, and the coarse grass
bristled behind the vines like the lances of a goblin army
following a retreat. The unmarried men ran away first, and
carried the news far and near that the village was doomed.
Who could fight, they said, against the Jungle, or the Gods of
the Jungle, when the very village cobra had left his hole in the
platform under the peepul-tree? So their little commerce with
the outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across the open
grew fewer and fainter. At last the nightly trumpetings of Hathi
and his three sons ceased to trouble them; for they had no more
to be robbed of. The crop on the ground and the seed in the
ground had been taken. The outlying fields were already losing
their shape, and it was time to throw themselves on the charity
of the English at Khanhiwara.

Native fashion, they delayed their departure from one day to
another till the first Rains caught them and the unmended roofs
let in a flood, and the grazing-ground stood ankle deep, and all
life came on with a rush after the heat of the summer. Then they
waded out--men, women, and children--through the blinding hot
rain of the morning, but turned naturally for one farewell look
at their homes.

They heard, as the last burdened family filed through the gate,
a crash of falling beams and thatch behind the walls. They saw a
shiny, snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering
sodden thatch. It disappeared, and there was another crash,
followed by a squeal. Hathi had been plucking off the roofs of
the huts as you pluck water-lilies, and a rebounding beam had
pricked him. He needed only this to unchain his full strength,
for of all things in the Jungle the wild elephant enraged is the
most wantonly destructive. He kicked backward at a mud wall that
crumbled at the stroke, and, crumbling, melted to yellow mud
under the torrent of rain. Then he wheeled and squealed, and
tore through the narrow streets, leaning against the huts right
and left, shivering the crazy doors, and crumpling up the caves;
while his three sons raged behind as they had raged at the Sack
of the Fields of Bhurtpore.

"The Jungle will swallow these shells," said a quiet voice in
the wreckage. "It is the outer wall that must lie down," and
Mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms,
leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo.

"All in good time," panted Hathi. "Oh, but my tusks were red
at Bhurtpore; To the outer wall, children! With the head!
Together! Now!"

The four pushed side by side; the outer wall bulged, split, and
fell, and the villagers, dumb with horror, saw the savage,
clay-streaked heads of the wreckers in the ragged gap. Then they
fled, houseless and foodless, down the valley, as their village,
shredded and tossed and trampled, melted behind them.

A month later the place was a dimpled mound, covered with soft,
green young stuff; and by the end of the Rains there was the
roaring jungle in full blast on the spot that had been under
plough not six months before.


MOWGLI'S SONG AGAINST PEOPLE

I will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines--
I will call in the Jungle to stamp out your lines!
The roofs shall fade before it,
The house-beams shall fall,
And the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall cover it all!

In the gates of these your councils my people shall sing,
In the doors of these your garners the Bat-folk shall cling;
And the snake shall be your watchman,
By a hearthstone unswept;
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall fruit where ye slept!

Ye shall not see my strikers; ye shall hear them and guess;
By night, before the moon-rise, I will send for my cess,
And the wolf shall he your herdsman
By a landmark removed,
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall seed where ye loved!

I will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host;
Ye shall glean behind my reapers, for the bread that is lost,
And the deer shall be your oxen
By a headland untilled,
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall leaf where ye build!

I have untied against you the club-footed vines,
I have sent in the Jungle to swamp out your lines.
The trees--the trees are on you!
The house-beams shall fall,
And the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall cover you all!




THE UNDERTAKERS

When ye say to Tabaqui, "My Brother!" when ye call the
Hyena to meat,
Ye may cry the Full Truce with Jacala--the Belly that runs
on four feet.
Jungle Law
"Respect the aged!"

"It was a thick voice--a muddy voice that would have made you
shudder--a voice like something soft breaking in two. There was
a quaver in it, a croak and a whine.

"Respect the aged! O Companions of the River--respect the aged!"

Nothing could be seen on the broad reach of the river except a
little fleet of square-sailed, wooden-pinned barges, loaded with
building-stone, that had just come under the railway bridge, and
were driving down-stream. They put their clumsy helms over to
avoid the sand-bar made by the scour of the bridge-piers, and as
they passed, three abreast, the horrible voice began again:

"O Brahmins of the River--respect the aged and infirm!"

A boatman turned where he sat on the gunwale, lifted up his
hand, said something that was not a blessing, and the boats
creaked on through the twilight. The broad Indian river, that
looked more like a chain of little lakes than a stream, was as
smooth as glass, reflecting the sandy-red sky in mid-channel,
but splashed with patches of yellow and dusky purple near and
under the low banks. Little creeks ran into the river in the wet
season, but now their dry mouths hung clear above water-line.
On the left shore, and almost under the railway bridge, stood a
mud-and-brick and thatch-and-stick village, whose main street,
full of cattle going back to their byres, ran straight to the
river, and ended in a sort of rude brick pier-head, where people
who wanted to wash could wade in step by step. That was the
Ghaut of the village of Mugger-Ghaut.

Night was falling fast over the fields of lentils and rice and
cotton in the low-lying ground yearly flooded by the river;
over the reeds that fringed the elbow of the bend, and the
tangled jungle of the grazing-grounds behind the still reeds.
The parrots and crows, who had been chattering and shouting over
their evening drink, had flown inland to roost, crossing the
out-going battalions of the flying-foxes; and cloud upon cloud
of water-birds came whistling and "honking" to the cover of the
reed-beds. There were geese, barrel-headed and black-backed,
teal, widgeon, mallard, and sheldrake, with curlews, and here
and there a flamingo.

A lumbering Adjutant-crane brought up the rear, flying as though
each slow stroke would be his last.

"Respect the aged! Brahmins of the River--respect the aged!"

The Adjutant half turned his head, sheered a little in the
direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sand-bar below
the bridge. Then you saw what a ruffianly brute he really was.
His back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six
feet high, and looked rather like a very proper bald-headed
parson. In front it was different, for his Ally Sloper-like head
and neck had not a feather to them, and there was a horrible
raw-skin pouch on his neck under his chin--a hold-all for the
things his pick-axe beak might steal. His legs were long and
thin and skinny, but he moved them delicately, and looked at
them with pride as he preened down his ashy-gray tail-feathers,
glanced over the smooth of his shoulder, and stiffened into
"Stand at attention."

A mangy little Jackal, who had been yapping hungrily on a low
bluff, cocked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the
shallows to join the Adjutant.

He was the lowest of his caste--not that the best of jackals are
good for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a
beggar, half a criminal--a cleaner-up of village rubbish-heaps,
desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly hungry, and full
of cunning that never did him any good.

"Ugh!" he said, shaking himself dolefully as he landed. "May the
red mange destroy the dogs of this village! I have three bites
for each flea upon me, and all because I looked--only looked,
mark you--at an old shoe in a cow-byre. Can I eat mud?"
He scratched himself under his left ear.

"I heard," said the Adjutant, in a voice like a blunt saw going
through a thick board--"I HEARD there was a new-born puppy in
that same shoe."

"To hear is one thing; to know is another," said the Jackal, who
had a very fair knowledge of proverbs, picked up by listening to
men round the village fires of an evening.

"Quite true. So, to make sure, I took care of that puppy while
the dogs were busy elsewhere."

"They were VERY busy," said the Jackal. "Well, I must not go to
the village hunting for scraps yet awhile. And so there truly
was a blind puppy in that shoe?"

"It is here," said the Adjutant, squinting over his beak at his
full pouch. "A small thing, but acceptable now that charity is
dead in the world."

"Ahai! The world is iron in these days," wailed the Jackal.
Then his restless eye caught the least possible ripple on the
water, and he went on quickly: "Life is hard for us all, and
I doubt not that even our excellent master, the Pride of the
Ghaut and the Envy of the River----"

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