All the Mowgli Stories (Macmillan Collector's Library)

‘We are under one Law, indeed,’ said Bagheera, wading into the water and looking across at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes where the deer and the pig pushed each other to and fro. ‘Good hunting, all you of my blood,’ he added, lying down at full length, one flank thrust out of the shallows; and then, between his teeth, ‘But for that which is the Law it would be very good hunting.’

The quick-spread ears of the deer caught the last sentence, and a frightened whisper ran along the ranks. ‘The Truce! Remember the Truce!’

‘Peace there, peace!’ gurgled Hathi, the Wild Elephant. ‘The Truce holds, Bagheera. This is no time to talk of hunting.’

‘Who should know better than I?’ Bagheera answered, rolling his yellow eyes up-stream. ‘I am an eater of turtles—a fisher of frogs. Ngaayah! Would I could get good from chewing branches!’

‘We wish so, very greatly,’ bleated a young fawn, who had only been born that spring, and did not at all like it. Wretched as the Jungle-People were, even Hathi could not help chuckling; while Mowgli, lying on his elbows in the warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the scum with his feet.

‘Well spoken, little bud-horn,’ Bagheera purred. ‘When the Truce ends that shall be remembered in thy favour,’ and he looked keenly through the darkness to make sure of recognising the fawn again.

Gradually the talking spread up and down the drinking-places. One could hear the scuffling, snorting pig asking for more room; the buffaloes grunting among themselves as they lurched out across the sandbars, and the deer telling pitiful stories of their long footsore wanderings in quest of food. Now and again they asked some question of the Eaters of Flesh across the river, but all the news was bad, and the roaring hot wind of the Jungle came and went between the rocks and the rattling branches, and scattered twigs and dust on the water.

‘The men-folk, too, they die beside their ploughs,’ said a young sambhur. ‘I passed three between sunset and night. They lay still, and their bullocks with them. We also shall lie still in a little.’

‘The river has fallen since last night,’ said Baloo. ‘O Hathi, hast thou ever seen the like of this drought?’

‘It will pass, it will pass,’ said Hathi, squirting water along his back and sides.

‘We have one here that cannot endure long,’ said Baloo; and he looked toward the boy he loved.

‘I?’ said Mowgli indignantly, sitting up in the water. ‘I have no long fur to cover my bones, but—but if thy hide were taken off, Baloo——’

Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo said severely:

‘Man-Cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher of the Law. Never have I been seen without my hide.’

‘Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo; but only that thou art, as it were, like the coconut in the husk, and I am the same coconut all naked. Now that brown husk of thine——’ Mowgli was sitting cross-legged, and explaining things with his forefinger in his usual way, when Bagheera put out a paddy paw and pulled him over backward into the water.

‘Worse and worse,’ said the Black Panther, as the boy rose spluttering. ‘First Baloo is to be skinned, and now he is a coconut. Be careful that he does not do what the ripe coconuts do.’

‘And what is that?’ said Mowgli, off his guard for the minute, though that is one of the oldest catches in the Jungle.

‘Break thy head,’ said Bagheera quietly, pulling him under again.

‘It is not good to make a jest of thy teacher,’ said the bear, when Mowgli had been ducked for the third time.

‘Not good! What would ye have? That naked thing running to and fro makes a monkey-jest of those who have once been good hunters, and pulls the best of us by the whiskers for sport.’ This was Shere Khan, the Lame Tiger, limping down to the water. He waited a little to enjoy the sensation he made among the deer on the opposite bank; then he dropped his square, frilled head and began to lap, growling: ‘The Jungle has become a whelping-ground for naked cubs, now. Look at me, Man-cub!’

Mowgli looked—stared, rather—as insolently as he knew how, and in a minute Shere Khan turned away uneasily. ‘Man-cub this, and Man-cub that,’ he rumbled, going on with his drink, ‘the cub is neither man nor cub, or he would have been afraid. Next season I shall have to beg his leave for a drink. Augrh!’

‘That may come, too,’ said Bagheera, looking him steadily between the eyes. ‘That may come, too—Faugh, Shere Khan!—what new shame hast thou brought here?’

The Lame Tiger had dipped his chin and jowl in the water, and dark, oily streaks were floating from it downstream.

‘Man!’ said Shere Khan coolly. ‘I killed an hour since.’ He went on purring and growling to himself.

The line of beasts shook and wavered to and fro, and a whisper went up that grew to a cry: ‘Man! Man! He has killed Man!’ Then all looked towards Hathi, the Wild Elephant, but he seemed not to hear. Hathi never does anything till the time comes, and this is one of the reasons why he lives so long.