All the Mowgli Stories (Macmillan Collector's Library)

‘Last year’s nuts are this year’s black earth,’ said Mowgli. ‘It is true that I am a Man, but it is in my stomach that this night I have said that I am a Wolf. I called the River and the Trees to remember. I am of the Free People, Kaa, till the dhole has gone by.’

‘Free People,’ Kaa grunted. ‘Free thieves! And thou hast tied thyself into the death-knot for the sake of the memory of the dead wolves? This is no good hunting.’

‘It is my Word which I have spoken. The Trees know, the River knows. Till the dhole have gone by my Word comes not back to me.’

‘Ngssh! This changes all trails. I had thought to take thee away with me to the northern marshes, but the Word—even the Word of a little, naked, hairless Manling—is the Word. Now I, Kaa, say——’

‘Think well, Flathead, lest thou tie thyself into the death-knot also. I need no Word from thee, for well I know——’

‘Be it so, then,’ said Kaa. ‘I will give no Word; but what is in thy stomach to do when the dhole come?’

‘They must swim the Waingunga. I thought to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the Pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting, we a little might turn them down-stream, or cool their throats.’

‘The dhole do not turn and their throats are hot,’ said Kaa. ‘There will be neither Manling nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry bones.’

‘Alala! If we die, we die. It will be most good hunting. But my stomach is young, and I have not seen many Rains. I am not wise nor strong. Hast thou a better plan, Kaa?’

‘I have seen a hundred and a hundred Rains. Ere Hathi cast his milk-tushes my trail was big in the dust. By the First Egg, I am older than many trees, and I have seen all that the Jungle has done.’

‘But this is new hunting,’ said Mowgli. ‘Never before have the dhole crossed our trail.’

‘What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward. Be still while I count those my years.’

For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night.

Then he felt Kaa’s back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard.

‘I have seen all the dead seasons,’ Kaa said at last, ‘and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling?’

‘It is only a little after moonset,’ said Mowgli. ‘I do not understand——’

‘Hssh! I am again Kaa. I knew it was but a little time. Now we will go to the river, and I will show thee what is to be done against the dhole.’

He turned, straight as an arrow, for the main stream of the Waingunga, plunging in a little above the pool that hid the Peace Rock, Mowgli at his side.

‘Nay, do not swim. I go swiftly. My back, Little Brother.’

Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa’s neck, dropped his right close to his body, and straightened his feet. Then Kaa breasted the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked water stood up in a frill round Mowgli’s neck, and his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under the python’s lashing sides. A mile or two above the Peace Rock the Waingunga narrows between a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred feet high, and the current runs like a millrace between and over all manner of ugly stones. But Mowgli did not trouble his head about the water; little water in the world could have given him a moment’s fear. He was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day. Instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his head to breathe from time to time, and Kaa came to anchor with a double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in the hollow of a coil, while the water raced on.

‘This is the Place of Death,’ said the boy. ‘Why do we come here?’

‘They sleep,’ said Kaa. ‘Hathi will not turn aside for the Striped One. Yet Hathi and the Striped One together turn aside for the dhole, and the dhole, they say, turn aside for nothing. And yet for whom do the Little People of the Rocks turn aside? Tell me, Master of the Jungle, who is the Master of the Jungle?’

‘These,’ Mowgli whispered. ‘It is the Place of Death. Let us go.’

‘Nay, look well, for they are asleep. It is as it was when I was not the length of thy arm.’