The Jungle Book
last ten days changing his skin, and now he was very splendid--darting
his big blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twisting the thirty feet
of his body into fantastic knots and curves, and licking his lips as he
thought of his dinner to come.
“He has not eaten,” said Baloo, with a grunt of relief, as soon as
he saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket. “Be careful,
Bagheera! He is always a little blind after he has changed his skin, and
very quick to strike.”
Kaa was not a poison snake--in fact he rather despised the poison snakes
as cowards--but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once
lapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said. “Good
hunting!” cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches. Like all snakes of
his breed Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at first. Then
he curled up ready for any accident, his head lowered.
“Good hunting for us all,” he answered. “Oho, Baloo, what dost thou do
here? Good hunting, Bagheera. One of us at least needs food. Is there
any news of game afoot? A doe now, or even a young buck? I am as empty
as a dried well.”
“We are hunting,” said Baloo carelessly. He knew that you must not hurry
Kaa. He is too big.
“Give me permission to come with you,” said Kaa. “A blow more or less is
nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I--I have to wait and wait for
days in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a
young ape. Psshaw! The branches are not what they were when I was young.
Rotten twigs and dry boughs are they all.”
“Maybe thy great weight has something to do with the matter,” said
Baloo.
“I am a fair length--a fair length,” said Kaa with a little pride. “But
for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown timber. I came very
near to falling on my last hunt--very near indeed--and the noise of my
slipping, for my tail was not tight wrapped around the tree, waked the
Bandar-log, and they called me most evil names.”
“Footless, yellow earth-worm,” said Bagheera under his whiskers, as
though he were trying to remember something.
“Sssss! Have they ever called me that?” said Kaa.
“Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we
never noticed them. They will say anything--even that thou hast lost all
thy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they
are indeed shameless, these Bandar-log)--because thou art afraid of the
he-goat’s horns,” Bagheera went on sweetly.
Now a snake, especially a wary old python like Kaa, very seldom shows
that he is angry, but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing
muscles on either side of Kaa’s throat ripple and bulge.
“The Bandar-log have shifted their grounds,” he said quietly. “When I
came up into the sun today I heard them whooping among the tree-tops.”
“It--it is the Bandar-log that we follow now,” said Baloo, but the words
stuck in his throat, for that was the first time in his memory that one
of the Jungle-People had owned to being interested in the doings of the
monkeys.
“Beyond doubt then it is no small thing that takes two such
hunters--leaders in their own jungle I am certain--on the trail of the
Bandar-log,” Kaa replied courteously, as he swelled with curiosity.
“Indeed,” Baloo began, “I am no more than the old and sometimes very
foolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf-cubs, and Bagheera
here--”
“Is Bagheera,” said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut with a snap,
for he did not believe in being humble. “The trouble is this, Kaa. Those
nut-stealers and pickers of palm leaves have stolen away our man-cub of
whom thou hast perhaps heard.”
“I heard some news from Ikki (his quills make him presumptuous) of a
man-thing that was entered into a wolf pack, but I did not believe. Ikki
is full of stories half heard and very badly told.”
“But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was,” said Baloo. “The
best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs--my own pupil, who shall
make the name of Baloo famous through all the jungles; and besides,
I--we--love him, Kaa.”
“Ts! Ts!” said Kaa, weaving his head to and fro. “I also have known what
love is. There are tales I could tell that--”
“That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise properly,”
said Bagheera quickly. “Our man-cub is in the hands of the Bandar-log
now, and we know that of all the Jungle-People they fear Kaa alone.”
“They fear me alone. They have good reason,” said Kaa. “Chattering,
foolish, vain--vain, foolish, and chattering, are the monkeys. But a
man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts
they pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day, meaning
to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. That man-thing
is not to be envied. They called me also--`yellow fish’ was it not?”
“Worm--worm--earth-worm,” said Bagheera, “as well as other things which
I cannot now say for shame.”
“We must remind them to speak well of their master. Aaa-ssp! We must
help their wandering memories. Now, whither went they with the cub?”
“The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe,” said Baloo. “We
had thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa.”
“I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do not hunt the
Bandar-log, or frogs--or green scum on a water-hole, for that matter.”
“Up, Up! Up, Up! Hillo! Illo! Illo, look up, Baloo of the Seeonee Wolf
Pack!”
Baloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was Rann the
Kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his
wings. It was near Rann’s bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle
looking for the Bear and had missed him in the thick foliage.
“What is it?” said Baloo.
“I have seen Mowgli among the Bandar-log. He bade me tell you. I
watched. The Bandar-log have taken him beyond the river to the monkey
city--to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a night, or ten nights,
or an hour. I have told the bats to watch through the dark time. That is
my message. Good hunting, all you below!”
“Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann,” cried Bagheera. “I will
remember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee alone, O
best of kites!”
“It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I could
have done no less,” and Rann circled up again to his roost.
“He has not forgotten to use his tongue,” said Baloo with a chuckle of
pride. “To think of one so young remembering the Master Word for the
birds too while he was being pulled across trees!”
“It was most firmly driven into him,” said Bagheera. “But I am proud of
him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.”
They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle People ever
went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted
city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that
men have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes do not.
Besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live
anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it
except in times of drought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs
held a little water.
“It is half a night’s journey--at full speed,” said Bagheera, and Baloo
looked very serious. “I will go as fast as I can,” he said anxiously.
“We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on the
quick-foot--Kaa and I.”
“Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four,” said Kaa shortly.
Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, and so they
left him to come on later, while Bagheera hurried forward, at the quick
panther-canter. Kaa said nothing, but, strive as Bagheera might, the
huge Rock-python held level with him. When they came to a hill stream,
Bagheera gained, because he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head and
two feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground Kaa made up
the distance.
“By the Broken Lock that freed me,” said Bagheera, when twilight had
fallen, “thou art no slow goer!”
“I am hungry,” said Kaa. “Besides, they called me speckled frog.”
“Worm--earth-worm, and yellow to boot.”
“All one. Let us go on,” and Kaa seemed to pour himself along the
ground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and keeping to
it.
In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking of Mowgli’s
friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, and were
very much pleased with themselves for the time. Mowgli had never seen an
Indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed
very wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little
hill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led up to the
ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted
hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the battlements were
tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung out of the windows of
the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps.
A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the
courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and green,
and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king’s elephants
used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees.
From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that
made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness;
the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where
four roads met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public
wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs
sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and
pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest.
And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to
use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king’s council
chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run
in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old
bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight
and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the
terraces of the king’s garden, where they would shake the rose trees and
the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored
all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of
little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what
they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling
each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and
made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they
would all rush together in mobs and shout: “There is no one in the
jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the
Bandar-log.” Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city
and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice
them.
Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not like
or understand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the Cold
Lairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli
would have done after a long journey, they joined hands and danced about
and sang their foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a speech and told
his companions that Mowgli’s capture marked a new thing in the history
of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show them how to weave sticks
and canes together as a protection against rain and cold. Mowgli picked
up some creepers and began to work them in and out, and the monkeys
tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost interest and began
to pull their friends’ tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.
“I wish to eat,” said Mowgli. “I am a stranger in this part of the