The Second Jungle Book
with the rush of a steam-engine.
“Auspiciously met, Protector of the Poor!” he fawned, backing at every
word. “A delectable voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of sweet
conversation. My tailless presumption, while waiting here, led me,
indeed, to speak of thee. It is my hope that nothing was overheard.”
Now the Jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery
was the best way of getting things to eat, and the Mugger knew that
the Jackal had spoken for this end, and the Jackal knew that the Mugger
knew, and the Mugger knew that the Jackal knew that the Mugger knew, and
so they were all very contented together.
The old brute pushed and panted and grunted up the bank, mumbling,
“Respect the aged and infirm!” and all the time his little eyes burned
like coals under the heavy, horny eyelids on the top of his triangular
head, as he shoved his bloated barrel-body along between his crutched
legs. Then he settled down, and, accustomed as the Jackal was to his
ways, he could not help starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw
how exactly the Mugger imitated a log adrift on the bar. He had even
taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would
make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the
time and place. All this was only a matter of habit, of course, because
the Mugger had come ashore for pleasure; but a crocodile is never quite
full, and if the Jackal had been deceived by the likeness he would not
have lived to philosophise over it.
“My child, I heard nothing,” said the Mugger, shutting one eye. “The
water was in my ears, and also I was faint with hunger. Since the
railway bridge was built my people at my village have ceased to love me;
and that is breaking my heart.”
“Ah, shame!” said the Jackal. “So noble a heart, too! But men are all
alike, to my mind.”
“Nay, there are very great differences indeed,” the Mugger answered
gently. “Some are as lean as boat-poles. Others again are fat as
young ja--dogs. Never would I causelessly revile men. They are of all
fashions, but the long years have shown me that, one with another, they
are very good. Men, women, and children--I have no fault to find with
them. And remember, child, he who rebukes the World is rebuked by the
World.”
“Flattery is worse than an empty tin can in the belly. But that which we
have just heard is wisdom,” said the Adjutant, bringing down one foot.
“Consider, though, their ingratitude to this excellent one,” began the
Jackal tenderly.
“Nay, nay, not ingratitude!” the Mugger said. “They do not think for
others; that is all. But I have noticed, lying at my station below the
ford, that the stairs of the new bridge are cruelly hard to climb, both
for old people and young children. The old, indeed, are not so worthy of
consideration, but I am grieved--I am truly grieved--on account of the
fat children. Still, I think, in a little while, when the newness of the
bridge has worn away, we shall see my people’s bare brown legs bravely
splashing through the ford as before. Then the old Mugger will be
honoured again.”
“But surely I saw Marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the Ghaut
only this noon,” said the Adjutant.
Marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all India over.
“An error--an error. It was the wife of the sweetmeat-seller. She loses
her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from me--the Mugger of
the Ghaut. I saw the mistake when she threw the garland, for I was lying
at the very foot of the Ghaut, and had she taken another step I might
have shown her some little difference. Yet she meant well, and we must
consider the spirit of the offering.”
“What good are marigold wreaths when one is on the rubbish-heap?” said
the Jackal, hunting for fleas, but keeping one wary eye on his Protector
of the Poor.
“True, but they have not yet begun to make the rubbish-heap that shall
carry ME. Five times have I seen the river draw back from the village
and make new land at the foot of the street. Five times have I seen the
village rebuilt on the banks, and I shall see it built yet five times
more. I am no faithless, fish-hunting Gavial, I, at Kasi to-day and
Prayag to-morrow, as the saying is, but the true and constant watcher of
the ford. It is not for nothing, child, that the village bears my name,
and ‘he who watches long,’ as the saying is, ‘shall at last have his
reward.’”
“_I_ have watched long--very long--nearly all my life, and my reward has
been bites and blows,” said the Jackal.
“Ho! ho! ho!” roared the Adjutant.
“In August was the Jackal born;
The Rains fell in September;
‘Now such a fearful flood as this,’
Says he, ‘I can’t remember!’”
There is one very unpleasant peculiarity about the Adjutant. At
uncertain times he suffers from acute attacks of the fidgets or cramp
in his legs, and though he is more virtuous to behold than any of the
cranes, who are all immensely respectable, he flies off into wild,
cripple-stilt war-dances, half opening his wings and bobbing his bald
head up and down; while for reasons best known to himself he is very
careful to time his worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. At the last
word of his song he came to attention again, ten times adjutaunter than
before.
The Jackal winced, though he was full three seasons old, but you cannot
resent an insult from a person with a beak a yard long, and the power of
driving it like a javelin. The Adjutant was a most notorious coward, but
the Jackal was worse.
“We must live before we can learn,” said the Mugger, “and there is this
to say: Little jackals are very common, child, but such a mugger as I am
is not common. For all that, I am not proud, since pride is destruction;
but take notice, it is Fate, and against his Fate no one who swims or
walks or runs should say anything at all. I am well contented with Fate.
With good luck, a keen eye, and the custom of considering whether a
creek or a backwater has an outlet to it ere you ascend, much may be
done.”
“Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a mistake,” said
the Jackal viciously.
“True; but there my Fate helped me. It was before I had come to my
full growth--before the last famine but three (by the Right and Left of
Gunga, how full used the streams to be in those days!). Yes, I was young
and unthinking, and when the flood came, who so pleased as I? A little
made me very happy then. The village was deep in flood, and I swam above
the Ghaut and went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and they were deep
in good mud. I remember also a pair of bracelets (glass they were,
and troubled me not a little) that I found that evening. Yes, glass
bracelets; and, if my memory serves me well, a shoe. I should have
shaken off both shoes, but I was hungry. I learned better later. Yes.
And so I fed and rested me; but when I was ready to go to the river
again the flood had fallen, and I walked through the mud of the main
street. Who but I? Came out all my people, priests and women and
children, and I looked upon them with benevolence. The mud is not a good
place to fight in. Said a boatman, ‘Get axes and kill him, for he is the
Mugger of the ford.’ ‘Not so,’ said the Brahmin. ‘Look, he is driving
the flood before him! He is the godling of the village.’ Then they
threw many flowers at me, and by happy thought one led a goat across the
road.”
“How good--how very good is goat!” said the Jackal.
“Hairy--too hairy, and when found in the water more than likely to hide
a cross-shaped hook. But that goat I accepted, and went down to the
Ghaut in great honour. Later, my Fate sent me the boatman who had
desired to cut off my tail with an axe. His boat grounded upon an old
shoal which you would not remember.”
“We are not ALL jackals here,” said the Adjutant. “Was it the shoal made
where the stone-boats sank in the year of the great drouth--a long shoal
that lasted three floods?”
“There were two,” said the Mugger; “an upper and a lower shoal.”
“Ay, I forgot. A channel divided them, and later dried up again,” said
the Adjutant, who prided himself on his memory.
“On the lower shoal my well-wisher’s craft grounded. He was sleeping in
the bows, and, half awake, leaped over to his waist--no, it was no more
than to his knees--to push off. His empty boat went on and touched again
below the next reach, as the river ran then. I followed, because I knew
men would come out to drag it ashore.”
“And did they do so?” said the Jackal, a little awe-stricken. This was
hunting on a scale that impressed him.
“There and lower down they did. I went no farther, but that gave me
three in one day--well-fed manjis (boatmen) all, and, except in the
case of the last (then I was careless), never a cry to warn those on the
bank.”
“Ah, noble sport! But what cleverness and great judgment it requires!”
said the Jackal.
“Not cleverness, child, but only thought. A little thought in life
is like salt upon rice, as the boatmen say, and I have thought deeply
always. The Gavial, my cousin, the fish-eater, has told me how hard it
is for him to follow his fish, and how one fish differs from the other,
and how he must know them all, both together and apart. I say that is
wisdom; but, on the other hand, my cousin, the Gavial, lives among his
people. MY people do not swim in companies, with their mouths out of the
water, as Rewa does; nor do they constantly rise to the surface of the
water, and turn over on their sides, like Mohoo and little Chapta; nor
do they gather in shoals after flood, like Batchua and Chilwa.”
“All are very good eating,” said the Adjutant, clattering his beak.
“So my cousin says, and makes a great to-do over hunting them, but
they do not climb the banks to escape his sharp nose. MY people are
otherwise. Their life is on the land, in the houses, among the cattle.
I must know what they do, and what they are about to do; and adding the
tail to the trunk, as the saying is, I make up the whole elephant. Is
there a green branch and an iron ring hanging over a doorway? The old
Mugger knows that a boy has been born in that house, and must some
day come down to the Ghaut to play. Is a maiden to be married? The old
Mugger knows, for he sees the men carry gifts back and forth; and she,
too, comes down to the Ghaut to bathe before her wedding, and--he is
there. Has the river changed its channel, and made new land where there
was only sand before? The Mugger knows.”
“Now, of what use is that knowledge?” said the Jackal. “The river has
shifted even in my little life.” Indian rivers are nearly always moving
about in their beds, and will shift, sometimes, as much as two or three
miles in a season, drowning the fields on one bank, and spreading good
silt on the other.
“There is no knowledge so useful,” said the Mugger, “for new land means
new quarrels. The Mugger knows. Oho! the Mugger knows. As soon as the
water has drained off, he creeps up the little creeks that men think
would not hide a dog, and there he waits. Presently comes a farmer
saying he will plant cucumbers here, and melons there, in the new land
that the river has given him. He feels the good mud with his bare
toes. Anon comes another, saying he will put onions, and carrots, and
sugar-cane in such and such places. They meet as boats adrift meet,
and each rolls his eye at the other under the big blue turban. The old
Mugger sees and hears. Each calls the other ‘Brother,’ and they go to
mark out the boundaries of the new land. The Mugger hurries with them
from point to point, shuffling very low through the mud. Now they begin
to quarrel! Now they say hot words! Now they pull turbans! Now they lift
up their lathis (clubs), and, at last, one falls backward into the mud,
and the other runs away. When he comes back the dispute is settled, as