The Second Jungle Book
set off for Cold Lairs, the deserted city of which you may have heard.
Mowgli was not the least afraid of the Monkey People in those days,
but the Monkey People had the liveliest horror of Mowgli. Their tribes,
however, were raiding in the Jungle, and so Cold Lairs stood empty and
silent in the moonlight. Kaa led up to the ruins of the queens’ pavilion
that stood on the terrace, slipped over the rubbish, and dived down
the half-choked staircase that went underground from the centre of
the pavilion. Mowgli gave the snake-call,--“We be of one blood, ye and
I,”--and followed on his hands and knees. They crawled a long distance
down a sloping passage that turned and twisted several times, and at
last came to where the root of some great tree, growing thirty feet
overhead, had forced out a solid stone in the wall. They crept through
the gap, and found themselves in a large vault, whose domed roof had
been also broken away by tree-roots so that a few streaks of light
dropped down into the darkness.
“A safe lair,” said Mowgli, rising to his firm feet, “but over-far to
visit daily. And now what do we see?”
“Am I nothing?” said a voice in the middle of the vault; and Mowgli saw
something white move till, little by little, there stood up the hugest
cobra he had ever set eyes on--a creature nearly eight feet long,
and bleached by being in darkness to an old ivory-white. Even the
spectacle-marks of his spread hood had faded to faint yellow. His eyes
were as red as rubies, and altogether he was most wonderful.
“Good hunting!” said Mowgli, who carried his manners with his knife, and
that never left him.
“What of the city?” said the White Cobra, without answering the
greeting. “What of the great, the walled city--the city of a hundred
elephants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle past counting--the city
of the King of Twenty Kings? I grow deaf here, and it is long since I
heard their war-gongs.”
“The Jungle is above our heads,” said Mowgli. “I know only Hathi and his
sons among elephants. Bagheera has slain all the horses in one village,
and--what is a King?”
“I told thee,” said Kaa softly to the Cobra,--“I told thee, four moons
ago, that thy city was not.”
“The city--the great city of the forest whose gates are guarded by the
King’s towers--can never pass. They builded it before my father’s father
came from the egg, and it shall endure when my son’s sons are as white
as I! Salomdhi, son of Chandrabija, son of Viyeja, son of Yegasuri, made
it in the days of Bappa Rawal. Whose cattle are YE?”
“It is a lost trail,” said Mowgli, turning to Kaa. “I know not his
talk.”
“Nor I. He is very old. Father of Cobras, there is only the Jungle here,
as it has been since the beginning.”
“Then who is HE,” said the White Cobra, “sitting down before me,
unafraid, knowing not the name of the King, talking our talk through a
man’s lips? Who is he with the knife and the snake’s tongue?”
“Mowgli they call me,” was the answer. “I am of the Jungle. The wolves
are my people, and Kaa here is my brother. Father of Cobras, who art
thou?”
“I am the Warden of the King’s Treasure. Kurrun Raja builded the stone
above me, in the days when my skin was dark, that I might teach death
to those who came to steal. Then they let down the treasure through the
stone, and I heard the song of the Brahmins my masters.”
“Umm!” said Mowgli to himself. “I have dealt with one Brahmin already,
in the Man-Pack, and--I know what I know. Evil comes here in a little.”
“Five times since I came here has the stone been lifted, but always to
let down more, and never to take away. There are no riches like these
riches--the treasures of a hundred kings. But it is long and long since
the stone was last moved, and I think that my city has forgotten.”
“There is no city. Look up. Yonder are roots of the great trees tearing
the stones apart. Trees and men do not grow together,” Kaa insisted.
“Twice and thrice have men found their way here,” the White Cobra
answered savagely; “but they never spoke till I came upon them groping
in the dark, and then they cried only a little time. But ye come with
lies, Man and Snake both, and would have me believe the city is not, and
that my wardship ends. Little do men change in the years. But I change
never! Till the stone is lifted, and the Brahmins come down singing the
songs that I know, and feed me with warm milk, and take me to the light
again, I--I--_I_, and no other, am the Warden of the King’s Treasure!
The city is dead, ye say, and here are the roots of the trees? Stoop
down, then, and take what ye will. Earth has no treasure like to these.
Man with the snake’s tongue, if thou canst go alive by the way that thou
hast entered it, the lesser Kings will be thy servants!”
“Again the trail is lost,” said Mowgli coolly. “Can any jackal have
burrowed so deep and bitten this great White Hood? He is surely mad.
Father of Cobras, I see nothing here to take away.”
“By the Gods of the Sun and Moon, it is the madness of death upon the
boy!” hissed the Cobra. “Before thine eyes close I will allow thee this
favour. Look thou, and see what man has never seen before!”
“They do not well in the Jungle who speak to Mowgli of favours,” said
the boy, between his teeth; “but the dark changes all, as I know. I will
look, if that please thee.”
He stared with puckered-up eyes round the vault, and then lifted up from
the floor a handful of something that glittered.
“Oho!” said he, “this is like the stuff they play with in the Man-Pack:
only this is yellow and the other was brown.”
He let the gold pieces fall, and move forward. The floor of the vault
was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and silver that had
burst from the sacks it had been originally stored in, and, in the long
years, the metal had packed and settled as sand packs at low tide. On it
and in it and rising through it, as wrecks lift through the sand, were
jewelled elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded with plates of
hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises. There were
palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with
silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings;
there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered
on the branches; there were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten
gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid
on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there
were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon’s-blood rubies; there were
shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped
and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were
sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there
were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape
that never sees the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets;
there were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and
eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets,
head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were
belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and
wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen
away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals,
cat’s-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within.
The White Cobra was right. No mere money would begin to pay the value of
this treasure, the sifted pickings of centuries of war, plunder, trade,
and taxation. The coins alone were priceless, leaving out of count all
the precious stones; and the dead weight of the gold and silver alone
might be two or three hundred tons. Every native ruler in India to-day,
however poor, has a hoard to which he is always adding; and though, once
in a long while, some enlightened prince may send off forty or fifty
bullock-cart loads of silver to be exchanged for Government securities,
the bulk of them keep their treasure and the knowledge of it very
closely to themselves.
But Mowgli naturally did not understand what these things meant. The
knives interested him a little, but they did not balance so well as
his own, and so he dropped them. At last he found something really
fascinating laid on the front of a howdah half buried in the coins.
It was a three-foot ankus, or elephant-goad--something like a small
boat-hook. The top was one round, shining ruby, and eight inches of
the handle below it were studded with rough turquoises close together,
giving a most satisfactory grip. Below them was a rim of jade with a
flower-pattern running round it--only the leaves were emeralds, and
the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, green stone. The rest of
the handle was a shaft of pure ivory, while the point--the spike and
hook--was gold-inlaid steel with pictures of elephant-catching; and the
pictures attracted Mowgli, who saw that they had something to do with
his friend Hathi the Silent.
The White Cobra had been following him closely.
“Is this not worth dying to behold?” he said. “Have I not done thee a
great favour?”
“I do not understand,” said Mowgli. “The things are hard and cold, and
by no means good to eat. But this”--he lifted the ankus--“I desire to
take away, that I may see it in the sun. Thou sayest they are all thine?
Wilt thou give it to me, and I will bring thee frogs to eat?”
The White Cobra fairly shook with evil delight. “Assuredly I will give
it,” he said. “All that is here I will give thee--till thou goest away.”
“But I go now. This place is dark and cold, and I wish to take the
thorn-pointed thing to the Jungle.”
“Look by thy foot! What is that there?” Mowgli picked up something white
and smooth. “It is the bone of a man’s head,” he said quietly. “And here
are two more.”
“They came to take the treasure away many years ago. I spoke to them in
the dark, and they lay still.”
“But what do I need of this that is called treasure? If thou wilt
give me the ankus to take away, it is good hunting. If not, it is good
hunting none the less. I do not fight with the Poison People, and I was
also taught the Master-word of thy tribe.”
“There is but one Master-word here. It is mine!”
Kaa flung himself forward with blazing eyes. “Who bade me bring the
Man?” he hissed.
“I surely,” the old Cobra lisped. “It is long since I have seen Man, and
this Man speaks our tongue.”
“But there was no talk of killing. How can I go to the Jungle and say
that I have led him to his death?” said Kaa.
“I talk not of killing till the time. And as to thy going or not going,
there is the hole in the wall. Peace, now, thou fat monkey-killer! I
have but to touch thy neck, and the Jungle will know thee no longer.
Never Man came here that went away with the breath under his ribs. I am
the Warden of the Treasure of the King’s City!”
“But, thou white worm of the dark, I tell thee there is neither king nor
city! The Jungle is all about us!” cried Kaa.
“There is still the Treasure. But this can be done. Wait awhile, Kaa of
the Rocks, and see the boy run. There is room for great sport here. Life
is good. Run to and fro awhile, and make sport, boy!”
Mowgli put his hand on Kaa’s head quietly.
“The white thing has dealt with men of the Man-Pack until now. He does
not know me,” he whispered. “He has asked for this hunting. Let him have
it.” Mowgli had been standing with the ankus held point down. He flung
it from him quickly and it dropped crossways just behind the great
snake’s hood, pinning him to the floor. In a flash, Kaa’s weight was
upon the writhing body, paralysing it from hood to tail. The red eyes
burned, and the six spare inches of the head struck furiously right and
left.
“Kill!” said Kaa, as Mowgli’s hand went to his knife.