The Second Jungle Book
He asked Mowgli about it, and the boy laughed and said. “When I miss the
kill I am angry. When I must go empty for two days I am very angry. Do
not my eyes talk then?”
“The mouth is hungry,” said Bagheera, “but the eyes say nothing.
Hunting, eating, or swimming, it is all one--like a stone in wet or dry
weather.” Mowgli looked at him lazily from under his long eyelashes,
and, as usual, the panther’s head dropped. Bagheera knew his master.
They were lying out far up the side of a hill overlooking the Waingunga,
and the morning mists hung below them in bands of white and green. As
the sun rose it changed into bubbling seas of red gold, churned off,
and let the low rays stripe the dried grass on which Mowgli and Bagheera
were resting. It was the end of the cold weather, the leaves and
the trees looked worn and faded, and there was a dry, ticking rustle
everywhere when the wind blew. A little leaf tap-tap-tapped furiously
against a twig, as a single leaf caught in a current will. It roused
Bagheera, for he snuffed the morning air with a deep, hollow cough,
threw himself on his back, and struck with his fore-paws at the nodding
leaf above.
“The year turns,” he said. “The Jungle goes forward. The Time of New
Talk is near. That leaf knows. It is very good.”
“The grass is dry,” Mowgli answered, pulling up a tuft. “Even
Eye-of-the-Spring [that is a little trumpet-shaped, waxy red flower
that runs in and out among the grasses]--even Eye-of-the Spring is shut,
and... Bagheera, IS it well for the Black Panther so to lie on his back
and beat with his paws in the air, as though he were the tree-cat?”
“Aowh?” said Bagheera. He seemed to be thinking of other things.
“I say, IS it well for the Black Panther so to mouth and cough, and howl
and roll? Remember, we be the Masters of the Jungle, thou and I.”
“Indeed, yes; I hear, Man-cub.” Bagheera rolled over hurriedly and sat
up, the dust on his ragged black flanks. (He was just casting his winter
coat.) “We be surely the Masters of the Jungle! Who is so strong as
Mowgli? Who so wise?” There was a curious drawl in the voice that made
Mowgli turn to see whether by any chance the Black Panther were making
fun of him, for the Jungle is full of words that sound like one thing,
but mean another. “I said we be beyond question the Masters of the
Jungle,” Bagheera repeated. “Have I done wrong? I did not know that the
Man-cub no longer lay upon the ground. Does he fly, then?”
Mowgli sat with his elbows on his knees, looking out across the valley
at the daylight. Somewhere down in the woods below a bird was trying
over in a husky, reedy voice the first few notes of his spring song.
It was no more than a shadow of the liquid, tumbling call he would be
pouring later, but Bagheera heard it.
“I said the Time of New Talk is near,” growled the panther, switching
his tail.
“I hear,” Mowgli answered. “Bagheera, why dost thou shake all over? The
sun is warm.”
“That is Ferao, the scarlet woodpecker,” said Bagheera. “HE has not
forgotten. Now I, too, must remember my song,” and he began purring and
crooning to himself, harking back dissatisfied again and again.
“There is no game afoot,” said Mowgli.
“Little Brother, are BOTH thine ears stopped? That is no killing-word,
but my song that I make ready against the need.”
“I had forgotten. I shall know when the Time of New Talk is here,
because then thou and the others all run away and leave me alone.”
Mowgli spoke rather savagely.
“But, indeed, Little Brother,” Bagheera began, “we do not always----”
“I say ye do,” said Mowgli, shooting out his forefinger angrily. “Ye DO
run away, and I, who am the Master of the Jungle, must needs walk alone.
How was it last season, when I would gather sugar-cane from the fields
of a Man-Pack? I sent a runner--I sent thee!--to Hathi, bidding him to
come upon such a night and pluck the sweet grass for me with his trunk.”
“He came only two nights later,” said Bagheera, cowering a little; “and
of that long, sweet grass that pleased thee so he gathered more than any
Man-cub could eat in all the nights of the Rains. That was no fault of
mine.”
“He did not come upon the night when I sent him the word. No, he was
trumpeting and running and roaring through the valleys in the moonlight.
His trail was like the trail of three elephants, for he would not hide
among the trees. He danced in the moonlight before the houses of the
Man-Pack. I saw him, and yet he would not come to me; and _I_ am the
Master of the Jungle!”
“It was the Time of New Talk,” said the panther, always very humble.
“Perhaps, Little Brother, thou didst not that time call him by a
Master-word? Listen to Ferao, and be glad!”
Mowgli’s bad temper seemed to have boiled itself away. He lay back with
his head on his arms, his eyes shut. “I do not know--nor do I care,” he
said sleepily. “Let us sleep, Bagheera. My stomach is heavy in me. Make
me a rest for my head.”
The panther lay down again with a sigh, because he could hear Ferao
practising and repractising his song against the Springtime of New Talk,
as they say.
In an Indian Jungle the seasons slide one into the other almost without
division. There seem to be only two--the wet and the dry; but if you
look closely below the torrents of rain and the clouds of char and dust
you will find all four going round in their regular ring. Spring is the
most wonderful, because she has not to cover a clean, bare field with
new leaves and flowers, but to drive before her and to put away the
hanging-on, over-surviving raffle of half-green things which the gentle
winter has suffered to live, and to make the partly-dressed stale earth
feel new and young once more. And this she does so well that there is no
spring in the world like the Jungle spring.
There is one day when all things are tired, and the very smells, as they
drift on the heavy air, are old and used. One cannot explain this, but
it feels so. Then there is another day--to the eye nothing whatever has
changed--when all the smells are new and delightful, and the whiskers of
the Jungle People quiver to their roots, and the winter hair comes away
from their sides in long, draggled locks. Then, perhaps, a little rain
falls, and all the trees and the bushes and the bamboos and the mosses
and the juicy-leaved plants wake with a noise of growing that you can
almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and night, a deep hum. THAT
is the noise of the spring--a vibrating boom which is neither bees, nor
falling water, nor the wind in tree-tops, but the purring of the warm,
happy world.
Up to this year Mowgli had always delighted in the turn of the seasons.
It was he who generally saw the first Eye-of-the-Spring deep down among
the grasses, and the first bank of spring clouds, which are like nothing
else in the Jungle. His voice could be heard in all sorts of wet,
star-lighted, blossoming places, helping the big frogs through their
choruses, or mocking the little upside-down owls that hoot through the
white nights. Like all his people, spring was the season he chose for
his flittings--moving, for the mere joy of rushing through the warm air,
thirty, forty, or fifty miles between twilight and the morning star, and
coming back panting and laughing and wreathed with strange flowers. The
Four did not follow him on these wild ringings of the Jungle, but went
off to sing songs with other wolves. The Jungle People are very busy
in the spring, and Mowgli could hear them grunting and screaming and
whistling according to their kind. Their voices then are different from
their voices at other times of the year, and that is one of the reasons
why spring in the Jungle is called the Time of New Talk.
But that spring, as he told Bagheera, his stomach was changed in him.
Ever since the bamboo shoots turned spotty-brown he had been looking
forward to the morning when the smells should change. But when the
morning came, and Mor the Peacock, blazing in bronze and blue and gold,
cried it aloud all along the misty woods, and Mowgli opened his mouth to
send on the cry, the words choked between his teeth, and a feeling came
over him that began at his toes and ended in his hair--a feeling of pure
unhappiness, so that he looked himself over to be sure that he had not
trod on a thorn. Mor cried the new smells, the other birds took it
over, and from the rocks by the Waingunga he heard Bagheera’s hoarse
scream--something between the scream of an eagle and the neighing of
a horse. There was a yelling and scattering of Bandar-log in the
new-budding branches above, and there stood Mowgli, his chest, filled to
answer Mor, sinking in little gasps as the breath was driven out of it
by this unhappiness.
He stared all round him, but he could see no more than the mocking
Bandar-log scudding through the trees, and Mor, his tail spread in full
splendour, dancing on the slopes below.
“The smells have changed,” screamed Mor. “Good hunting, Little Brother!
Where is thy answer?”
“Little Brother, good hunting!” whistled Chil the Kite and his mate,
swooping down together. The two baffed under Mowgli’s nose so close that
a pinch of downy white feathers brushed away.
A light spring rain--elephant-rain they call it--drove across the Jungle
in a belt half a mile wide, left the new leaves wet and nodding behind,
and died out in a double rainbow and a light roll of thunder. The spring
hum broke out for a minute, and was silent, but all the Jungle Folk
seemed to be giving tongue at once. All except Mowgli.
“I have eaten good food,” he said to himself. “I have drunk good
water. Nor does my throat burn and grow small, as it did when I bit the
blue-spotted root that Oo the Turtle said was clean food. But my stomach
is heavy, and I have given very bad talk to Bagheera and others, people
of the Jungle and my people. Now, too, I am hot and now I am cold, and
now I am neither hot nor cold, but angry with that which I cannot see.
Huhu! It is time to make a running! To-night I will cross the ranges;
yes, I will make a spring running to the Marshes of the North, and back
again. I have hunted too easily too long. The Four shall come with me,
for they grow as fat as white grubs.”
He called, but never one of the Four answered. They were far beyond
earshot, singing over the spring songs--the Moon and Sambhur Songs--with
the wolves of the pack; for in the spring-time the Jungle People make
very little difference between the day and the night. He gave the sharp,
barking note, but his only answer was the mocking maiou of the little
spotted tree-cat winding in and out among the branches for early birds’
nests. At this he shook all over with rage, and half drew his knife.
Then he became very haughty, though there was no one to see him, and
stalked severely down the hillside, chin up and eyebrows down. But never
a single one of his people asked him a question, for they were all too
busy with their own affairs.
“Yes,” said Mowgli to himself, though in his heart he knew that he had
no reason. “Let the Red Dhole come from the Dekkan, or the Red Flower
dance among the bamboos, and all the Jungle runs whining to Mowgli,
calling him great elephant-names. But now, because Eye-of-the-Spring is
red, and Mor, forsooth, must show his naked legs in some spring dance,
the Jungle goes mad as Tabaqui.... By the Bull that bought me! am I the
Master of the Jungle, or am I not? Be silent! What do ye here?”
A couple of young wolves of the Pack were cantering down a path, looking
for open ground in which to fight. (You will remember that the Law of
the Jungle forbids fighting where the Pack can see.) Their neck-bristles
were as stiff as wire, and they bayed furiously, crouching for the first
grapple. Mowgli leaped forward, caught one outstretched throat in either