The Second Jungle Book
“Ay, surely, my son. Man, ghost, or wolf of the Jungle, I believe.”
“HE will be afraid when he hears my people singing. Thou wilt know and
understand. Go now, and slowly, for there is no need of any haste. The
gates are shut.”
Messua flung herself sobbing at Mowgli’s feet, but he lifted her very
quickly with a shiver. Then she hung about his neck and called him every
name of blessing she could think of, but her husband looked enviously
across his fields, and said: “IF we reach Khanhiwara, and I get the ear
of the English, I will bring such a lawsuit against the Brahmin and old
Buldeo and the others as shall eat the village to the bone. They shall
pay me twice over for my crops untilled and my buffaloes unfed. I will
have a great justice.”
Mowgli laughed. “I do not know what justice is, but--come next Rains.
and see what is left.”
They went off toward the Jungle, and Mother Wolf leaped from her place
of hiding.
“Follow!” said Mowgli; “and look to it that all the Jungle knows these
two are safe. Give tongue a little. I would call Bagheera.”
The long, low howl rose and fell, and Mowgli saw Messua’s husband flinch
and turn, half minded to run back to the hut.
“Go on,” Mowgli called cheerfully. “I said there might be singing. That
call will follow up to Khanhiwara. It is Favour of the Jungle.”
Messua urged her husband forward, and the darkness shut down on them and
Mother Wolf as Bagheera rose up almost under Mowgli’s feet, trembling
with delight of the night that drives the Jungle People wild.
“I am ashamed of thy brethren,” he said, purring. “What? Did they not
sing sweetly to Buldeo?” said Mowgli.
“Too well! Too well! They made even ME forget my pride, and, by the
Broken Lock that freed me, I went singing through the Jungle as though I
were out wooing in the spring! Didst thou not hear us?”
“I had other game afoot. Ask Buldeo if he liked the song. But where
are the Four? I do not wish one of the Man-Pack to leave the gates
to-night.”
“What need of the Four, then?” said Bagheera, shifting from foot to
foot, his eyes ablaze, and purring louder than ever. “I can hold them,
Little Brother. Is it killing at last? The singing and the sight of the
men climbing up the trees have made me very ready. Who is Man that we
should care for him--the naked brown digger, the hairless and toothless,
the eater of earth? I have followed him all day--at noon--in the white
sunlight. I herded him as the wolves herd buck. I am Bagheera! Bagheera!
Bagheera! As I dance with my shadow, so danced I with those men. Look!”
The great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling
overhead, struck left and right into the empty air, that sang under the
strokes, landed noiselessly, and leaped again and again, while the
half purr, half growl gathered head as steam rumbles in a boiler. “I
am Bagheera--in the jungle--in the night, and my strength is in me. Who
shall stay my stroke? Man-cub, with one blow of my paw I could beat thy
head flat as a dead frog in the summer!”
“Strike, then!” said Mowgli, in the dialect of the village, NOT the
talk of the Jungle, and the human words brought Bagheera to a full stop,
flung back on haunches that quivered under him, his head just at the
level of Mowgli’s. Once more Mowgli stared, as he had stared at the
rebellious cubs, full into the beryl-green eyes till the red glare
behind their green went out like the light of a lighthouse shut off
twenty miles across the sea; till the eyes dropped, and the big head
with them--dropped lower and lower, and the red rasp of a tongue grated
on Mowgli’s instep.
“Brother--Brother--Brother!” the boy whispered, stroking steadily and
lightly from the neck along the heaving back. “Be still, be still! It is
the fault of the night, and no fault of thine.”
“It was the smells of the night,” said Bagheera penitently. “This air
cries aloud to me. But how dost THOU know?”
Of course the air round an Indian village is full of all kinds of
smells, and to any creature who does nearly all his thinking through his
nose, smells are as maddening as music and drugs are to human beings.
Mowgli gentled the panther for a few minutes longer, and he lay down
like a cat before a fire, his paws tucked under his breast, and his eyes
half shut.
“Thou art of the Jungle and NOT of the Jungle,” he said at last. “And I
am only a black panther. But I love thee, Little Brother.”
“They are very long at their talk under the tree,” Mowgli said, without
noticing the last sentence. “Buldeo must have told many tales. They
should come soon to drag the woman and her man out of the trap and put
them into the Red Flower. They will find that trap sprung. Ho! ho!”
“Nay, listen,” said Bagheera. “The fever is out of my blood now. Let
them find ME there! Few would leave their houses after meeting me. It is
not the first time I have been in a cage; and I do not think they will
tie ME with cords.”
“Be wise, then,” said Mowgli, laughing; for he was beginning to feel as
reckless as the panther, who had glided into the hut.
“Pah!” Bagheera grunted. “This place is rank with Man, but here is just
such a bed as they gave me to lie upon in the King’s cages at Oodeypore.
Now I lie down.” Mowgli heard the strings of the cot crack under the
great brute’s weight. “By the Broken Lock that freed me, they will think
they have caught big game! Come and sit beside me, Little Brother; we
will give them ‘good hunting’ together!”
“No; I have another thought in my stomach. The Man-Pack shall not know
what share I have in the sport. Make thine own hunt. I do not wish to
see them.”
“Be it so,” said Bagheera. “Ah, now they come!”
The conference under the peepul-tree had been growing noisier and
noisier, at the far end of the village. It broke in wild yells, and
a rush up the street of men and women, waving clubs and bamboos and
sickles and knives. Buldeo and the Brahmin were at the head of it, but
the mob was close at their heels, and they cried, “The witch and the
wizard! Let us see if hot coins will make them confess! Burn the hut
over their heads! We will teach them to shelter wolf-devils! Nay, beat
them first! Torches! More torches! Buldeo, heat the gun-barrels!”
Here was some little difficulty with the catch of the door. It had been
very firmly fastened, but the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light
of the torches streamed into the room where, stretched at full length on
the bed, his paws crossed and lightly hung down over one end, black
as the Pit, and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera. There was one
half-minute of desperate silence, as the front ranks of the crowd clawed
and tore their way back from the threshold, and in that minute
Bagheera raised his head and yawned--elaborately, carefully, and
ostentatiously--as he would yawn when he wished to insult an equal.
The fringed lips drew back and up; the red tongue curled; the lower jaw
dropped and dropped till you could see half-way down the hot gullet; and
the gigantic dog-teeth stood clear to the pit of the gums till they rang
together, upper and under, with the snick of steel-faced wards shooting
home round the edges of a safe. Next instant the street was empty;
Bagheera had leaped back through the window, and stood at Mowgli’s
side, while a yelling, screaming torrent scrambled and tumbled one over
another in their panic haste to get to their own huts.
“They will not stir till day comes,” said Bagheera quietly. “And now?”
The silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to have overtaken the village;
but, as they listened, they could hear the sound of heavy grain-boxes
being dragged over earthen floors and set down against doors. Bagheera
was quite right; the village would not stir till daylight. Mowgli sat
still, and thought, and his face grew darker and darker.
“What have I done?” said Bagheera, at last coming to his feet, fawning.
“Nothing but great good. Watch them now till the day. I sleep.” Mowgli
ran off into the Jungle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, and
slept and slept the day round, and the night back again.
When he waked, Bagheera was at his side, and there was a newly-killed
buck at his feet. Bagheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to work
with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in
his hands.
“The man and the woman are come safe within eye-shot of Khanhiwara,”
Bagheera said. “Thy lair mother sent the word back by Chil, the Kite.
They found a horse before midnight of the night they were freed, and
went very quickly. Is not that well?”
“That is well,” said Mowgli.
“And thy Man-Pack in the village did not stir till the sun was high this
morning. Then they ate their food and ran back quickly to their houses.”
“Did they, by chance, see thee?”
“It may have been. I was rolling in the dust before the gate at dawn,
and I may have made also some small song to myself. Now, Little Brother,
there is nothing more to do. Come hunting with me and Baloo. He has new
hives that he wishes to show, and we all desire thee back again as of
old. Take off that look which makes even me afraid! The man and woman
will not be put into the Red Flower, and all goes well in the Jungle. Is
it not true? Let us forget the Man-Pack.”
“They shall be forgotten in a little while. Where does Hathi feed
to-night?”
“Where he chooses. Who can answer for the Silent One? But why? What is
there Hathi can do which we cannot?”
“Bid him and his three sons come here to me.”
“But, indeed, and truly, Little Brother, it is not--it is not seemly
to say ‘Come,’ and ‘Go,’ to Hathi. Remember, he is the Master of the
Jungle, and before the Man-Pack changed the look on thy face, he taught
thee the Master-words of the Jungle.”
“That is all one. I have a Master-word for him now. Bid him come to
Mowgli, the Frog: and if he does not hear at first, bid him come because
of the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore.”
“The Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore,” Bagheera repeated two or three
times to make sure. “I go. Hathi can but be angry at the worst, and
I would give a moon’s hunting to hear a Master-word that compels the
Silent One.”
He went away, leaving Mowgli stabbing furiously with his skinning-knife
into the earth. Mowgli had never seen human blood in his life before
till he had seen, and--what meant much more to him--smelled Messua’s
blood on the thongs that bound her. And Messua had been kind to
him, and, so far as he knew anything about love, he loved Messua as
completely as he hated the rest of mankind. But deeply as he loathed
them, their talk, their cruelty, and their cowardice, not for anything
the Jungle had to offer could he bring himself to take a human life, and
have that terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. His plan
was simpler, but much more thorough; and he laughed to himself when he
thought that it was one of old Buldeo’s tales told under the peepul-tree
in the evening that had put the idea into his head.
“It WAS a Master-word,” Bagheera whispered in his ear. “They were
feeding by the river, and they obeyed as though they were bullocks. Look
where they come now!”
Hathi and his three sons had arrived, in their usual way, without a
sound. The mud of the river was still fresh on their flanks, and Hathi
was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a young plantain-tree that he
had gouged up with his tusks. But every line in his vast body showed to
Bagheera, who could see things when he came across them, that it was not
the Master of the Jungle speaking to a Man-cub, but one who was afraid
coming before one who was not. His three sons rolled side by side,
behind their father.
Mowgli hardly lifted his head as Hathi gave him “Good hunting.” He kept
him swinging and rocking, and shifting from one foot to another, for