Chapter-3
Afew days before Mowgli turned out of the Pack, Baloo was teaching him the law of the Jungle. Baloo was always pleased to have Mowgli as a student as he was a fast learner. Sometimes Bagheera also used to keep an eye on Mowgli and would sit silently on the branch of a tree to see how Mowgli recited the day’s lesson to Baloo. Mowgli could climb up trees as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well as he could run. Baloo used to teach him laws and Bagheera used to teach him skills.
Baloo used to give him the long sessions of learning about the jungle law which Bagheera considered wrong for Mowgli as Mowgli was very small to learn so much in a day. This was the reason of quarrel between Bagheera and Baloo but this never affected their friendship as they were old pals.
One day, Baloo saw Mowgli playing with the monkeys happily and sharing food with them. He got very angry and came running towards Mowgli and scared all the monkeys to run away. But Baloo then realized he had never taught Mowgli how to treat wild monkeys.
“They have no law. They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people. We have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die,” said Baloo.
Suddenly it started raining. Baloo and Mowgli started running towards the nearest shelter and Mowgli kept thinking about what Baloo had told him about the monkeys. It was absolutely right.
One day while Baloo, Bagheera and Mowgli were having the midday nap, the monkeys took notice of the sleeping Mowgli lying in between Bagheera and Baloo. Suddenly, Mowgli felt something crawling through his legs and soon before he could shout, the monkeys took him up the tree. This woke Baloo and Bagheera. The monkeys took Mowgli to the upper branches where Bagheera dared not follow. Then they began their flight. Two of the strongest monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung off with him through the treetops.
For a time, he was afraid of being dropped. Then, he grew angry but could not do much except to struggle in order to release himself. Baloo and Bagheera were running behind but could not match the speed of the monkeys.
It was useless to look down, for he could only see the topsides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue. Rann the Kite who keeps a watch over the jungle was waiting for things to die. Rann saw that the monkeys were carrying something dropped a few hundred yards. He was surprised to see Mowgli being dragged up to a treetop. Seeing Rann Mowgli shouted, “Tell Baloo and Bagheera.”
Rann had never seen Mowgli before, though of course he had heard of him. So, he was confused what he would tell Baloo and Bagheera.
Rann soon approached Baloo and Bagheera and told them that he saw a man’s cub being dragged by the monkeys.
Baloo and Bagheera were furious with rage and grief. Bagheera climbed as he had never climbed before, but the thin branches broke beneath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark.
They both knew that the monkeys feared Kaa—the Rock Snake. He could climb as well as they could. He would steal the young monkeys in the night. The whisper of his name made their wicked tails cold.
“Let us go to Kaa,” said Baloo.
They found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the afternoon sun, admiring his beautiful new coat, for he had been in retirement for the last ten days changing his skin. Kaa was not a poisonous snake. In fact, he rather despised the poisonous snakes as cowards; but his strength lay in his hug. When he had once lapped his huge coils round anybody there was nothing to be said.
It was always difficult to get Kaa as he was the laziest animal of the jungle and had reasons to avoid work. It took lots of effort for Baloo and Bagheera to make up Kaa’s mind but he finally agreed to save Mowgli after giving all the possible excuses. 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.
A voice came from the sky suddenly. It was Rann, “I have seen Mowgli with the monkeys and they 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.”
Bagheera thanked Rann and decided to go to Cold Lairs. They all knew where that place was, but a 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. The monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere. 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,” said Bagheera. Baloo looked very serious. “I will go as fast as I can,” he said anxiously.
Baloo was too slow to match Kaa and Bagheera’s speed, so he had to rest at short distances. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting. So, they left him to come on later, while Bagheera hurried forward. Kaa also had to make full efforts to match a panther’s speed.
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.
Finally, Bagheera and Kaa reached the place.
The monkeys called the place their city. They would sit in circles on the hall, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect the pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them. 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. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy.
The monkeys dragged Mowgli 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 started dancing. 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.
Mowgli started feeling hungry. He called for food but none of the monkeys paid attention. Then he shouted loud which caught attention of the monkeys. The monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts. But they fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much trouble to go back with what was left of the fruit. Mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry. Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed.
Mowgli then said to himself, ‘So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jungle.’
No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was. The monkeys took him to a ruined summer-house of white marble in the centre of the terrace. The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the underground passage from the palace. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mowgli could not help laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave them. Mowgli made no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speakers singing their own praises. Mowgli kept on telling them that he was tired but they were least interested.
Bagheera, Baloo and Kaa were seeing this from the wall but needed some definite plan to rescue Mowgli as they knew monkeys were dangerous when in large numbers.
“I will go to the west wall,” Kaa whispered, “and come down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favour. They will not throw themselves upon my back in their hundreds.”
“I know it,” said Bagheera. “Would that Baloo were here! But we must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go to the terrace.”
The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli wondered what would come next he heard Bagheera’s light feet on the terrace. The black panther had raced up the slope almost without a sound and was striking. The monkeys were seated round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: “Someone is here! Kill him!” A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the summer’s house and pushed him through the hole of the broken dome.
Mowgli couldn’t do anything but stood as quietly as he could, peering through a small opening and listening to the furious din of the fight round the plack panther—the yells and chatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera’s deep, hoarse cough as he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his enemies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was fighting for his life.
Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe gave him new courage. He worked his way desperately, inch by inch, straight for the reservoirs, halting in silence. Then from the ruined wall nearest the jungle rose up the rumbling war-shout of Baloo. The old bear had done his best, but he could not come before. He panted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in a wave of monkeys, but he threw himself squarely on his haunches, and, spreading out his forepaws, hugged as many as he could hold, and then began to hit with a regular bat-bat-bat, like the flipping strokes of a paddle wheel. A crash and a splash told Mowgli that Bagheera had fought his way to the tank where the monkeys could not follow. The panther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of the water, while the monkeys stood there deep on the red steps, dancing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out to help Baloo.
It was then that Bagheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in despair gave the snake’s call for protection.
Then, Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious to kill. The monkeys scattered with the cries, “Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run!!”
Kaa was everything that the monkeys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits of his power; none of them could look him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug. And so they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was much thicker than that of Bagheera’s, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. Then Kaa opened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hissing word, and the far-away monkeys, hurrying to the defence of the Cold Lairs, stayed where they were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and crackled under them. Mowgli heard Bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up from the tank. The monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They clung around the necks of the big stone.
Mowgli started dancing with contempt as he now knew he was safe. Bagheera went to take Mowgli out of the hole before the monkeys attacked him again but Kaa knew no monkey would move without his permission.
Bagheera and Baloo were injured but had enough power left to get Mowgli out.
The moon was sinking behind the hills and the lines of trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged shaky fringes of things. Baloo went down to the tank for a drink and Bagheera began to put his fur in order, as Kaa glided out into the centre of the terrace and brought his jaws together with a ringing snap that drew all the monkeys’ eyes upon him. He turned twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving his head from right to left.
Baloo and Bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their throats, their neck hair bristling. Mowgli watched and wondered.
“It is only old Kaa making circles on the dust,” said Mowgli, “Let us go.” And the three slipped off through a gap in the walls to the jungle.
“Now,” said Bagheera, “jump on my back, Little Brother; and we will go home.”
Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s back and slept so deeply that he never woke when he was put down in the home-cave.
