Chapter-3
After Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan’s hide to the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee Pack that hence forward he would hunt in the Jungle alone; and the four children of Mother and Father Wolf said that they would hunt with him. But it is not easy to change all one’s life at once—particularly in the Jungle. The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told Mother Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and down the blade of his skinning knife—the same he had skinned Shere Khan with—they said he had learnt something. Then Akela and Gray Brother had to explain their share of the great buffalo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli had managed his war.
It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and from time to time, Mother Wolf would throw up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.
‘But for Akela and Gray Brother here,’ Mowgli said, at the end, ‘I could have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if you had seen the blue herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the Man-Pack flung stones at me!’
‘I am glad I did not see that last,’ said Mother Wolf, stiffly. ‘It is not my custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals! I would have taken a price from the Man-Pack; but I would have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes, I would have spared her alone.’ ‘Peace, peace, Raksha!’ said Father Wolf, lazily. ‘Our Frog has come back again—so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Man alone.’ Both Baloo and Bagheera echoed: ‘Leave Man alone.’
Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf’s side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again.
‘But what,’ said Akela, cocking one ear, ‘but what if men do not leave you alone, Little Brother?’
‘We be five,’ said Gray Brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word.
‘We also might attend to that hunting,’ said Bagheera, with a little switch switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. ‘But why think of Man now, Akela?’
‘For this reason,’ the Lone Wolf answered. ‘When that yellow thief’s hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make a mixed trail in case any should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly might know it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me.
Said Mang, “The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet’s nest.”’
‘It was a big stone that I threw,’ chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet’s nest, and racing to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him.
‘I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now I know, for I have good cause’—Akela looked here at the old dry scars on his flank and side—‘that men do not carry guns for pleasure. Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail—if, indeed, he be not already on it.’ ‘But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?’ said Mowgli angrily. ‘Your are a man, Little Brother,’ Akela returned. ‘It is not for us, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why.’ He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow, but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on.
‘Another time,’ Mowgli said, quietly, returning the knife to its sheath, ‘speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in two breaths—not one.’ ‘Phff! That is a sharp tooth,’ said Akela, snuffing at the blade’s cut in the earth, ‘but living with the Man-Pack has spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking.’
Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Gray Brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up-wind, and, half-crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously. He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose; and his three months in the smoky village had put him back sadly. However, he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect to catch the upper scent, which, though the faintest, is the truest.
‘Man!’ Akela growled, dropping on his haunches.
‘Buldeo!’ said Mowgli, sitting down. ‘He follows our trail, and yonder is the sunlight on his gun. Look!’ It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a second, on the brass clamps of the old Tower musket, but nothing in the Jungle winks with just that flash, except when the clouds race over the sky. Then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or even a highly-polished leaf will flash like a heliograph. But that day was cloudless and still.
‘I knew men would follow,’ said Akela, triumphantly. ‘Not for nothing have I led the Pack!’ Mowgli’s four wolves said nothing, but ran downhill on their bellies, melting into the thorn and underbrush.
‘Whither go you, and without word?’ Mowgli called.
‘Hush! We roll his skull here before mid-day!’ Gray Brother answered.
‘Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat Man!’ Mowgli shrieked.
‘Who was a wolf but now? Who drove the knife at me for thinking he might be a Man?’ said Akela, as the Four turned back sullenly and dropped to heel.
‘Am I to give reason for all I choose to do?’ said Mowgli, furiously. ‘That is Man! There speaks Man!’ Bagheera muttered under his whiskers.
‘Even so did men talk round the King’s cages at Oodeypore. We of the Jungle know that Man is wisest of all. If we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he is most foolish.’ Raising his voice, he added, ‘The Man-cub is right in this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one, unless we know what the others will do, is bad hunting. Come, let us see what this Man means towards us.’ ‘We will not come,’ Gray Brother growled. ‘Hunt alone, Little Brother. We know our own minds! The skull would have been ready to bring by now.’ Mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends, his chest heaving and his eyes full of tears. He strode forward, and, dropping on one knee, said, ‘Do I not know my mind? Look at me!’ They looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called them back again and again, till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and they trembled in every limb, while Mowgli stared and stared.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘of us five, which is leader?’ ‘you are a leader, Little Brother,’ said Gray Brother, and he licked Mowgli’s foot. ‘Follow, then,’ said Mowgli, and the four followed at his heels with their tails between their legs.
‘This comes of living with the Man-Pack,’ said Bagheera, slipping down after them. ‘There is more in the Jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo.’ The old bear said nothing, but he thought many things.
Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jungle, at right angles to Buldeo’s path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his musket on his shoulder, running up the two days’ old trail at a dog-trot.
Mowgli knew the manners and customs of the villagers very fairly. He argued that so long as they could eat, and talk, and smoke, they would not do anything else; but as soon as they had fed they would begin to be dangerous. Buldeo would be coming in before long, and if his escort had done its duty Buldeo would have a very interesting tale to tell. So he went in through the window, and, stooping over the man and the woman, cut their thongs, pulling out the gag, and looked round the hut for some milk.
Messua was half wild with pain and fear (she had been beaten and stoned all the morning), and Mowgli put his hand over her mouth just in time to stop a scream. Her husband was only bewildered and angry, and sat picking dust and things out of his torn beard. ‘I knew; I knew he would come,’ Messua sobbed at last. ‘Now do I know that he is my son’; and she caught Mowgli to her heart. Up to that time Mowgli had been perfectly steady, but here he began to tremble all over, and that surprised him immensely.
‘Why are these thongs? Why have they tied thee?’ he asked, after a pause.
‘To be put to the death for making a son of thee—what else?’ said the man, sullenly. ‘Look! I bleed.’
Messua said nothing, but it was at her wounds that Mowgli looked, and they heard him grit his teeth when he saw the blood. ‘Whose work is this?’ said he. ‘There is a price to pay.’ ‘The work of all the village. I was too rich. I had too many cattle. Therefore she and I are witches, because we gave thee shelter.’
‘I do not understand. Let Messua tell the tale.’
‘I gave thee milk, Nathoo; dost thou remember?’ Messua said, timidly. ‘Because thou wast my son, whom the tiger took, and because I loved you very dearly. They said that I was thy mother, the mother of a devil, and therefore worthy of death.’
‘And what is a devil?’ said Mowgli. ‘Death I have seen.’ The man looked up gloomily under his eyebrows, but Messua laughed. ‘See!’ she said to her husband, ‘I knew; I said that he was no sorcerer! He is my sonmy son!’
‘Son or sorcerer, what good will that do us?’ the man answered. ‘We be as dead already.’ ‘Yonder is the road through the Jungle’; Mowgli pointed through the window.
‘Your hands and feet are free. Go now.’ ‘We do not know the Jungle, my son, as—as you know,’ Messua began. ‘I do not think that I could walk far.’
‘And the men and women would be upon our backs and drag us here again,’ said the husband.
‘Hum!’ said Mowgli, and he tickled the palm of his hand with the tip of his skinning-knife; ‘I have no wish to do harm to anyone of this village Yet. But I do not think they will stay thee. In a little while they will have much to think upon.
Ah!’ he lifted his head and listened to shouting and trampling outside. ‘So they have let Buldeo come home at last?’ ‘He was sent out this morning to kill you,’ Messua cried.
‘Did you meet him?’ ‘Yes, we; I met him. He has a tale to tell; and while he is telling it there is time to do much. But first I will learn what they mean. Think where ye would go, and tell me when I come back.’ He bounded through the window and ran along again outside the wall of the village till he came within earshot of the crowd round the peepal-tree. Buldeo was lying on the ground, coughing and groaning, and everyone was asking him questions. His hair had fallen about his shoulders; his hands and legs were skinned from climbing up trees, and he could hardly speak, but he felt the importance of his position keenly. From time to time he said something about devils and singing devils, and magic enchantment, just to give the crowd a taste of what was coming. Then he called for water.
‘Bah!’ said Mowgli. ‘Chatter—chatter! Talk, talk! Men are blood brothers of the Bandar-log. Now he must wash his mouth with water; now he must blow smoke; and when all that is done he has still his story to tell. They are very wise people-men. They will leave no one to guard Messua till their ears are stuffed with uldeo’s tales. And-I grow as lazy as they!’ He shook himself and glided back to the hut. Just as he was at the window he felt a touch on his foot.
‘Mother,’ said he, for he knew that tongue well, ‘what do you do here?’ ‘I heard my children singing through the woods, and I followed the one I loved best. Little Frog, I have a desire to see that woman who gave you milk,’ said Mother Wolf, all wet with the dew.
‘They have bound and mean to kill her. I have cut those ties, and she goes with her man through the Jungle.’ ‘I also will follow. I am old, but not yet toothless.’ Mother Wolf reared herself up on end, and looked through the window into the dark of the hut.
In a minute she dropped noiselessly, and all she said was, ‘I gave you your first milk; but Bagheera speaks truth: Man goes to Man at the last.’
‘Maybe,’ said Mowgli, with a very unpleasant look on his face; ‘but tonight I am very far from that trail. Wait here, but do not let her see.’
‘Thou wast never afraid of me, Little Frog,’ said Mother Wolf, backing into the high grass, and blotting herself out, as she knew how.
‘And now,’ said Mowgli, cheerfully, as he swung into the hut again, ‘they are all sitting round Buldeo, who is saying that which did not happen. When his talk is finished, they say they will assuredly come here with the Red—with fire and burn you both. And then?’
‘I have spoken to my man,’ said Messua. ‘Kanhiwara is thirty miles from here, but at Kanhiwara we may find the English—’
‘And what Pack are they?’ said Mowgli.
‘I do not know. They be white, and it is said that they govern all the land, and do not suffer people to burn or beat each other without witnesses. If we can get thither tonight we live. Otherwise we die.’
‘Live then. No man passes the gates tonight. But what does he do?’ Messua’s husband was on his hands and knees digging up the earth in one corner of the hut.
‘It is his little money,’ said Messua. ‘We can take nothing else.’ ‘Ah, yes. The stuff that passes from hand to hand and never grows warmer.
‘Do they need it outside this place also?’ said Mowgli.
The man stared angrily. ‘He is a fool, and no devil,’ he muttered. ‘With the money I can buy a horse. We are too bruised to walk far, and the village will follow us in an hour.’ ‘I say they will not follow till I choose, but a horse is well thought of, for Messua is tired.’ Her husband stood up and knotted the last of the rupees into his waist-cloth. Mowgli helped Messua through the window, and the cool night air revived her, but the Jungle in the starlight looked very dark and terrible.
‘You know the trail to Kanhiwara?’ Mowgli whispered.
They nodded.
‘Good. Remember, now, not to be afraid. And there is no need to go quickly.’
Only there may be some small singing in the Jungle behind you and before.’
‘Think you we would have risked a night in the Jungle through anything less than the fear of burning? It is better to be killed by beasts than by men,’ said Messua’s husband; but Messua looked at Mowgli and smiled.
