 section 14 of the second jungle book this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read by Magdalena Cook the second jungle book by Rudyard Kipling section 14 the king's anchors part one these are the four that are never content that have never been filled since the Jews began Jackalos mouth and the glut of the kite and the hands of the ape and the eyes of man jungle saying card the big rock python had changed his skin for perhaps the 200th time since his birth and Magdalena never forgot that he owed his life to car for a night's work at cold layers which you may perhaps remember went to congratulate him skin changing always makes a snake moody and depressed till the new skin begins to shine and look beautiful carne never made fun of Magdalena anymore but accepted him as the other jungle people did for the master of the jungle and brought him all the news that a python of his size would naturally hear what card did not know about the middle jungle as they call it the life that runs close to the earth or under it the boulder burrow and the tree-bowl life might have been written upon the smallest of his scales that afternoon Mowgli was sitting in the circle of cars great coils fingering the flaked and broken old skin that lay all looped and twisted among the rocks just as car had left it car had very courteously packed himself under Mowgli's broad bare shoulders so that the boy was really resting in a living armchair even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect said Mowgli under his breath playing with the old skin strange to see the covering of one zone head at one zone feet hey but I lack feet said car and since this is the custom of all my people I do not find it strange does thy skin never feel old and harsh and I go and wash flathead but it is true in the great heats I have wished I could slour my skin without pain and run skinless I wash and also I take off my skin how looks the new coat Mowgli ran his hand down the diagonal checkerings of the immense back the turtle is harder backed but not so gay he said judgmentically the frog my name bearer is more gay but not so hard it is very beautiful to see like the mottling in the mouth of a lily it needs water a new skin never comes to full color before the first bath let us go bathe I will carry these said Mowgli and he stooped down laughing to lift the middle section of cars great body just where the barrel was thickest a man might just as well have tried to heave up a two-foot water main and car lay still puffing with quiet amusement then the regular evening game began the boy in the flush of his great strength and the python in his sumptuous new skin standing up one against the other for a wrestling match a trial of iron strength of course car could have crushed a dozen Mowgli's if he had let himself go but he played carefully and never lost one-tenth of his power ever since Mowgli was strong enough to endure a little rough handling car had taught him this game and it suppled his limbs as nothing else could sometimes Mowgli would stand lapped almost to his throat in cars shifting coils striving to get one arm free and catch him by the throat then car would give way limply and Mowgli with both quick moving feet would try to cramp the purchase of that huge tail as it flung backward feeling for a rock or a stump they would rock to and fro head-to-head each waiting for his chance till the beautiful statue like group melted in a whirl of black and yellow coils and struggling legs and arms to rise up again and again now now now said car making feints with his head that even Mowgli's quick hand could not turn aside look I touched their little brother here and here are thy hands numb here again the game always ended in one way with a straight driving blow off the head that knocked the boy over and over Mowgli could never learn the guard for that lightning lunch and as car said there was not the least used in trying good hunting car grunted at last and Mowgli as usual was shot away half a dozen yards gasping and laughing he rose with his fingers full of grass and followed car to the Weissnake's pet bathing place a deep pitchy black pool surrounded with rocks and made interesting by sunken tree stumps the boy slipped in jungle fashion without a sound and dived across rose to without a sound and turned on his back his arms behind his head watching the moon rising above the rocks and breaking up her reflection in the water with his toes cast diamond shaped head cut the pool like a razor and came out to rest on Mowgli's shoulder they lay still soaking luxuriously in the cool water it is very good said Mowgli at last sleeply now in the man pack at this hour as I remember they laid them down upon hard pieces of wood in the inside of a mud trap and having carefully shut out all the clean winds drew foul cloth over their heavy heads and made evil songs through their noses it is better in the jungle a hurrying cobra slipped down over a rock and drank gave them good hunting and went away said car as though he had suddenly remembered something so the jungle gives the all that there has ever decided little brother not all said Mowgli laughing else there would be a new and strong Shekhan to kill once the moon now I could kill with my own hands asking no help of buffaloes and also I have wished the sun to shine in the middle of the rains and the rains to cover the sun in the deep of summer and also I have never gone empty but I wish that I had killed a goat and also I have never killed a goat but I wished it had been Buck nor Buck but I wished it had been Nilgay but thus do we feel all of us there has no other desire the big snake demanded what more can I wish I have the jungle and the favour of the jungle is there any more between sunrise and sunset now the cobra said car began what cobra he that went away just now said nothing he was hunting it was another has so many dealings with the poison people I give them their own path they carry death in the foretooth and that is not good for they are so small but what hood is this thou has spoken with car rolled down slowly in the water like a steamer in a beam sea three or four moons since he said I hunted in cold layers which place thou has not forgotten and the thing I hunted fled shrieking past the tanks and to that house whose sider once broke off for thy sake and ran into the ground but the people of cold layers do not live in burrows mowgli knew that car was telling of the monkey people this thing was not living but seeking to live car replied with the quiver of his tongue he ran into a burrow that led very far I followed and having killed I slept and when I wait I went forward under the earth even so coming at last upon a white hood a white cobra who spoke of things beyond my knowledge and showed me many things I had never before seen new game was a good hunting mowgli turned quickly on his side it was no game and it would have broken all my teeth but the white hood said that a man he spoke as one that knew the breed that a man would give the breath under his ribs for only the sight of those things we will look said mowgli I now remember that I was once a man slowly slowly it was haste that killed the yellow snake that ate the sun we two spoke together under the earth and I spoke of thee naming thee as a man said the white hood and he is indeed as old as the jungle it is long since I have seen a man let him come and he shall see all these things for the least of which very many men would die that must be a new game and yet the poison people do not tell us when game is afoot they are an unfriendly folk it is not a game it is it is I cannot say what it is we will go there I have never seen a white hood and I wish to see the other things did he kill them they're all dead things he says he is the keeper of them all ah as the wolf stands above meat he has taken to his own lair let us go mowgli swam to bank rolled on the grass to dry himself and the two 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 car led up to the ruins of the queen's pavilion that stood on the terrace slipped over the rubbish and dived down the half-joke staircase that went underground from the centre of the pavilion mowgli gave the snake hall we be of one blood year 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 30 feet overhead had forced out a solid stone in the wall they crept through the gap and found themselves in a large vault whose dome droop had also been broken away by the tree root 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 foot long and bleached by being in the darkness to an old ivory white even the spectacle marks of his spread hood had faded to faint yellow his eyes was 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 20 000 horses and cattle past counting the city of the king of 20 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 he sungs among elephants baguera has slain all the horses in one village and what is a king I told these had cast 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 it when my sons sons are as white as I salomdi son of chandrabija son of vigija son of yggasuri made it in the days of bupah rawal whose cattle are ye it is a lost trail said mowgli turning to car 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 a knife in the snake's tongue mowgli they call me was the answer I am off the jungle the wolves are my people and car here is my brother father of cobras who art thou I'm the warden of the king's treasure caran 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 brahman's my masters um said mowgli to himself I have dealt with one brahman 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 great trees tearing the stones apart trees and men do not grow together car 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 changed never till the stone is lifted and the brahman's come down singing the songs that I know and feed me with warm milk and take me to that light again I I I and no other am the warden of the king's treasure the city is dead you say and here are the roots of the trees stoop down then and take what you will earth has no treasure like to these man with a snake's tongue if thou's can'ts go alive by the way that thou has entered it the lesser kings will be thy servants again the trail is lost said magley couly can any jackal have borrowed so deep and bitten this great whitewood 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 here's the cobra before thine eyes close I will allow thee this favor look thou and see what man has never seen before they do not well in the jungle who speaks to maglia favours said the boy between his teeth but the dark changes all as I know I will look if that pleases thee he stared with puckered up eyes round the vault and lifted up from the floor a handful of something that glittered oh he 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 coin 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 ricing through it as rex slipped through the sand were dueled elephant how-dars of embossed silver studded with plates of hammered gold and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises there were pelanquins and litters for carrying queens framed and braced with silver and enamel with jade handle 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 dueled eyes there were coats of mail gold inlaid on steel and fringe with rotted and blackened seed pearls there were helmets crested and beaded with pigeons blood rubies there were shields of lacquer of tortoiseshell rhinoceros hide strapped embossed 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 ceased 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 no strings armlets headbands finger rings and girdles past any counting there were belts seven fingers broad a 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 today however poor has a horde to which he is always adding and though once in a long while some enlightened prince may send off 40 or 50 bullet 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 mahogly 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 howder half buried in the coins it was a three foot anchors or elephant goat something like a small boat hook the top was one round shining ruby and eight inches of the handle below it was studded with rough turquoise is close together giving a most satisfactory grip below them was a rim of jade with a flower pattern running around it only the leaves were emeralds and the blossoms were ruby sunk in the cool green stone the rest of the handle was a shaft of pure ovary while the point the spike and hook was gold inlaid steel with pictures of elephant catching and the pictures attracted mahogly who saw that they had something to do with his friend harthe the silent the white cobra had been following him closely is this not worth dying to behold he said have i not done the a great favor i do not understand said mahogly the things are hard and cold and by no means good to eat but this he lifted the anchors i desire to take away that i may see it in the sun thou say as they are all thine will thou give it to me and i will bring the frogs to eat the white cobra fairly shook with evil delight assuredly i will give it he said all that there is i will give thee till thou ghost away but i go now the 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 mahogly 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 treasures 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 that will give me the anchors to take away it is good hunting if not it is good hunting nonetheless i do not fight with the poison people and i was also taught the master word of the 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 list it is long since i have seen man and the 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 a while kaa of the rocks and see the boy run there is room for great sport here life is good run to and fro a while and make sport boy mowgli put his hands 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 anchor's held point down he flung it from him quickly and it dropped crossways just behind the great snakes hood pinning him to the floor in a flash kaa's weight was upon the writhing body paralyzing 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 no he said as he drew the blade i will never kill again say for food but look you kaa he caught the snake behind the hood forced the mouth open with a blade of the knife and showed the terrible poison fangs of the upper jaw lying black and withered in the gum the white cobra had outlived his poison as a snake will end of section 14 section 15 of the second jungle book this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read by Magdalena Cook the second jungle book by Rajad Kipling section 15 the king's anchor's part two through it is dried up literally a rotted out tree stump said mowgli and motioning kaa away he picked up the anchor setting the white cobra free the king's treasure needs a new warden he said gravely through thou has not done well run to and fro and make sport through i am ashamed kill me hiss the white cobra there has been too much talk of killing we will go now i take the thorn pointer thing though because i have fought and worsted thee see then that the thing does not kill thee at last it is death remember it is death there is enough in that thing to kill the men of all my city not long will thou hold it jungle man nor he who takes it from thee they will kill and kill and kill for its sake my strength is dried up but the anchors will do my work it is death it is death it is death mowgli crawled out through the hole in the passage again and the last that he saw was the white cobra striking furiously with his harmless fangs at the stolen golden faces of the gods that lay on the floor and hissing it is death they were glad to get to the lighter day once more and when they were back in their own jungle and mowgli made the anchors glitter in the morning light he was almost as pleased as though he had found a bunch of new flowers to stick in his hair this is brighter than bagheera's eyes he said delightedly as he twirled the ruby i will show it to him but what did zoom mean when he talked of death i cannot say i am sorrowful to my tale's tale that he felt not thy knife there is always evil at cold layers above ground or below but now i am hungry does thou hunt with me this dawn said ka no bagheera must see this thing good hunting mowgli danced off flourishing the great anchors and stopping from time to time to admire it till he came to that part of the jungle bagheera chiefly used and found him drinking after a heavy kill mowgli told him all his adventures from beginning to end and bagheera sniffed at the anchors between wiles when mowgli came to the white cobra's last words the panther purred approvingly then the white hood spoke the thing which is mowgli asked quickly i was born in the king's cages at udipool and it is in my stomach that i know some little of man very many men would kill thrice in a night for the sake of that one big redstone alone but the stone makes it heavy to the hand my little bright knife is better and see the redstone is not good to eat then why would they kill mowgli go thou and sleep thou has lived among men and i remember men kill because they are not hunting for idleness and pleasure wake again bagheera for what use was this thorn-pointed thing made bagheera half opened his eyes he was very sleepy with a malicious twinkle it was made by men to thrust into the head of the sons of harthy so that the blood should pour out i have seen the like in the street of udipool before our cages that thing has tasted the blood of many such as harthy but why do they thrust into the heads of elephants to teach them man's law having neither claws nor teeth men make these things and worse always more blood when i come near even to the things the manpack have made said mowgli disgustedly he was getting a little tired of the weight of the anchors if i had known this i would not have taken it first it was misuwa's blood on the thongs and now it's hathies i will use it no more look the anchors flew sparkling and buried itself point down 30 yards away between the trees so my hands are clean of death said mowgli rubbing his palms on the fresh moist earth the sous said death would follow me he is old and white and mad white or black death or life i am going to sleep little brother i cannot hunt all night and how all day as do some folk bagheera went off to a hunting layer that he knew about two miles off mowgli made an easy way for himself up a convenient tree knotted three or four creepers together and in less time than it takes to tell was swinging in a hammock 50 feet above ground though he had no positive objection to strong daylight mowgli followed the custom of his friends and used it as little as he could when he waved among the very loud voice people that live in the trees it was twilight once more and he had been dreaming off the beautiful pebbles he had thrown away at least i will look at that thing again he said and slid down a creeper to the earth but bagheera was before him mowgli could hear him snuffing in the half light where is the thorn pointed thing cried mowgli a man has taken it here is the trail now we shall see whether thu spoke truths if the pointed thing is death that man will die let us follow kill first said bagheera an empty stomach makes a careless eye men go very slowly and the jungle is wet enough to hold the lightest mark they killed as soon as they could but it was nearly three hours before they finished their meat and drink and buckled down the trail the jungle people know that nothing makes up for being hurried over your meals think you the pointed thing will turn in the man's hand and kill him mowgli asked the thu said it was death we shall see when we find said bagheera trotting with his head low it is single foot he meant that there was only one man and the weight of the thing has pressed his heel far into the ground hey this is as clear as summer lightning mowgli answered and they fell into the quick choppy trail trot in and out through the checkers of the moonlight following the marks of those two bare feet now he runs swiftly said mowgli the toes are spread apart they went on over some wet ground now why does he turn aside here wait said bagheera and flung himself forward with one superb bound as far as ever he could the first thing to do when a trail ceases to explain itself is to cast forward without leaving your own confusing foot marks on the ground bagheera turned as he landed and faced mowgli crying here comes another trail to meet him it is a smaller foot this second trail and the toes turn inward then mowgli ran up and looked it is the foot of a gond hunter he said look here he dragged his bow on the grass that is why the first trail turned aside so quickly big foot hid from little foot that is true said bagheera now less by crossing each other's tracks we failed the signs let each take one trail i am big foot little brother and thou are little foot the gond bagheera leaped back to the original trail leaving mowgli stooping above the curious narrow track off the wild little man of the woods now said bagheera moving step by step along the chain of footprints i big foot turn aside here now i hide me behind a rock and stand still not daring to shift my feet cry thy trail little brother now i little foot come to the rock said mowgli running up his trail now i sit down under the rock leaning upon my right hand and resting my bow between my toes i wait long for the mark of my feet is deep here i also said bagheera hidden behind the rock i wait resting the end of the thorn pointed thing upon a stone it slips for here is the scratch upon the stone cry thy trail little brother one two twigs and a big branch are broken here said mowgli in an undertone now how shall i cry that ah it is plain now i little foot go away making noises and trampling so that big foot may hear me he moved away from the rock pace by pace among the trees his voice rising in the distance as he approached a little cascade i go far away to where the noise of falling water covers my noise and here i wait cry thy trail bagheera big foot the panther had been casting in every direction to see how big foot's trail led away from behind the rock then he gave tongue i come from behind the rock upon my knees dragging the thorn pointed seeing no one i run i big foot runs swiftly the trail is clear let each follow his own i run bagheera swept on along the clearly marked trail and mowgli followed the steps of the gond for some time there were silence in the jungle where art thou little foot cried bagheera mowgli's voice answered him not fifty yards to the right um said the panther with a deep cough the two run side by side drawing nearer they raced on another half mile always keeping about the same distance till mowgli whose head was not so close to the ground as bagheera's cried they have met good hunting look here stood little foot with his knee on a rock and yonder his big foot indeed not ten yards in front of them stretched across the pile of broken rocks lay the body of a villager of the district a long small feathered gond arrow through his back and breast was the do so old and so mad little brother said bagheera gently here is one death at least follow on but where is the drinker of elephant's blood the red-eyed thorn little foot has it perhaps it is single foot again now the single trail of a light man who had been running quickly and bearing a burden on his left shoulder held on round along low spur of dried grass where each footfall seemed to the sharp eyes of the trackers marked in hot iron neither spoke till the trail ran up to the ashes of the campfire hidden in a ravine again said bagheera checking as though he had been turned into stone the body of the little wise and gond laid with its feet in the ashes and bagheera looked inquiringly at mowgli that was done with a bamboo said the boy after one glance i have used such a thing among the buffaloes when i served in the man pack the father of cobras i am sorrowful that i made a gesture of him knew the breed well as i might have known said i not that men kill for idleness indeed they killed for the sake of the red and blue stones bagheera answered remember i was in the king's cages at udipaw one two three four tracks said mowgli stooping over the ashes four tracks of men with shod feet they do not go so quickly as gond's now what evil had the little woodman done to them see they talked together all five standing up before they killed him bagheera let us go back my stomach is heavy in me and yet it heaves up and down like an oriole's nest at the end of a branch it is not good hunting to live game afoot follow said the panther those eight shod feet had not gone far no more was said for fully an hour as they worked up the broad trail of the four men with shod feet it was clear hot daylight now and bagheera said i smell smoke men are always more ready to eat than to run mowgli answered trotting in and out between the low scrub bushes of the new jungle they were exploring bagheera a little to his left made an indescribable noise in his throat here is one that has done with feeding said he a tumbled bundle of gay colored clothes lay under a bush and round it was some spilt flour that was done by the bamboo again said mowgli see that white dust is what men eat they have taken the kill from this one he carried their food and given him for a kill to chill the kite it is the third said bagheera i will go with new big frogs to the father of cobras and feed him fat said mowgli to himself the drinker of elephant's blood is death himself but still i do not understand follow said bagheera they had not gone half a mile further when they heard co the crow singing the death song in the top off a tamarisk under whose shade there were men lying a half dead fire smoked in the center of the circle under an iron plate which held a blackened and burned cake of unleavened bread close to the fire and blazing in the sunshine lay the ruby and turquoise anchors the thing works quickly all ends here said bagheera how did these die mowgli there is no mark on any a jungle dweller gets to learn by experience as much as many doctors know of poisonous plants and berries mowgli sniffed the smoke that came up from the fire broke off a morsel off the blackened bread tasted it and spat it out again apple of death he coughed the first must have made it ready in the food for these who killed him having first killed the gond good hunting indeed the kills follow close said bagheera apple of death is what the jungle call thorn apple or datura the readyest poison in all india what now said the panther must thou and i kill each other for yonder red eyed slayer can it speak said mowgli in a whisper did i do it wrong when i throw it away between us two it can do no wrong for we do not desire what men desire if it be left here it will assuredly continue to kill men after another as fast as nuts fall in the high wind i have no love to men but even i would not have them die six in a night what matter they are only men they killed one another and were well pleased said bagheera the first little woodman hunted well they are cubs nonetheless and a cub will drown himself to bite the moon's light on the water the fault was mine said mowgli who spoke as though he knew all about everything i will never again bring into the jungle strange things not though they be as beautiful as flowers this he handled the anchors gingerly goes back to the father of cobras but first we must sleep and we cannot sleep near these sleepers also we must bury him lest he run away and kill another six dig me a hole under that tree but little brother said bagheera moving off to the spot i tell thee it is no fault of the blood drinker the trouble is with the men all one said mowgli dig the hole deep when we wake i will take him up and carry him back two nights later as the white cobras sat mourning in the darkness of the vault ashamed and robbed and alone the turquoise anchors well through the hole in the wall and clashed on the floor of golden coins father of cobras said mowgli he was careful to keep the other side of the wall get thee a young and ripe one of thine own people to help the guard the king's treasures so that no man may come away alive anymore aha it returns then i said the thing was death how comes is that they are still alive the old cobra mumbled twining lovingly around the anchor's half by the bull that bought me i don't know that thing has killed six times in a night let him go out no more end of section 15 section 16 of the second jungle book this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Catherine Eastman the second jungle book by Rudyard Kipling section 16 the song of the little hunter air more the peacock flutters air the monkey people cry air chill the kite swoops down a furlong sheer through the jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh he is fear oh little hunter he is fear very softly down the glade runs a waiting watching shade and the whisper spreads and widens far and near and the sweat is on my brow for he passes even now he is fear oh little hunter he is fear air the moon has climbed the mountain air the rocks are ribbed with light when the downward dipping trails are dank and drear comes a breathing hard behind the snuffle snuffle through the night it is fear oh little hunter it is fear on thy knees and draw the bow bid the shrilling arrow go in the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear but thy hands are loose and weak and the blood has left thy cheek it is fear oh little hunter it is fear when the heat cloud sucks the tempest when the slivered pine trees fall when the blinding blaring rain squalls lash and veer through the war gongs of the thunder rings a voice more loud than all it is fear oh little hunter it is fear now the spades are banked and deep now the footless boulders leap now the lightning shows each littlest leaf rib clear but thy throat is shut and dried and thy heart against thy side hammers fear oh little hunter this is fear end of section 16 section 17 of the second jungle book this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings own the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org the second jungle book by radiod kippling section 17 the people of the eastern ice they are melting like the snow they beg for coffee and sugar they go where the white men go the people of the western ice they learn to steal and fight they sell their furs to the trading post they sell their souls to the white the people of the southern ice they trade with the wailers crew their women have many ribbons but their tents are torn and few but the people of the elderites beyond the white men's ken their spears are made of the narwhal horn and they are the last of the men translation he has opened his eyes look put him in the skin again he will be a strong dog on the fourth month we will name him for whom said amorak could lose eyes rolled around the skinlined snowhouse till it fell on 14-year-old kotaku sitting on the sleeping bench making a button out of walrus ivory name him for me said kotaku with a grin i shall need him one day could lu grind back till his eyes were almost buried in the fat of his flat cheeks and nodded to amorak while the puppy's fierce mother whined to see her baby wriggling far out of reach in the little seal skin pouch hung above the warmth of the blubber lamp kotaku went on with his carving and could lose through a rolled bundle of leather dog harnesses into a tiny little room that opened from one side of the house slipped off his heavy deerskin hunting suit put it in a whale bone net that hung over another lamp and dropped down on the sleeping bench to whittle at a piece of frozen seal meat till amorak his wife should bring the regular dinner of boiled meat and blood soup he had been out since early dawn at the seal holes eight miles away and had come home with three big seal halfway down the long low snow passage or tunnel that led to the inner door of the house you could hear snapping and yelpings as the dogs of his sleigh team released from the day's work scuffled for warm places when the yelpings grew too loud kotaku lazily rolled off the sleeping bench and picked up a whip with an 18 inch handle of springy whale bone and 25 feet of heavy plaited thong he dived into the passage where it sounded as though all the dogs were eating him alive but that was no more than their regular grace before meals when he crawled out at the far end half a dozen furry heads followed him with their eyes as he went to a sort of gallows of whale jawbones from which the dog's meat was hung spit off the frozen stuff in big lumps with a broad-headed spear and stood his whip in one hand and the meat in the other each beast was called by name the weakest first and won't be dyed any dog that moves out of his turn for the taping lash would shoot out like thong lightning and flick away an inch or so of hair and hide each beast's ground snapped choked once over his portion and hurried back to the protection of the passage while the boys stood upon the snow under the blazing northern light and dealt out justice the last to be served was the big black leader of the team who kept order when the dogs were harnessed and to him kotaku gave a double allowance of meat as well as an extra crack of the whip ah said kotaku coiling up the lash i have a little one over the lamp that will make a great many howlings saabok get in he crawled back over the huddle dogs dusted the dry snow from his furs with the whale bone beta that americ kept by the door tapped the skin lined roof of the house to shake off any icicles that might have fallen from the dome of snow above and curled up on the bench the dogs in the passage snored and whined in their sleep the baby boy in americ's deep fur hood kicked and choked and gurgled and the mother of the newly named puppy lay at kotaku's side her eyes fixed on the bundle of seal skin warm and safe above the broad yellow flame of the lamp and all this happened far away to the north beyond labrador beyond hudson straight with the great tides heave the ice about north of melville peninsula north even of the narrow fury and hecklust rates on the north shore of baffin land where barlott's island stands above the ice of lancaster sound like a pudding bowl wrong side up north of lancaster sound there is little we know anything about except north deven and ellersmere land but even there live a few scattered people next door as it were to the very pole kadlu was an inuit what you call an eskimo and his tribe some 30 persons in all belong to the tananemiat the country lying at the back of something in the maps that desolate coast is written navy board inland but the inuit name is best because the country lies at the very back of everything in the world for nine months of the year there was only ice and snow and gale after gale with a cold that no one can realize who has never seen a thermometer even at zero for six months of those nine it is dark and that is what makes it so horrible in the three months of summer it only freezes every other day and every night and then the snow begins to weep off on the southerly slopes and a few ground willows put out their woolly buds a tiny scone crop or so makes believe to blossom beaches are fine gravel and rounded stones run down to the open sea and polished boulders and streaked rocks lift up above the granulated snow but all that has gone in a few weeks and the wild winter locks down again on the land while at sea the ice tears up and down in the offing jamming and ramming and splitting and hitting and pounding and grounding till it all freezes together ten feet thick from the land outward to deep water in the winter cadlou would follow the seal to the edge of this land ice and spear them as they came up to breathe at their blow holes the seal must have opened water to live and catch fish in and in the deep of winter the ice would sometimes run 80 miles without a break from the nearest shore in the spring he and his people retreated from the flows to the rocky mainland where they put up tents of skins and sneered the seabirds or spared the young seal basking on the beaches later they would go south into baffin land after the reindeer and took at their year's store of salmon from the hundreds of streams and lakes of the interior coming back north in September or October for the musk ox hunting and the regular winter sealery this traveling was done with dog slays 20 and 30 miles a day or sometimes down the coast in big skin women boats when the dogs and the babies lay among the feet of the rowers and the women sang songs as they glided from cape to cape over the glassy cold waters all the luxuries that the talanemriat knew came from the south driftwood for slay runners rod iron for harpoon tips steel knives tin kettles that cooked food much better than the old soapstone affairs flint and steel and even mattress as well as the coloured ribbon for the women's hair little cheap mirrors and red cloth for the edgings of deerskin dressed jackets cadlou traded the rich creamy twisted narwhal horn and musk ox teeth these are just as valuable as pearls to the southern innuit and they in turn traded with the whalers and the missionary posts of exeter and cumberland sounds and so the chain went on till a kettle picked up by ship's cook in the bendy bazaar might end its days over a rubber lamp somewhere on the cool side of the arctic circle cadlou being a good hunter was rich in iron harpoons snow knives bird darts and all the other things that make life easy up there in the great cold and he was the head of his tribe or as they say a man who knows all about it by practice this did not give him any authority except now and then he could advise his friends to change their hunting grounds but cadlou used it to domineer a little in the lazy fat innuit fashion over the other boys when they came out at night to play ball in the moon night or to sing the child's song to the aurora borealis but at fourteen an innuit feels himself a man and cadlou was tired of making snares for wildfowl and kit foxes and most tired of all of helping to women to true seal and deer skins that supples them as nothing else can the long day through while the men were out hunting he wanted to go into the coggy the singing house when the hunters gathered there for their mysteries and the anglicock the sorcerer frightened them into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put out and you could hear the spirit of the reindeer stamping on the roof and when a spear was thrust out into the open black knight he came back covered with hot blood he wanted to throw his big boots into the net with the tired air of ahead of the family and took ample with the hunters when they dropped in of an evening and played a sort of homemade roulette with a tin pot and nail there were hundreds of things he wanted to do but the grown men laughed at him and said wait till you've been in the buckle Kotaku hunting is not all catching now that his father had named a puppy for him things look brighter and then he would does not waste the good dog on his son till the boy knows something of dog driving and Kotaku was more than sure that he knew more than everything if the puppy had not had an iron constitution he would have died from over stuffing and overhandling Kotaku made him a tiny harness with a trace to it and hauled him all over the floor shouting oh go to the right go to the left oh ha ha stop the puppy did not like it at all but being fished for in this way was pure happiness beside being put to the slay for the first time he just sat down on the snow and played with a seal hide trace that ran from his harness to the pitou the big thong in the bows of the slay then the team started and the puppy found the heavy 10 foot slay running up his back and dragging him along the snow while Kotaku laughed till the tears ran down his face then followed days and days of the cruel whip that hisses like the wind over ice and his companions all bit him because he did not know his work and the harness chaffed him and he was not allowed to sleep with Kotaku anymore but had to take the coldest place in the passage it was a sad time for the puppy the boy learned too as fast as a dog though a dog slay is a heartbreaking thing to manage each beast is harnessed the weakest nearest the driver by his own separate trace which runs under his left foreleg to the main thong where it is fastened by a sort of button and loop which can be slipped by a turn of the wrist thus freeing one dog at a time this is very necessary because young dogs often get the trace between their hind legs where it cuts to the bone and they one and all will go visiting their friends as they run jumping in and out among the traces then they fight and the result is more mixed than a wet fishing line next morning a great deal of trouble can be avoided by scientific use of the whip every inuit boy prides himself as being a master of the long lash but it is easy to flicker the mark on the ground and difficult to lean forward and catch a shaking dog just behind the shoulders when the slay is going at full speed if you call one dog's name for visiting and accidentally lash another the two will fight it out at once and stop all the others again if you travel with a companion and begin to talk or by yourself and sing the dogs will halt turn around and sit down to hear what you have to say Kotaku was run away from once or twice through forgetting to block the slay when he stopped and he broke many lashings and ruined a few thongs before he could be trusted with a full team of eight and the light slay then he felt himself a person of consequence and on smooth black ice with a bold heart and quick elbow he smoked along over the levels as fast as a pack in full cry he would go 10 miles to the seal holes and when he was on the hunting grounds he would twitch a trace loose from the pituit and free the big black leader who was the clearest dog in the team as soon as the dog had centered a breathing hole Kotaku would reverse the slay driving a couple of sword-off antlers that stuck up like perambulator handles from the backrest deep into the snow so that the team could not get away then he would crawl forward inch by inch and wait till a seal came up to breathe then he would stab down swiftly with his spear and running line and presently would haul his seal up to the lip of the ice while the black leader came up and helped to pull the carcass across the ice to the slay this was the time when the harnessed dogs yelped and foamed with excitement and Kotaku lay the long lash like a red hot bar across all their faces till the carcass froze stiff going home was the heavy work the loaded slay had to be humid among the rough ice and the dog sat down and looked hungrily at the seal instead of pulling at last they would strike the well-worn slay road to the village and Tudokai along the ringing ice heads down and tails up while Kotaku struck up the anchor-tivor and tainai tainai tana the song of the returning hunter and voices hailed him from house to house under all that dim star-lit and sky when Kotaku the dog came to his full growth he enjoyed himself too he fought his way up the team steadily fight after fight till one fine evening over their food he tackled the big black leader Kotaku the boy saw fair play and made second dog of him as they say so he was promoted to the long thong of the leading dog running five feet in advance of all others it was his bounden duty to stop all fighting in harness or out of it and he wore a collar of copper wire very thick and heavy on special occasions he was fed with cooked food inside the house and sometimes was allowed to sleep on the bench with Kotaku he was a good seal dog and would keep the musk ox at bay by running around him and snacking at his heels he would even and this for a slay dog is the last proof of bravery he would even stand up to the gaunt Arctic wolf whom all dogs of the north as a rule fear beyond anything that walks the snow he and his master they did not count the team of ordinary dogs as company hunted together day after day and night after night fur wrapped boy and savaged long-haired narrow-eyed white fanged yellow brute all an Inuit has to do is get food and skins for himself and his family the women folk make the skins into clothing and occasionally help in trapping small game but the bulk of the food and they eat enormously must be found by the men if the supply fails there was no one up there to buy or beg or borrow from the people must die an Inuit does not think of these chances until he was forced to Cadlou Kotaku Amarack and the boy baby who kicked about in Amarack's fur hood and chewed pieces of rubber all day was happy together as any family in the world they came of a very gentle race and then you would sell them loses his temper and almost never strikes a child who did not know exactly what telling a real lie meant still less how to steal they were content to spear their living out of the heart of the bitter hopeless cold to smile all their smiles until queer ghost and fairy tales of evenings and eat like it eat no more and sing the endless women's song through the long lamp-lighted days as they mended their clothes and their hunting gear but one terrible winter everything betrayed them the Tananami it returned from the yearly salmon fishing and made their houses on the early ice to the north of Violet's Island ready to go after the seal as soon as the sea froze but it was an early and savage autumn all through September there were continuous scales that broke up the smooth seal ice when it was only four or five feet thick and forced it inland and piled a great barrier some 20 miles broad have lumped and ragged and needly ice over which it was impossible to draw the dog's nays the edge of the flow off which the seal were used to fish in winter laid perhaps 20 miles beyond this barrier and out of reach of the Tananamiat even so they might have managed to scrape through their winter on their stock of frozen salmon and stored blood and what the traps gave them but in December one of their hunters came across a toothpick a skin-ten of three women and a girl nearly dead whose men had come down from the far north and been crushed in their little skin-hunting boats when they went out after the long-horned narwhale. Kadlu of course could only distribute the women among the huts of the winter village for no one knew it dare refuse a meal to a stranger he never knows when his own turn might come to beg Amarak took the girl who was about 14 into her house as a sort of servant from the cut of her sharp pointed hood and the long diamond pattern of her white deer skin leggings they supposed she came from Ellesmere land she had never seen ten cooking bots or wooden shod slays before but Katuku the boy and Katuku the dog were rather fond of her then all the foxes went south and even the wolverine that growling blunt-headed little thief of the snow did not take the trouble to follow the line of empty traps that Katuku sent the tribe lost a couple of their best hunters who were badly crippled in a fight with a musk ox and this threw more work on the others Katuku went out day after day with a light hunting sleigh and six or seven of the strongest dogs looking till his eyes ached for some patch of clear ice where a seal might perhaps have scratched a breathing hole Katuku the dog ranged far and wide and in the dead stillness of the icefield Katuku the boy could hear his half choked wine of excitement above a seal hole three miles away as plain as though he were at his elbow when the dog found a hole the boy would build himself a little low snow wall to keep off the worst of the bitter wind and there he would wait 10 12 20 hours for the seal to come up and breathe his eyes glued to the tiny mark he had made above the hole to guide the downward thrust of his heartburn a little seal skin met under his feet and his legs tied together in the in the totary ang the buckle that the old hunters had talked about this helps to keep a man's legs from twitching as he waits and waits and waits for the quicky of seal to rise though there is no excitement about it you can easily believe that the sitting still in the buckle with the thermometer perhaps 40 degrees below zero is the hardest work and he knew it knows when the seal was caught katuku the dog would bound forward his trace drowning behind him and helped to pull the body to the sleigh where the tired and hungry dogs lay suddenly under the lee of the broken ice a seal did not go very far for each mouth in the little village had a right to be filled and neither bone hide or sinew was wasted the dog's meat was taken for human use an amarack fed the team with pieces of old summer skin tints raked out from under the sleeping bench and they hailed and hailed again and waked to howling hungly one could tell by the soapstone lamps in the huts that famine was near in good seasons when blubber was plentiful the light in the boat-shaped lamps would be two feet high cheerful oily and yellow now it was a bare six inches amarack carefully pricked down the moss wick when an unwatched flame brightened for a moment and the eyes of all the family followed her hand the horror of famine up there in the great cold is not so much dying as dying in the dark all he knew it dreaded the dark that presses on them without a break for six months in each year and when the lamps are low in the houses the minds of the people begin to be shaken and confused but worse was to come the underfed dogs snapped and growled in the passages glaring at the cold stars and snuffing into the bitter wind night after night when they stopped howling the silence filled down again as solid and heavy as a snow drift against the door and men could hear the beating of the blood in the thin passages of the air and the thumping of their own hearts that sounded as loud as the noise of saucerous drums beaten across the snow one night katuku the dog who had been unusually sullen in harness leaped up and pushed his head against katuku's knee katuku patted him but the dog still pushed blindly forward thawning then katlu waked and gripped the heavy wolf-like head and stared into the glassy eyes the dog whimpered and shivered between katlu's knees the hair rose about his neck and he growled as though a stranger at the door then he barked joyously and rolled on the ground and bit at katuku's boot like a puppy what is it said katuku for he was beginning to be afraid the sickness katlu answered it is the dog's sickness katuku the dog lifted his nose and howled and howled again i have not seen this before what will he do said katuku katlu lifted one shoulder a little and crossed the hut for his short stabbing hard tooth the big dog looked at him howled again and slunk away down the passage while the other dogs do aside right and left to give him ample room when he was out on the snow he barked furiously as though on the trail of a musk ox and barking and leaping and frisking passed out of sight his trouble was not hydrophobia but simple plain madness the cold and the hunger and above all the dark had turned his head and when the terrible dog sickness once shows itself in a team it spreads like wildfire next day another dog sickened and was killed then and there by katuku as he bit and struggled among the traces then the black second dog who had been the leader in the old days suddenly gave tongue on an imaginary reindeer track and when they slipped him from the pitu he flew at the throat of an ice cliff and ran away as his leader had done his harness on his back after that no one would take the dogs out again they needed them for something else and the dogs knew it and although they were tied down and fed by hand their eyes were full of despair and fear to make things worse the old women began to tell ghost tales and to say that they had met the spirits of the dead hunters lost that autumn who prophesied all sorts of horrible things katuku agreed more for the loss of his dog than anything else for though an enduet eats enormously he also knows how to starve at the hunger the darkness the cold and the exposure told on his strength and he began to hear voices inside his head and see people who were not there out of the tail of his eye one night he had unbuckled himself after 10 hours waiting above a blind seal hole and was staggering back to the village faint and dizzy he halted to lean his back against the boulder which happened to be supported like a rock and stone on a single jutting point of eyes his weight disturbed the balance of the thing it rolled over ponderously and as kotaku sprang aside to avoid it slid after him squeaking and hissing on the ice slope that was enough for kotaku he had been brought up to believe that every rock and boulder had its owner his innuer who was generally a one-eyed kind of woman thing called a tornag and that when the tornag meant to help a man she rolled after him inside her stone house and asked him whether he would take her for a guardian spirit in samathors the ice prop rocks and boulders roll and slip all over the face of the land so you can easily see how the idea of live stones arose kotaku heard the blood beating in his ears as he had heard it all day and he thought that it was the tornag of the stone speaking to him before he reached home he was quite certain that he had held a long conversation with her and as all his people believed that this was quite possible no one contradicted him she said to me i jumped down i jumped down for my place on the snow called kotaku with hollow eyes leaning forward in the half-lighted hut she said i will be a guide she said i will guide you to the good seal holes tomorrow i go out and the tornag will guide me end of section 17 section 19 of the second jungle book this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org a second jungle book by Rudyard Kipling section 18 quickern part two now the girl from the north had been lying near the lamp eating very little and saying less for days passed but when Amarack and Cadlou next morning packed and lashed a little hand-slave for kotaku and loaded it with his hunting gear and as much blubber and frozen seal meat as they could spare she took the pulling rope and stepped out boldly at the boy's side your house is my house she said as the little bone shod sled squeaked and bumped behind them in the awful Arctic night my house is your house said kotaku but i think we shall both go to Sedna together now Sedna is the mistress of the underworld and the Inuit believe that everyone who dies must spend a year in her horrible country before going to Quadli Palmyat the happy place where it never freezes and the fat reindeer trot up when you call through the village people were shouting the torna has spoken to kotaku they will show him open ice he will bring us seal again their voices were soon swallowed up by the cold empty dark and kotaku and the girl shouldered close together as they strained on the pulling rope or humid the sleigh through ice in the direction of the polar sea kotaku insisted that the tornaig of the stove had told him to go north and north they went under taktukjong the reindeer those stars that we call the great bear no european could have made five miles a day over the ice rubbish and the sharp edge drifts but those two knew exactly the turn of the wrist that coaxed the sleigh around the hammock the jerk that nearly lifts it out of an ice crack and the exact strength that goes to the few quiet strokes of the spearhead that make a path possible when everything else looks hopeless the girl said nothing but bowed her head and the long wolverine fur fringe of her ermine hood blew across her broad dark face the sky above them was an intense velvety black changing to bands of indian red on the horizon where the great stars burnt like street lamps from time to time a greenish wave of the northern lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens flick like a flag and disappear or a meteor would crackle from behind darkness to darkness trailing a shower of sparks behind then they could see the ridged and furrowed surface of the flow tipped and laced with strange colors red copper and bluish but in the ordinary starlight everything turned to one frostbitten gray the flow as you will remember had been battered and tormented by the autumn gales till it was one frozen earthquake there were gullies and ravines and holes like gravel pits cut in ice lumps of scattered pieces frozen down to the original floor of the flow blotches of old black ice that had been thrust under the flow in some gale and heaved up again roundish boulders of ice saw-like edges of ice carved by the snow that flies before the wind and sunken pits where 30 or 40 acres lay below the level of the rest of the field from a little distance you might have taken the lumps for seal or walrus over to enslayers or men on a hunting expedition or even the great ten-legged white spirit bear himself but in spite of these fantastic shapes all on the very edge of starting into life there was neither sound nor the least faint echo of sound and through this silence and through this waste where the sudden lights flapped and went out again the slay in the two that pulled it crawled like things in a nightmare a nightmare of the end of the world at the end of the world when they were tired kotoku would make what the hunters call a half house a very small snow hut into which they would huddle with the traveling lamp and try to thaw out the frozen seal meat when they had slept the march began again 30 miles a day to get 10 miles northward the girl was always very silent but kotoku muttered to himself and broke out into the songs he had learned in the singing house summer songs and reindeer and salmon songs all horribly out of place at that season he would declare that he heard the tornak growling to him and would run wildly up a hammock tossing his arms and speaking in loud threatening tones to tell the truth kotoku was nearly crazy for the time being but the girl was sure that he was being guarded by his guardian spirit and that everything would come right she was not surprised therefore when at the end of the fourth march kotoku whose eyes were burning like fireballs in his head told her that his tornak was following them across the snow in the shape of a two-headed dog the girl looked where kotoku pointed and something seemed to slip into a ravine it was certainly not human but everybody knew that the tornak preferred to appear in the shape of bear and seal and such like it might have been the ten-legged white spirit bear himself or it might have been anything for kotoku and the girl were so starved that their eyes were untrustworthy they had trapped nothing and seen no trace of game since they had left the village their food would not hold out for another week and there was a gale coming a polar storm can blow for 10 days without a break and all that while it is certain death to be abroad kotoku laid up a snowhouse large enough to take in the handslay never be separated from your meat and while he was shaping the last irregular block of ice that makes the keystone of the roof he saw a thing looking at him from a little cliff of ice half a mile away the air was hazy and the thing seemed to be 40 feet long and 10 feet high with 20 feet of tail and a shape that quivered all along the outlines a girl saw it too but instead of crying aloud with terror said quietly that is kikun what comes after he will speak to me said kotoku but the snow knife trembled in his hand as he spoke because however much a man may believe that he is the friend of strange and ugly spirits he seldom likes to be taken quiet at his word kikun too is the phantom of a gigantic toothless dog without any hair who is supposed to live in the far north and to wonder about the country just before things are going to happen they may be pleasant or unpleasant things but not even the sorcerers care to speak about kikun he makes the dogs go mad like the spirit bear he has several extra pairs of legs six or eight and this thing jumping up and down in the haze had more legs than any real dog needed kotoku and the girl huddled into their hut quickly of course if kikun had wanted them he could have torn it to pieces above their head but the sense of a foot thick snow wall between themselves and the wicked dog was great comfort the gale broke with a shriek of wind like the shriek of a train and for three days and three nights it held never varying one point and never lulling even for a minute they fed the stone lamp between their knees and nibbled at the half-warm seal meat and watched the black soot gather on the roof for 72 long hours a girl countered up the food in the sleigh there was not more than two days supine and kotoku looked over the iron heads and the dear sinew fastlings of his harpoon and his seal lance and his bird dart there was nothing else to do we shall go to Sedna soon very soon the girl whispered in three days we shall lie down and go will your tornak do nothing sing her an Angacoc song to make her come he began to sing in the high-pitched howl of the magic songs and the gale went down slowly in the middle of his song the girl started laid her midden hand and then her head to the ice floor of the hut kotoku followed her example and the two kneeled staring into each other's eyes and listening with every nerve he ripped a thin sliver of whale bone from the rim of a bird snare that lay on the sleigh and after straightening set it upright in a little hole in the ice firming it down with his mitten it was almost as delicately adjusted as a compass needle and now instead of listening they watched the thin rod quivered a little the least little jar in the world then it vibrated steadily for a few seconds came to rest and vibrated again this time nodding to another point of the compass too soon said kotoku some big flow has broken far away outside the girl pointed at the rod and shook her head it is the big breaking she said listen to the ground ice it knocks when they kneeled this time they heard the most curious muffling grunts and knockings apparently under their feet sometimes it sounded as though a blind puppy was squeaking above the lamp then as if a stone were being ground on hard ice and again like muffled blows on a drum but all dragged down and made small as though they traveled through a little horn a weary distance away we shall not go to sit in a lying down said kotoku it is the breaking the tornak has cheated us we shall die all this may sound absurd enough but the two were face to face with a very real danger the three days of gale had driven the deep water of baffin's base southerly and piled it onto the edge of the far reaching land ice that stretches from bylots island to the west also the strong current which sets east out of Lancaster Sound carried with it mile upon mile of what they call pack ice rough ice that has not frozen into fields and this pack was bombarding the flow at the same time that the swell and heave of the storm walked sea was weakening and undermining it what kotoku and the girl had been listening to were the faint echoes of that fight 30 or 40 miles away and the little turtle rod quivered to the shock of it now as the anew would say when the ice once wakes after its long winter sleep there is no knowing what may happen for solid flow ice changes shape almost as quickly as a cloud the gale was evidently a spring gale sent out of time and anything was possible yet the two were happier in their minds than before if the flow broke up there would be no more waiting and suffering spirits goblins and which people were moving about on the racking ice and they might find themselves stepping into sednath country side by side with all sorts of wild things the flush of excitement still on them when they left the hut after the gale the noise on the horizon was steadily growing and the tough ice moaned and buzzed all around them it is still waiting said kotoku on the top of a hammock sat or crouched the eight-legged thing that they had seen three days before and it howled horribly let us follow said the girl it may know of some way that does not lead to sedna but she reeled from weakness as she took the pulling rope the thing moved off slowly and clumsily across the ridges heading always toward the westward and the land and they followed while the growling thunder at the edge of the flow rolled nearer and nearer the flow's lip was split and cracked in every direction for three or four miles inland and great pans of 10-foot thick ice from a few yards in a 20-acre square were jolting and ducking and surging into one another and into the yet unbroken flow as the heavy swell torque and shock and spouted between them this battering ram ice was so to speak the first army that the sea was fleeing against the flow the incessant crassion jar of these cakes almost drowned the ripping sounds of sheets of packed driven ice driven bodily under the flow as cards are hastily pushed under a tablecloth where the water was shallow these sheets would be piled one atop of the other till the bottom most touched mud 50 feet down and the discoloured sea banked behind the muddy ice till the increasing pressure drove all forward again in addition to the flow and the pack ice the gale and the currents were bringing down true bergs sailing mountains of ice snapped off from the greenland side of the water all from the north shore of melville bay they pounded in solemnly the waves breaking white round them and advanced on the flow like an old-time fleet under full sail a berg that seemed ready to carry the world before it would ground helplessly in deep water reel over and wallow in the leather of foam and mud and flying frozen spray while a much smaller and lower one would rip and ride into the flat flow flinging tongues of ice on either side and cutting a track half a mile long before it was stopped some fell like swords shewing a raw-edged canal another splintered into a shower of blocks weighing scores of tons of peace that whirled and skirted among the hammocks others again rose up bodily out of the water when they should twisted as though in pain and fell solidly on their sides while the sea threshed over their shoulders this trampling and crowding and bending and buckling and arching of the ice in every possible shape was going on as far as the eye could reach all along the north line of the flow from where kotaku and the girl were the confusion looked no more than uneasy rippling calling movement under the horizon but it came toward them each moment and they could hear far away to landward a heavy booming as it might have been the boom of artillery through a fog that showed that the flow was being jammed home against the iron cliffs of violet's island the land to the southward behind them this has never been before said kotaku staring stupidly this is not the time how can the flow break now follow that said the girl pointing to the thing half limping half running distractedly before them they followed tugging at the hands say while nearer and nearer came the roaring march of the ice at last the fields around them cracked and starred in every direction and the cracks opened and snapped like the teeth of wolves but where the thing rested on a mound of old and scattered ice blocks some 50 feet high there was no motion kotaku leaped forward wildly dragging the girl after him and crawled to the bottom of the mound the talking of the ice grew louder and louder around them but the mound stayed fast and as the girl looked at him he threw his right elbow upward and outward making the innuent sign for land in the shape of an island and land it was that the eight-legged limping thing had led them to some granite-tipped sandblaged dialet off the coast shod and sheath and masked with ice so that no man could have told it from the flow but at the bottom solid earth and not shifting ice the smashing and rebound of the flows as they grounded and splintered marked the borders of it and a friendly shoal rang out to the northward and turned aside the rush of the heaviest ice exactly as a plowshare turns over loam there was danger of course that some heavily squeezed ice field might shoot up the beach and plain off the top of the islet bodily but that did not trouble kotaku and the girl when they made their snowhouse and began to eat and heard the ice hammer and skid along the beach the thing had disappeared and kotaku was talking excitedly about his power over spirits as he crowded round the lamp in the midst of his wild sayings the girl began to laugh and rock herself backward and forward behind her shoulder crawling into the hut crawl by crawl there were two heads one yellow and one black that belonged to two of the most sorrowful and ashamed dogs that you ever saw kotaku the dog was one and the black leader was the other both were now fat well-looking and quite restored to their proper minds but coupled to each other in an extraordinary fashion when the black leader ran off you remember his harness was still on him he must have met kotaku the dog and played or fought with him for his shoulder loop had caught in the plaited cotton wire of kotaku's collar and had drawn tight so that neither could get at the trace to gnaw it apart but each was fast and side long to his neighbor's neck that with the freedom of hunting on their own account must have helped cure their madness they were very sober the girl pushed the two shame-faced creatures towards kotaku and sobbing with laughter cried that is kikun who led us to safe ground look at his eight legs and double head kotaku cut them free and they fell into his arms yellow and black together trying to explain how they had got their senses back again kotaku ran a hand down their ribs which were round and well clothed they have found food he said with a grin i do not think we shall go to sedness so soon i'd torn accent these the sickness has left them as soon as they had greeted kotaku these two who had been forced to sleep and eat and hunt together for the past few weeks fluid each other's throat and there was a beautiful battle in the snow house empty dogs do not fight kotaku said they have found the seal let us sleep we shall find food when they waked there was open water to the north of the beach of the island and all the loose and ice had been driven landward the first sound of the surf is one of the most delightful at the end you it can hear for it means that spring is on the road kotaku and the girl took hold of hands and smiled for the clear full roar of the surge among the ice reminded them of salmon and reindeer time and the smell of blossoming ground willows even as they looked the sea began to skim over between the floating cakes of ice so intense was the cold but on the horizon there was a vast red glare and that was the light of the sunken sun it was more like hearing him yawn in his sleep than seeing him rise and the glare lasted for only a few minutes but it marked the turn of the year nothing they felt could alter that kotaku found the dogs fighting over a fresh killed seal who was following the fish that a gale always disturbs he was the first of some 20 or 30 seal that landed on the island in the course of the day and until the sea until the sea froze hard there were hundreds of keen black heads rejoicing in the shallow free water and floating about with the floating eyes it was good to eat seal liver again to fill the lamps recklessly with blubber and watch the flame blaze three feet in the air but as soon as the new sea ice bore kotaku and the girl loaded the handslay and made the two dogs pour as they had never pulled in their lives for they feared what might have happened in their village the weather was as pitiless as usual but it is easier to draw a slay laden with good food than to hunt starving they left five and 20 seal carcasses buried in the ice of the beach all ready for youth and hurried back to their people the dogs showed them the way as soon as kotaku told them what was expected and though there was no sign of a landmark in two days they were giving tongue outside cad lose house only three dogs answered them the others had been eaten and the houses were all dark but when kotaku shouted oh joe boiled meat weak voices replied and when he called the muster of the village name by name very distinctly there were no gaps in it an hour later the lamps blazed in cad lose house snow water was heating the pots were beginning to simmer and the snow was dripping from the roof as amorak made ready a meal for all the village and the baby boy in the hood chewed at a strip of rich nutty blubber and the hunters slowly and methodically filled themselves to the very brim with seal men kotaku and the girl told their tale the two dogs sat between them and whenever their names came in they cocked in here a piece and looked most thoroughly ashamed of themselves a dog who has once gone mad and recovered the inuit say is safe against all further attacks so the torn acted off forget us said kotaku the storm blew the ice broke and the seal swam in behind the fish that were frightened by the storm now the new seal holes are not two days distant let the good hunters go tomorrow and bring back the seal I have speared 25 seal buried in the ice when we have eaten those we will all follow the seal on the flow what do you do said the sorcerer in the same sort of voice as he used to Cadillou richest of the Tanana Amaya Cadillou looked at the girl from the north and said quietly we build a house he pointed to the northwest site of Cadillou's house for that is the sign on which the married son or daughter always lives the girl turned her hands palm upward with a little despairing shake of her head she was a foreigner picked up starving and could bring nothing to the housekeeping amaret jumped from the beach where she sat and began to sweep things into the girl's lap stone lamps iron skin scrapers tin kettles deer skins embroidered with mothgoth teeth and real canvas needles such as sailor's use the finest dowry that has ever been given on the far edge of the arctic circle and the girl from the north bowed her head down to the very floor also these said kataku laughing and signing to the dogs who thrust their cold muzzles into the girl's face ah said the hanchikok with an important cough as though he had been thinking it all over as soon as kataku left the village I went into the singing house and sang magic I sang all the long nights and called upon the spirit of the reindeer my singing made the gale blow that spoke the ice and drew the two dogs towards kataku when the ice would have crushed his bones my song drew the seal in behind the broken ice my body lay still in the quaggy but my spirit ran about on the ice and guided kataku and the dogs in all the things they did I did it everybody was full and sleepy so no one contradicted and the hanchikok by virtue of his office helped himself to get another lump of boiled meat and lay down to sleep with the others in the warm well-lighted oil smelling home now kataku who drew very well in the inuit fashion scratched pictures of all these adventures on a long flat piece of ivy with a hole at one end when he and the girl went north to Ellesmere land in the year of the wonderful open winter he left the picture story with Kadler who lost it in the shingle when his dog slay broke down one summer on the beach of lake Gletling at Nikosiring and there a lake inuit found at next spring and sold it to a man at Imogen who was an interpreter on a cumberland sound wailer and he sold it to Hans Olson who was afterward a quartermaster on board a big steamer that took tourists to the north cape in Norway when the tourist season was over the steamer ran between London and Australia stopping at Salon and there Olson sold the ivy to a single east jeweler for two for two imitation sapphires i found it under some rubbish in the house at colombo and have translated it from one end to another end of section 18 section 19 of the second jungle book this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Catherine Eastman the second jungle book by Rudyard Kipling section 19 Angutivan Taina this is a very free translation of the song of the returning hunter as the men used to sing it after seal spearing the Inuit always repeat things over and over again our gloves are stiff with a frozen blood our furs with a drifted snow as we come in with the seal the seal in from the edge of the flow ojana aua oa hak and the yelping dog teams go and the long whips crack and the men come back back from the edge of the flow we tracked our seal to his secret place we heard him scratch below we made our mark and we watched beside out on the edge of the flow we raised our lance when he rose to breathe we drove it downward so and we played him thus and we killed him thus out on the edge of the flow our gloves are glued with the frozen blood our eyes with the drifting snow but we come back to our wives again back from the edge of the flow ojana aua oa hak and the loaded dog teams go and the wives can hear their men come back back from the edge of the flow end of section 19