 8. Letting in the Jungle, Part 2 meantime, Mowgli was putting the miles behind him, nine to the hour, swinging on, delighted to find himself so fit after all his crammed months among man. The one idea in his head was to get Missua and her husband out of the trap, whatever it was, for he had a natural mistrust of traps. Later on he promised himself he would pay his debts to the village at large. It was at twilight when he saw the well-remembered grazing grounds, and a duck-tree where Grey Brother had waited for him on the morning that he killed Shura Khan. Angry as he was at the whole breed and community of man, something jumped up in his throat and made him catch his breath when he looked at the village roofs. He noticed that everyone had come in from the fields unusually early, and that, instead of getting bitter evening-cooking, they gathered in a crowd around the village tree, and chattered, and shouted. Man must always be making traps for a man, or they are not content, said Mowgli. Last night it was Mowgli, but that night seems many rains ago. To-night it is Missua and her man. Tomorrow, and for many nights after, it will be Mowgli's turn again. He crapped outside the wall till he came to Missua's hut, and looked through the window into the room. There lay Missua, gagged and bound hand and foot, breathing hard and groaning. Her husband was tied to the gaily painted bed-stead. The door of the hut that opened into the street was shut fast, and three or four people were sitting with her backs to it. 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. Baldio would be coming in before long, and if his escort had done its duty Baldio would have a very interesting tale to tell. So he went in through the window, and, stooping over the man and the woman, got their thongs, pulling out the gags, and looked around the hut for some milk. Missua was half-mild 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, Missua sobbed at last. Now do I know that he is my son? And she hugged Mowgli to her heart. Up to that time Mowgli had been perfectly steady, but now 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 death for making a son of thee, what else, sat the man suddenly. Look, I bleed! Missua said nothing, but it was at her wounds that Mowgli looked, and they hurt 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 Missua tell the tale. I gave thee milk, Nathu, dost thou remember? Missua said timidly. As thou wasst my son, whom the tiger took, and because I love thee 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, but Missua laughed. See, she said to her husband, I knew, I said that he was no sorcerer, he's my son, my son. Son, or sorcerer, what good will that do us? The man answered, we be as dead already. Yonder is the road to the jungle. Mowgli pointed through the window. Your hands and feet are free. Go now. We do not know the jungle, my son. As thou knowst, Missua began. I do not think that I could walk far. And the man and women would be upon our backs and drag us here again, said her husband. Hm! 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 any one of this village, yet. But I do not think they will stay thee. In a little while they will have much else to think upon. Ah! he lifted his head and listened to shouting and trampling outside. So they have let Bouldio come home at last. He was sent out this morning to kill thee, Missua cried. Didst thou 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 you 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 ear-shelt of the crowd round the people-tree. Bouldio 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. Pah! said Mowgli, chatter, chatter, talk, talk. Man are blood-brothers of the Bandar law. 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 garb Missua till their ears are stuffed with Bouldio's tails. And I grow as lazy as day. He shook himself and glided back to the hut. Just as he was at the window he felt a touch on his foot. Mother, he said, for he knew that tongue well. What dost thou 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 thee milk, said Mother Wolf, all wet with a 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 thee thy first milk. But Beguira speaks truth. Man goes to man at 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 was 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 Baldyu, 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 M'Zua, Caniwara a sturdy miles from here. But at Caniwara 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? M'Zua's husband was on his hands and knees, digging up the earth in one corner of the hut. It is his little money, M'Zua. 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 the horse is well thought of, for M'Zua is tired. Her husband stood up and knotted the last of the rupees into his waistcloth. Mowgli helped M'Zua 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 Caniwara, Mowgli whispered. They nodded. Good, remember now not to be afraid, and there is no need to go quickly. Only, 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 M'Zua's husband. But M'Zua looked at Mowgli and smiled. I say, Mowgli went on, just as though we were a baloo repeating an old jungle law for the hundredth time to a foolish cope. I say that not a tooth in the jungle is buried against you. Not a foot in the jungle is lifted against you. Neither man nor a beast shall stay you till you come with an eyeshot of Caniwara. There will be a watch about you. He turned quickly to M'Zua saying, he does not believe, but thou will believe? I surely, my son, man, ghost, or wolf of the jungle. I believe. He will be afraid when he hears my people singing. Thou wilt know and understand. Go now, and slowly, for there is no need of any haste. The gates are shut. M'Zua flung herself sobbing at Mowgli's feet, but he lifted her very quickly with a shiver. Then she hung about his neck and called him every name of blessing she could think of. But her husband looked enviously across his fields and said, If we reach Caniwara and I get the ear of the English, I will bring such a lawsuit against the Brahmin and Albaldeo and the others, as shall eat the village to the bone. They shall pay me twice over for my crops untilled and my buffaloes unfed. I will have a great justice. Mowgli laughed. I do not know what justice is, but come next rains and see what is left. They went off toward the jungle, and mother wolf leaped from her place of hiding. Follow, said Mowgli, and looked to it that all the jungle knows these two are safe. Give tongue a little, I would call Bagheera. The long, low hell rose and fell, and Mowgli saw M'Zua's husband flinch and turn, half-minded to run back to the hut. Go on, Mowgli called cheerfully. I said there might be singing. That call will follow up to Caniwara. It is favour of the jungle. M'Zua urged her husband forward, and the darkness shut down on them, and mother wolf as Bagheera rose up almost under Mowgli's feet, trembling with the light of the night that drives the jungle people wild. I am ashamed of thy brethren, he said, purring. What, did they not sing sweetly to Mowgli, said Mowgli? Too well, too well, they made even me forget my pride, and, but a broken lock that freed me, I went singing through the jungle, as though I were out wooing in the spring. Didst thou not hear us? I had other game afoot. Ask Bodhio if he liked the song. But where are the four? I do not wish one of the men packed to leave the gates to-night. What need of the four, then, said Bagheera, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes ablaze and purring louder than ever. I can hold them, little brother. Is it killing at last? The singing and the sight of the man climbing up the trees have made me very ready. Who is man that we should care for him, the naked brown digger, the hairless and toothless, the ether of the earth? I have followed him all day, at noon, in the white sunlight. I heard in him as the wolves heard buck. I am Bagheera, Bagheera, Bagheera. As I danced with my shadow, so danced I with those man. Look! The great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling overhead. Struck left and right into the empty air that sang under the strokes, and landed noiselessly, and leapt again and again. While the half-purr, half-growl, gathered head, as steam rumbles in the boiler. I am Bagheera, in the jungle, in the night, and my strength is in me. Who shall stay my stroke? Man-cup, with one blow of my paw, I could beat thy head flat as a dead frog in the summer. Strike then, said Mowgli, in the dialect of the village, not the talk of the jungle, and the human words brought Bagheera to a full stop, flung back on haunches that quivered under him, his head just at the level of Mowgli's. Once more Mowgli stared as he had stared at the rebellious copes, full into the barrel-green eyes that the red glare behind their green went out like the light of a lighthouse, shot off twenty miles across the sea, till the eyes dropped, and the big head with them, dropped lower and lower, and the red rasp of a tongue grated on Mowgli's instep. Brother, brother, brother, the boy whispered, stroking steadily and lightly from the neck along the heaving back. Be still, be still, it is the fault of the night, and no fault of thine. It was the smells of the night, said Bagheera penitently. This air cries aloud to me, but how does thou know? Of course, the air round an Indian village is full of all kinds of smells, and to any creature who does nearly all his thinking through his nose, smells or as maddening as music and drugs are to human beings. Mowgli gentleed the panther for a few minutes longer, and he lay down like a cat before a fire, his paws tucked under his breast, and his eyes half shut. Thou art of the jungle, and not of the jungle, he said at last, and I am only a black panther, but I love thee, little brother. They are very long at their talk under the tree, Mowgli said, without noticing the last sentence. Valdio must have told many tales. They should come soon to drag the woman and her man out of the trap, and put them into the red flower. They will find that trap sprung, haha. Nay, listen, said Bagheera, the fever is out of my blood now, let them find me there. Few would leave their houses after meeting me, it is not the first time I have been in a cage, and I do not think they will time me with cords. Be wise then, said Mowgli, laughing, for he was beginning to feel as reckless as the panther, who had glided into the hut. Pah, Bagheera grunted, this place is rank with man, but here is just such a bed as they gave me to lie upon in the king's cages at Udipore. Now I lie down. Mowgli heard the strings of the cot crack under the great brood's weight. By the broken lock that freed me, they will think they have caught big game. Come and sit beside me, little brother, we will give them good hunting together. No, I have another thought in my stomach. The man-pack shall not know what share I have in the sport. Make thine own hunt, I do not wish to see them. Be it so, said Bagheera. Now they come. The conference under the peeple tree had been growing noisier and noisier at the far end of the village. It broke in wild yells, and the rush of the street of men and women, waving clubs and bamboos and sickles and knives. Poldio and the brahmin were at the head of it, but the mob was close at their heels, and they cried. The witch and the wizard let us see if hot coins will make them confess. Burn the hut over their heads. We will teach them to shelter wolf devils. Nay, beat them first. Torches, more torches, Poldio, heed the gun barrels. Here was some little difficulty with the catch of the door. It had been very firmly fastened, but the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light of the torches streamed into the room, where, stretched at full length on the bed, his paws crossed and lightly hung down over one end, black as pit and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera. There was one half minute of desperate silence as the front ranks of the crowd clawed and tore their way back from the threshold, and in that minute, Bagheera raised his head and yawned, elaborately, carefully, and ostentatiously, as he would yawn when he wished to insult an equal. The fringed lips drew back and up, the red tongue curled, the lower jaw dropped and dropped so you could see halfway down the hot gullet, and a gigantic dogty stood clear to the pit of the gums till they rang together, upper and under, with a snake of steel-faced ward shooting home round the edges of a safe. Next instant the street was empty. Bagheera had leaped back through the window and stood at Mowgli's side, while a yelling, screaming thorn scrambled and tumbleed over one another in their panic haste to get to their own huts. They will not stir till day comes, said Bagheera quietly, and now. The silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to have overtaken the village, but as they listened, they could hear the sound of heavy grain boxes being dragged over earthen floors and sat down against doors. Bagheera was quite right, the village would not stir till daylight. Mowgli sat still, and thought, and his face grew darker and darker. What have I done? said Bagheera, at last coming to his feet, fawning. Nothing but great good. Watched him now till the day. I sleep. Mowgli ran off into the jungle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, and slept, and slept the day round and the night back again. When he waked, Bagheera was at his side, and there was a newly killed buck at his feet. Bagheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to work with his skinning knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in his hands. End of Section 8 Section 9 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. The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling Section 9 Letting in the Jungle, Part 3 The man and the woman are come safe within eyeshot of Caniwara, Bagheera said. Thy lair mother sent the word back by chill, the kite. They found a horse before midnight of the night they were freed, and went very quickly. It's not that well. That is well, said Mowgli. And thy man-pack in the village did not stir till the sun was high this morning. Then they ate their food and ran back quickly to their houses. Did they, by any chance, see thee? It may have been. I was rolling in the dust before the gate at dawn, and I may have made also some small song to myself. Now, little brother, there is nothing more to do. Come hunting with me in below. He is new hives that he wishes to show, and we all desire thee back again as of old. Take off that look which makes even me afraid. The man and woman will not be put into the red flower, and all goes well in the jungle. Is it not true? Let us forget the man-pack. They shall be forgotten in a little while. Where does Hathi feed tonight? Where he chooses, who can answer for the silent one? But why? What is there Hathi can do which we cannot? Bid him and his three sons to come here to me. But indeed and truly, little brother, it is not seemly to say come and go to Hathi. Remember, he is the master of the jungle, and before the man-pack changed a look on thy face, he taught thee the master-words of the jungle. That is all one. I have a master-word for him now. Bid him come to Mowgli the frog, and if he does not hear at first, bid him come because of the sack of the fields of birth-bore. The sack of the fields of birth-bore, Bhagyar repeated two or three times to make sure. I go. Hathi can but be angry at the worst, and I would give a moons-hunting to hear a master-word that compels the silent one. He went away, leaving Mowgli stabbing furiously with his skinning-knife into the earth. Mowgli had never seen human blood in his life before, till he had seen, and, what meant much more to him, smelled Mesua's blood on the thongs that bound her, and Mesua had been kind to him, and, so far as he knew anything about love, he loved Mesua as completely as he hated the rest of mankind. But deeply as he loathed them, their talk, their cruelty, and their cowardice, not for anything the jungle had to offer, could he bring himself to take a human life, and have that terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. His plan was simpler, but much more thorough, and he laughed to himself when he thought that it was one of all Baldeo's tales, told under the people-tree in the evening, that had put the idea into his head. It was a master-word, Bhagyar whispered in his ear. They were feeding by the river, and they obeyed as though they were bullocks. Look where they come now! Hathi and his three sons had arrived in their usual way, without a sound. The mud of the river was still fresh under flanks, and Hathi was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a young plantan tree, that he had gawked up with his tusks. But every line in his vast body showed to Bhagyara, who could see things when he came across them, that it was not the master of the jungle speaking to a man-cope, but one who was afraid, coming before one who was not. His three sons rolled side by side behind their father. Mowgli hardly lifted his head as Hathi gave him good hunting. He kept him swinging and rocking, and shifting from one foot to another, for a long time before he spoke. And when he opened his mouth it was to Bhagyara, and not to the elephants. I will tell a tale that was told to me by the hunter he hunted today, said Mowgli. It concerns an elephant, old and wise, who fell into a trap, and a sharpened stake in the pit scarred him from a little above his heel to the crest of his shoulder, leaving a white mark. Mowgli threw out his hand, and as Hathi wheeled the moonlight showed a long white scar on his slaty side, as though he had been struck with a red hot whip. Man came to take him from the trap, Mowgli continued, but he broke his ropes for he was strong, and went away till his wound was healed. Then came he, angry, by night to the fields of those hunters. And I remember now that he had three sons. These things happened many, many rains ago, and very far away, among the fields of Berthbor. What came to those fields at the next reaping, Hathi? They were reaped by me and by my three sons, said Hathi. And to the plowing that follows the reaping, said Mowgli, there was no plowing, said Hathi. And to the men that lived by the green crops on the ground, said Mowgli. They went away. And to the huts in which the man slept, said Mowgli. We tore the roofs to pieces, and the jungle swallowed up the walls, said Hathi. And what more, said Mowgli. As much good ground as I can walk over in two nights from the east to the west, and from the north to the south as much as I can walk over in three nights, the jungle took. We let in the jungle upon five villages, and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing ground and the soft crop grounds, there is not one man to-day who takes his food from the ground. That was the sack of the fields of Berthbor, which I and my three sons did. And now I ask, man-cup, how the news of it came to thee, said Hathi. A man told me, and now I see even Baldeo can speak truth. It was well done, Hathi, with the white mark, but the second time it shall be done better, for the reason that there is a man to direct. Thou knowest the village of the man-pack that cast me out. They are idle, senseless, and cruel. They play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport. When they are full fed, they would throw their own braid into the red flower. This I have seen. It is not well that they should live here any more. I hate them. Kil, then, said the youngest of Hathi's three sons, picking up a tuft of grass, dusting it against his four legs, and throwing it away, while his little red eyes glanced furtively from side to side. What good are white bones to me? Mowgli answered angrily. Am I the cope of a wolf to play in the sun with a raw head? I have killed Shura Khan, and his hide rots on the council-rock, but I do not know whether Shura Khan is gone, and my stomach is still empty. Now I will take that which I can see and touch, let in the jungle upon that village, Hathi. Bagheera shivered, and cowered down. He could understand, if the worst came to worst, a quick rush down a village street, and a right and left blow into a crowd, or a crafty killing of men as they plowed in the twilight. But this scheme for deliberately blotting out an entire village from the eyes of man and beast frightened him. Now he saw why Mowgli had sent for Hathi. No one but a long-lived elephant could plan and carry through such a war. Let them run as the man ran from the fields of Berthbor, till we have the rainwater for the only plough, and the noise of the rain on the thick leaves for the pattering of their spindles, till Bagheera and I layer in the house of the Brahmin, and the buck drink at the tank behind the temple, let in the jungle, Hathi. But I, but we have no quarrel with them, and it needs the red rage of great pain ere we tear down the places where a man sleep, said Hathi doubtfully. Are ye the only eaters of grass in the jungle? Driving your peoples, let the deer and the pig and the nail-guy look to it. Ye need never show a hands breath of hide till the fields are naked, let in the jungle, Hathi. There will be no killing. My tusks were red at the sack of the fields of Berthbor, and I would not wake that smell again. Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean earth. Let them go and find a fresh lair. They cannot stay here. I have seen and smelled the blood of the woman that gave me food, the woman whom they would have killed but for me. Only the smell of the new grass on their doorsteps can take away that smell. It burns in my mouth. Let in the jungle, Hathi. Ah, said Hathi, so did the scar of the stake burn on my hide till we watched the villages die under in the spring growth. Now I say, thy war shall be our war. We will let in the jungle. Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath. He was shaking all over with rage and hate before the place where the elephants had stood was empty, and Bagheera was looking at him with terror. By the broken lock that freed me, said the Black Panther at last, art thou the naked thing I spoke for in the pack when all was young. Master of the jungle, when my strength goes, speak for me. Speak for Balu. Speak for us all. We are copes before thee. Snap twigs on their foot. Fawns that have lost their dull. The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset Mowgli altogether, and he laughed and caught his breath and sobbed and laughed again, till he had to jump into a pool to make himself stop. Then he swam round and round, looking in and out of the bars of the moonlight like the frog, his namesake. By this time Hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one point of the compass, and were striding silently down the valleys a mile away. They went on and on for two days' march, that is to say, a long sixty miles, through the jungle, and every step they took and every wave of their trunks was known and noted and talked over by Mang and Chil and the monkey people and all the birds. Then they began to feed and fed quietly for a week or so. Hathi and his sons are like Ca, the rock bifin. They never hurry till they have to. At the end of that time a non-new who had started it, a rumour went through the jungle that there was better food and water to be found in such and such a valley. The pig, who of course will go to the ends of the earth for a full meal, moved first by companies scuffling over the rocks, and the deer followed with the small wild foxes that live on the dead and dying of the herds. And the heavy-shouldered Nilgai moved parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps came after the Nilgai. The least little thing would have turned the scattered, straggling droves that crazed and sauntered, and drank and grazed again. But whenever there was an alarm someone would rise up and suit them. At one time it would be Ikki, the porcupine, full of news of good feed just a little further on. At another Mang would cry cheerily and flap down a glade to show it was all empty. Or Balu, his mouth full of roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line and half frightened half-rompet clumsily back to the proper road. Very many creatures broke back or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go forward. At the end of another ten days or so the situation was this. The deer and the pig and the Nilgai were milling round and round in a circle of eight or ten miles radius, while the eaters of flesh squirmished round its edge. And the center of that circle was the village, and round the village the crops were ripening, and in the crops sat man on what they call Machans, platforms like pigeon-purchase, made of sticks at the top of four poles, to scare away birds and other stealers. Then the deer were coaxed no more. The eaters of flesh were closed behind them, and forced them forward and inward. It was a dark night when Hathi and his three sons slipped down from the jungle, and broke off the poles of the Machans with their trunks. They fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom-falls, and the man that tumbled from them heard the deep gurgling of the elephants in their ears. Then the vanguard of the bewildered armies of the deer broke down, and flooded into the village grazing grounds and the blowing fields, and a sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig came with them, and what the deer left, the pig spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of wolves would shake the herds, and they would rush to and fro desperately, treading down the young barley and cutting flat the banks of the irrigating channels. Before the dawn broke the pressure on the outside of the circle gave way at one point. The eaters of flesh had fallen back and left an open path to the south, and drove upon a drove of buck fled along it. Others, who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal next night. But the work was practically done. When the villagers looked in the morning they saw their crops were lost. And that meant death, if they did not get away. For they lived year in and year out as near to starvation as the jungle was near to them. When the buffaloes were sent to graze the hungry broods found that the deer had cleared the grazing grounds, and so wandered into the jungle and drifted off with their wild mates. And when twilight fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the village lay in their stables with their heads beaten in. Only Bagheera could have given those strokes, and only Bagheera would have thought of insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street. The villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that night, so Hathi and his three sons, when cleaning among what was left, and where Hathi gleams there is no need to follow. The man decided to live on their stored seed corn until the rains had fallen, and then to take work as servants till they could catch up with the last year. But as the grain dealer was thinking of his well-filled crates of corn, and the prices he would levy at the sale of it, Hathi's sharp tusks were picking out the corner of his mud-house, and smashing open the big, wicked chest leaped with cow-dung where the precious stuff lay. When that last loss was discovered it was the brahmin's turn to speak. He had prayed to his own gods without answer. It might be, he said, that unconsciously the village had offended some one of the gods of the jungle, for beyond doubt the jungle was against them. So they sent for the headman of the nearest tribe of wandering Gaons, little, wise, and very black hunters, living in the deep jungle, whose fathers came of the oldest race in India, the Aboriginal owners of the land. They made the Gaon welcome with what they had, and they stood on one leg, his bow in his hand, and two or three poisoned arrows stuck through his top knot, looking half afraid and half contemptuously at the anxious villagers and their ruined fields. They wished to know whether his gods, the old gods, were angry with them, and what sacrifices should be offered. The Gaon said nothing, but picked up a trail of Kareela, the vine that bears the bitter wild gourd, and laced it to and fro across the temple door in the face of the staring red Hindu image. Then he pushed with his hand in the open air along the road to Kaniwara, and went back to his jungle and watched the jungle people drifting through it. He knew that when the jungle moves only white man can hope to turn it aside. There was no need to ask his meaning. The wild gourd would grow where they worshiped their god, and the sooner they saved themselves the better. But it is hard to tear a village from its moorings. They stayed on as long as any summer food was left to them, and they tried to gather nuts in the jungle. But shadows with glaring eyes watched them, and rolled before them even at midday, and when they ran back afraid to their walls, on the tree trunks they had passed not five minutes before, the bark would be stripped and chiseled with the stroke of some great talent paw. The more they kept to their village the bolder grew the wild things that gambled and bellowed on the grazing grounds by the Wangunga. They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the empty buyers that backed onto the jungle. The wild pig trampled them down, and the knotty-rooted vines roared after and threw their elbows over the new one ground, and the coarse grass bristled behind the vines like the lances of a goblin army following a retreat. The unmarried man ran away first, and carried the news far and near that the village was doomed. Who could fight, they said, against the jungle, or the gods of the jungle, when the very village cobra had left his hole in the platform under the people-tree, so their little commerce with the outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across the open grew fewer and fainter. At last the nightly trumpetings of Hathi and his three sons seized to trouble them, for they had no more to be robbed of. The crop on the ground and the seed in the ground had been taken. The outlying fields were already losing their shape, and it was time to throw themselves on a charity of the English at Caniwara. Native fashion they delayed their departure from one day to another till the first rains caught them and the unmended roosts let in a flood, and the grazing ground stood ankle-deep, and all life came on with a rush after the heat of summer. Then they waded out, man, women, and children, through the blinding hot rain of the morning, but turned naturally for one farewell look at their homes. They heard, as the last burdened family fell through the gate, a crash of falling beams and thatch behind the walls. They saw a shiny, snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering sodden thatch. It disappeared, and there was another crash followed by a squeal. Hathi had been plucking off the roofs of the huts as she plucked water lilies, and a rebounding beam had pricked him. He needed only this to unchain his full strength. For of all things in the jungle, the wild elephant enraged his de-most-wantsonly destructive. He kicked backward at a mud wall that crumbled at the stroke, and, crumbling, melted to yellow mud under the torrent of rain. Then he wheeled and squealed and tore through the narrow streets, leaning against the huts, right and left, shivering the crazy doors and crumpling up the caves, while his three sons raged behind him as they had raged at the sack of the fields of a berth bore. The jungle will swallow these shells, said a quiet voice in the wreckage. It is the outer wall that must lie down, and mogley, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo. All in good time, panted Hathi. Oh, but my tusks were red at berth bore, to the outer wall, children, with a head, together, now. The four pushed side by side, the outer wall bulged, split, and fell, and the villagers, dumb with horror, saw the savage glazed, streaked heads of the wreckers in the ragged gap. Then they fled, houseless and foodless, down the valley, as their village, shredded and tossed and trampled, melted behind them. A month later the place was a dimpled mound, covered with soft, green, young stuff, and by the end of the rains there was the roaring jungle in full blast, on the spot that had been on their plow, not six months before. End of Section 9 I will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines. I will call in the jungle to stamp out your lines. The roofs shall fade before it, the house beams shall fall, and the carella, the bitter carella shall cover it all. In the gates of these your councils my people shall sing, in the doors of these your garners the bat-folk shall cling, and the snake shall be your watchman by a hearthstone unswept, for the carella, the bitter carella shall fruit where ye slept. Ye shall not see, my strikers, ye shall hear them and guess. By night before the moonrise I will send for my sess, and the wolf shall be your herdsman by a landmark removed, for the carella, the bitter carella shall seed where ye loved. I will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host. Ye shall glean behind my reapers for the bread that is lost, and the deer shall be your oxen by a headland untilled. For the carella, the bitter carella shall leaf where ye build. I have untied against you the club-footed vines. I have sent in the jungle to swamp out your lines. The trees, the trees are on you, the house beams shall fall, and the carella, the bitter carella shall cover you all. End of section 10 My brother, when ye call the high inn at a meet, ye may cry the full truth with jacala, the belly that runs on four feet. Jungle law. Respect the agent. It was a thick voice, a muddy voice that would have made you shudder, a voice like something soft breaking in two. There was a quaver in it, a croak and a whine. Respect the agent, o companions of the river, respect the agent. Nothing could be seen on the broad reach of the river, except the little fleet of square-sailed, wooden-pinned barges, noted with building-stone, that had just come under the railway bridge and were driving downstream. They put their clumsy helms over to avoid the sandbar made by the scour of the bridge-peers, and as they passed, three abreast, the horrible voice began again. O brams of the river, respect the agent and infirm. A boatman turned where he sat on the gunnel, lifted up his hand, said something that was not a blessing, and the boats creaked on through the twilight. The broad Indian River, that looked more like a chain of little lakes in a stream, was as smooth as glass, reflecting the sandy red sky in mid-channel, but splashed with patches of yellow and dusky purple near and under the low banks. Little creeks ran into the river in the wet season, but now their dry males hung clear above the waterline. On the left shore, and almost under the railway bridge, stood a mud-and-brick and faction-stick village, whose main street, full of cattle going back to their bars, ran straight to the river and ended in a sort of rude brick here ahead, where people who wanted to wash could wade in step by step. That was the gout of the village of Mugger Gout. The night was falling fast over the fields of lentils and rice and cotton in the low-lying ground, yearly flooded by the river, over the reeds that fringe the elbow of the bend, and the tangled jungle of the grazing grounds behind the still reeds. The parrots and crows who had been chattering and shouting over their evening drink had flown inland to roost, crossing the outgoing battalions of the flying foxes, and cloud upon cloud of waterbirds came whistling and honking to the cover of the reed beds. There were geese, barrel-headed and black-backed, teal, wigeon, mallard, and sheildrake, with curlews, and here and there a flamingo. A lumbering agitant crane bought up the rear, flying as though each slow stroke would be his last. Respect the aged, brahmins of the river, respect the aged. The agitant half turned his head, sheared a little in the direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sandbar below the bridge. Then you saw what a roughenly brute he really was. His back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six foot high and looked rather like a very proper bald-headed parson. In front it was different. For his alley-sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to them, and there was a horrible raw skinned pouch on his neck under his chin, a hole-all for all the things his pickaxe beaks might steal. His legs were long and thin and skinny, but he moved them delicately and looked at them with pride as he preened down his ashy gray tail feathers, glanced over the smooth of his shoulder and stiffened into standard attention. A mangy little jackal who had been yapping hungrily on a low bluff, cocked up his ears and tail and scuttled across the shallows to join the agitant. He was the lowest of his caste, not that the best of jackals are good for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a criminal. I clean her up of village rubbish heaps, desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly hungry and full of cunning that never did him any good. Ugg, he said, shaking himself dullfully as he landed. May the red manes destroy the dogs of this village. I have three bites for each flea upon me, and all because I looked, only looked, Matthew, at an old shoe and a cow-bire. Can I eat mud? He scratched himself under his left ear. I heard, said the agitant, in a voice like a blunt saw going through a thick board. I heard there was a newborn puppy in that same shoe. To hear is one thing, to know is another, said the jackal, who had a very fair knowledge of proverbs, picked up by listening to men round the village far as of an evening. Quite true. So, to make sure, I took care of that puppy while the dogs were busy elsewhere. They were very busy, said the jackal. Well, I must not go to the village hunting for scraps yet a while, and so there truly was a blind puppy in that shoe. It is here, said the agitant, squinting over his beak at his full pouch. A small thing, but acceptable now that charity is dead in the world. Ah, the world is iron in these days, wailed the jackal. Then his restless eye caught the least possible ripple on the water, and he went on quickly. Life is hard for us all, and I doubt not that even our excellent master, the pride of the gout and envy of the river. A liar, a flatterer and a jackal, all hatched out of the same egg, said the agitant, to nobody in particular, for he was rather a fine sort of a liar on his own account when he took the trouble. Yes, the envy of the river, the jackal repeated, raising his voice. Even he, I doubt not, finds that since the bridge has been built, good food is more scarce. But on the other hand, though I would by no means say this to his noble face, he is so wise and virtuous as I, alas, am not. When the jackal owns his grey, how black must the jackal be, muttered the agitant. He could not see what was coming. That his food never fails, and in consequence, there was a soft grating sound, as though a boat had just touched in shoal water. The jackal spun round quickly and faced, it is always best to face, the creature he had been talking about. It was a twenty-four foot crocodile, cased in what looked like treble riveted boilerplate, studded and keeled and crested. The yellow points of his upper teeth just overhanging his beautifully fluted lower jaw. It was the blunt nose mugger or mugger gout, older than any man in the village, who had given his name to the village. The demon of the ford before the railway bridge came, murderer, man-eater and local fetish in one. He lay with his chin in the shallows, keeping his place by an almost invisible rippling of his tail. And while the jackal knew that one stroke of that same tail in the water would carry the mugger up the bank with a rush of a steam engine. O auspiciously met protector of the poor, he fawned, backing at every word. A delectable voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of sweet conversation. My tailless presumption while waiting here led me indeed to speak of thee. It is my hope that nothing was overheard. Now the jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery was the best way of getting things to eat. And the mugger knew that the jackal had spoken for this end, and the jackal knew that the mugger knew, and the mugger knew that the jackal knew that the mugger knew, and so they were all very contented together. The old brute pushed and panted and grunted up the bank, mumbling, respect the ages and infirm, and all the time his little eyes burned like coals under the heavy horned eyelids on top of his triangular head, as he shoved his bloated barrel body along between his crutched legs. Then he settled down, and accustomed as the jackal was to his ways, he could not help starting for the hundredth time, when he saw how exactly the mugger imitated a logger drift on the barn. He had even taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the time and place. All this was only a matter of habit, of course, because the mugger had come ashore for pleasure. But a crocodile is never quite full, and if the jackal had been deceived by the lightness, he would not have lived to philosophise over it. My child, I heard nothing, said the mugger, shutting one eye. The water was in my ears, and also I was faint with hunger. Since the railway bridge was built, my people at my village have ceased to love me, and that is breaking my heart. Ah, shame, said the jackal. So noble a beast, so noble a heart, too. But men are all alike to my mind. Nay, there are very great differences indeed, the mugger answered gently. Some are as lean as boat poles, other again as fat as young jack dogs. Never would I causelessly revile men. They are of all fashions, but the long years have shown me that, one with another. They are very good. Men, women and children, I have no fault to find with them. And remember, child, he who rebukes the world is rebuked by the world. Flattery is worse than an empty tin in the belly, but that's which we have just heard is wisdom, said the adjutant, bringing down one foot. Consider, though, their ingratitude that this excellent one began the jackal tenderly. Nay, nay, not ingratitude, the mugger said. They do not think for others, that is all. But I have noticed, lying at my station below the ford, that the stairs of the new bridge are cruelly hard to climb, both for old people and young children. The old indeed are not so worthy of consideration, but I am aggrieved, I am truly grieved, on account of the fat children. Still, I think, in a little while, when the newness of the bridge has worn away, we shall see my people's bare brown legs bravely splashing through the ford as before. Then the old mugger will be honoured again. But surely I saw marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the gout, only this noon, said the adjutant. Marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all India over. An error, an error, it was the wife of the sweetmeat seller. She loses her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from me the mugger of the gout. I saw the mistake when she threw the garland, for I was lying at the very foot of the gout. And had she taken another step, I might have shown her some little difference. Had she meant well, and we must consider the spirit of the offering. What good a marigold wreaths when one is on the rubbish heap, said the jackal, hunting for fleas, but keeping one weary eye on the protector of the poor. True, but they have not yet begun to make the rubbish heap that shall carry me. Five times have I seen the river draw back from the village and make new land at the foot of the street. Five times have I seen the village rebuilt on the bank, and I shall see it built yet five times more. I am no faithless fish-hunting gavel. I at Cassie the day and pray egg tomorrow as the saying is, but the true and constant watcher of the Ford. It is not for nothing, child, that the village bears my name, and he who watches long as the saying is, shall at last have his reward. I have watched long, very long, nearly all my life, and my reward has been bites and blows, said the jackal. Ho, ho, ho! roared the adjutant. In August was the jackal born. The rains fell in September. Now, such a fearful flood as this city I can't remember. There was one very unpleasant peculiarity about the adjutant. At uncertain times he suffers from acute attacks of the fidgets or cramp in his leg, and though he is more virtuous to behold than any of the cranes, who are all immensely respectable, he flies off into wild, crippled, stilt moor dances, half opening his wings and bobbing his bald head up and down. While, for reasons best known to himself, he is very careful to time his worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. At the last word of his song he came to attention again, ten times adjutant-er than before. The jackal winced, though he was full three seasons old, but you cannot resent an insult from a person with a beaky yard long, and the power of driving it like a javelin. The adjutant was a most notorious coward, but the jackal was worse. We must live before we can learn, said the mugger. And there is this to say. Little jackals are very common, child, but such a mugger as I am is not common. For all that I am not proud, since pride is destruction. But Tate noticed it is fate, and against his fate no one who swims or walks or runs should say anything at all. I am well contented with fate. With good luck, a keen eye, and a custer of considering whether a creek or a backwater has an outlet toward EUSN, much may be done. Once I heard that even the protector of the pole made a mistake, said the jackal viciously. True, but there my fate helped me. It was before I had come to my full growth. Before the last famine, but three. By the right and left of Gunga, how full used the streams be in those days. Yes, I was young and unthinking, and when the flood came, who so pleased as I? A little made me very happy then. The village was deep in flood, and I swam above the galt and went far inland up to the rice fields, and they were deep in good mud. I remember also a pair of bracelets, glass they were, and troubled me not a little, that I found that evening. Yes, glass bracelets, and if my memory serves me well, a shoe. I should have shaken off both shoes, but I was hungry. I learned better later. Yes, and so I fed and rested me. But when I was ready to go to the river again, the flood had fallen, and I walked through the mud of the main street. Who but I? Came out all my people, priests, and women and children. And I looked upon them with benevolence. The mud is not a good place to fight him. Said a boatman, Get axes and kill him, for he is the mugger of the ford. Not so, said the brahman. Look, he is driving the flood before him. He is the godling of the village. Then they threw many flowers at me, and by happy thought one led a goat across the road. How good, how very good is goat, said the jackal. Hairy, too hairy. And when found in the water, more than likely to hide a cross-shaped hook. But that goat I accepted, and went down to the gout in great honour. Later my fate set me the boatman, who had desired to cut off my tail with an axe. His boat ground as upon an old shoal, which you would not remember. We are not all jackals here, said the agitant. Was it the shoal made where the stone boats sank in the year of the great drought? A long shoal that lasted three floods? There were two, said the mugger, an upper and lower shoal. Ah, I forgot. A channel divided them, and later dried up again, said the agitant, who prided himself on his memory. On the lower shoal my well-wishers' craft grounded. He was sleeping in the bowels, and half awake, left over to his waist, no, it was more to his knees, to push off. His empty boat went on and touched again below the next reach as the river ran then. I followed because I knew men would come out to drag it ashore. And did they so? asked the jackal, a little awestrucken. This was hunting on a scale that impressed him. There and lower they did. I went no farther, but they gave me three in one day. Well fed mangies, boatman, all. And except in the case of the last, then I was careless, never a cry to warn those on the bank. Ah, noble sport! But what cleverness and great judgement it requires, said the jackal. Not cleverness, child, but only thought. A little thought in life is like salt upon rice, as the boatman said. And I have thought deeply always. The gavel, my cousin, the fish-eater, has told me how hard it is for him to follow his fish, and how one fish differs from the other, and how he must know them all, both together and apart. I say this is wisdom. But on the other hand, my cousin the gavel lives amongst his people. My people do not swim in companies with their mouths out of water, as Rewa does, nor do they constantly rise to the surface of the water and turn over on their side, like muhu and little chapter, nor do they gather in shoals after flood, like betua and chua. All very good eating, said the adjutant, clattering his beak. So my cousin says and makes a great to-do over hunting them, but they do not climb the banks to escape his sharp nose. My people are otherwise. Their life is on the land, in the houses, among the cattle. I must know what they do and what they are about to do, and adding the tail to the trunk, as the saying is, I make up the whole elephant. Is there a green branch and an iron ring hanging over a doorway? The old mugger knows that a boy has been born in that house, and must someday come down to the gout to pray. It's a maiden to be married, the old mugger knows, for he sees the men carry gifts back and forth, and she too comes down to the gout to bathe before her wedding. And he is there. Has the river changed its channel and made new land where there was only sand before? The mugger knows. Now, of what use is that knowledge? said the jackal. The river has shifted even in my little life. Indian rivers are nearly always moving about in their beds, and will shift sometimes as much as two or three miles in a season, drowning the fields on one bank and spreading good silt on the other. There is no knowledge so useful, said the mugger. For new land means new quarrels. The mugger knows. I'll hold the mugger knows. As soon as the water has drained off, he creeps up the little creeks that men think would not hide a dog, and there he waits. Presently comes a farmer saying he will plant cucumbers here and melons there in the new land that the river has given him. He feels a good mud with his bare toes. And on comes another, saying he will put in onion and carrots and sugarcane in such and such places. They meet as boats adrift meet, and each rolls his eye at the other under the big blue turban. The old mugger sees and hears. Each calls the other brother, and they go to mark out the boundaries of the new land. The mugger hurries with them from point to point, shuffling very low through the mud. Now they begin to quarrel. Now they say hot words. Now they pull turbines. Now they lift up their lathes, clumps, and at last one falls backwards into the mud, and the other runs away. When he comes back, the dispute is settled. As the iron-bound bamboo of the looser witnesses. Yet they are not grateful to the mugger. No, they cry murder, and their families fight with sticks twenty a side. My people are good people, upland jets, malwares of the bet. They do not give blows for sport, and when the fight is done, the old mugger waits far down the river out of sight of the village behind the Kekaskar beyonder. Then they come down, my broad-shouldered jets, eight or nine together under the stars, bearing the dead man upon a bed. They are old men with grey beards, and voices as deep as mine. They light a little fire, aha, well I know the fire, and they drink tobacco, and they nod their heads together forward in a ring, or sideways toward the dead man upon the bank. They say the English law will come with a rope for this matter, and that such a man's family will be ashamed, because such a man must be hanged in the great square of the jail. Then say the friends of the dead, let him hang, and the talk is all to do over again. Once, twice, twenty times in the long night. Then says one that last, the fight was a fair fight. Let us take blood money, a little more than is offered by the slayer, and we will say nothing about it. Then do they haggle over the blood money, for the dead was a strong man, leaving many sons. Yet before Amrit Vela, sunrise, they put the fire to him a little, as the custom is, and the dead man comes to me, and he says no more about it. Ah, my children, the mugger knows, the mugger knows, and my malware jets are good people. They are too close, too narrow in the hand for my crop, croaked the adjutant. They waste not the polish on the cow's horn, as the saying is. And again, who can gleam after a malware? Ah, I gleam them, said the mugger. Now in Calcutta of the south, in the old days, the adjutant went on, everything was thrown into the streets, and we picked and chose. Those were dainty seasons, but today they keep their streets as clean as the outside of an egg, and my people fly away. To be clean is one thing, to dust, sweep and sprinkle seven times a day, we raise the very gods themselves. There was a down country jackal had it from a brother who told me, that in Calcutta of the south, all the jackals were as fat as otters in the rain, said the jackal, his mouth watering at the very thought of it. Ah, but the white faces are there, the English, and they bring dogs from somewhere down the river in boats, big fat dogs, to keep those same jackals lean, said the adjutant. They are then as hard-hearted as these people, I might have known. Neither earth, sky or water shows charity to a jackal. I saw the tents of a whiteface last season after the rains, and I also took a new yellow bridal to eat. The white faces do not dress their leather in the proper way, it made me very sick. That was better than my case, said the adjutant. When I was in my third season, a young and bold bird, I went down the river to where the big boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice as big as this village. He has been as far as Delhi, and says all the people there walk on their heads, muttered the jackal. The mugger opened his left eye, and looked keenly at the adjutant. It is true, the big bird insisted. A liar only lies when he hopes to be believed. No one who has not seen those boats could believe this truth. That is more reasonable, said the mugger. And then, from the insides of this boat, they were taking out great pieces of white stuff, which in a little while turned to water. Much spit off and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. But a boatman who laughed took a piece no larger than a small dog and threw it to me. I, all my people, swallowed without reflection, and that piece I swallowed as is now custom. Immediately I was affected with excessive cold, which beginning in my crop ran down to the extreme end of my toes and deprived me even of speech. While the boatman laughed at me, never have I felt such cold. I danced in my grief and amazement till I could recover my breath, and then I danced and cried out against the falseness of this world, and the boatman derided me till they fell down. The chief wonder of the matter, sitting aside that marvellous coldness, put there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my lamenting. End of section 11 Section 12 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 The Second Jungle Book by Raddard Kipling Section 12 The Undertakers Part 2 The adjutant had done his very best to describe his feelings after swallowing a seven pound lump of Wenham Lake ice off an American ice ship in the days before Calcutta made her ice by machinery. But as he did not know what ice was, and as the mugger and the jack on you rather less, the tail missed fire. Anything said the mugger, shutting his left eye again, anything as possible that comes out of a boat thrice the size of mugger guard. My village is not a small one. There was a whistle overhead on the bridge, and the deli mail slid across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully following along the river. He clanked away into the dark again, but the mugger and jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads. Is that anything less wonderful than a boat thrice the size of mugger gout, said the bird looking up? I saw that built child, stone by stone, I saw the bridge peers rise, and when the men fell off, they were wondrous sure-footed for the most part, but when they fell, I was ready. After the first pier was made, they never thought to look down the stream for the body to burn. There again I saved much trouble. There was nothing strange in the building of the bridge, said the mugger. But that which goes across, pulling the roofed carts, that is strange, the adjunct repeated. It is past any doubt a new breed of bullock. Someday it will not be able to keep its foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did. The old mugger will then be ready. The jackal looked at the adjutant, and the adjutant looked at the jackal. If there was one thing there were more certain of than another. It was that the engine was everything in the wild world, except a bullock. The jackal had watched it time and time again from the yellow hedges by the side of the line, and the adjutant had seen engines since the first locomotive ran in India. But the mugger had only looked up at the thing from below, where the brass dome seemed rather like a bullock sump. Yes, a new kind of bullock, the mugger repeated ponderously, to make himself quite sure in his own mind. And certainly it is a bullock, said the jackal. And again it might be, began the mugger pettishly. Certainly, most certainly, said the jackal, without waiting for the other to finish. What, said the mugger angrily, for he could feel that the others knew more than he did. What might it be? I never finished my word. You said it was a bullock. It is anything that the protector of the poor pleases. I am his servant, not the servant of the thing that crosses the river. Whatever it is, it is whiteface work, said the adjutant, and for my part, I would not lie out on a place so near to it as this bar. You do not know the English, as I do, said the mugger. There was a whiteface here when the bridge was built, and he would take a boat in the evenings and shuffle with his feet on the bottom boards and whisper, Is he here? Is he there? Bring me my gun. I could hear him before I could see him, each sound he made, creaking and puffing and rattling his gun up and down the river. As surely as I had picked one of his workmen, and thus saved great expense in wood for the burning, so surely would he come down to the gout and shout in a loud voice that he would hunt me and rid the river of me. The mugger of mugger gout. Me? Children, I have swum under the bottom of his boat for hour after hour and heard him fire his gun at logs. And when I was well sure he was weary, I have risen by his side and snapped my jaws in his face. When the bridge was finished, he went away. All the English hunted that fashion, except when they are hunted. Who hunts the whitefaces? Yep, the Jekyll excitedly. No one now, but I have hunted them in my time. I remember a little of that hunting. I was young then, said the adjutant, plactering his beak significantly. I was well established here. My village was being builded for the third time, as I remember, when my cousin, Agaveal, bought me word of rich waters above Benares. At first I would not go, for my cousin, who was a fish eater, does not always know the good from the bad. But I heard my people talking in the evening, and what they said made me certain. And what did they say? the Jekyll asked. They said enough to make me, the Magger of Maggagout, leave water and take to my feet. I went by night, using the littlest streams as they served me. But it was the beginning of the hot weather, and all the streams were low. I crossed dusty roads. I went through tall grass. I climbed hills in the moonlight. Even rocks did I climb children. Consider this well. I crossed the tale of Sir Hind, the waterless, before I could find the set of the little rivers that flowed Gungerwood. I was a month's journey for my own people and the river that I knew. That was very marvellous. What food on the way, said the Jekyll, who kept his soul in his little stomach, and was not a bit impressed by the Magger's land travels. That which I could find, cousin, said the Magger slowly, dragging each word. Now, you do not call a man cousin in India, unless you can think you can establish some sort of blood relationship. And as it is only in old fairy tales that the Magger ever marries a Jekyll, the Jekyll knew for what reason he had been suddenly lifted into the Magger's family circle. If he had been alone, he would not have cared, but the agiton's eyes twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest. A surely father, I might have known, said the Jekyll. A Magger does not care to be called a father of Jekylls, and the Mugger of Muggergout said as much, and a great deal more, which there is no use for him repeating here. The protector of the poor has claimed kinship. How can I remember the precise degree? Moreover, we eat the same food. He has said it was the Jekyll's reply. That made matters rather worse. For what the Jekyll hinted at, that the Magger must have eaten his food on that landmarch fresh and fresh every day, instead of keeping it by him till it was in a fit and proper condition, as every self-respecting Mugger and most wild beasts do when they can. Indeed, one of the worst terms of contempt along the riverbed is, eat her a fresh meat. It is nearly as bad as calling a man a cannibal. That food was eaten 30 seasons ago, said the agiton quietly. If we talk for 30 seasons more, it will never come back. Tell us now what happened when the good waters were reached after thy most wonderful land journey. If we listened to the howling of every Jekyll, the business of the town would stop as the flowing is. The Mugger must have been grateful for the interruption, because he went on with a rush by the right and left of Gunga when I came there and never did I see such waters. Were they better then than the big flood of last season, said the Jekyll? Better? That flood was no more than comes every five years. A handful of drowned strangers, some chickens, and a dead bullet in muddy water with cross currents. But the season I think of, the river was low, smooth and even. And as the Jekyll had warmed me, the dead English came down, touching each other. I got my girth in that season, my girth and my depth. From Angra by Etowah and the Broadwitters by Alahabad. Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the foals at Alahabad, said the adjutant. They came in there like whigeon to the reeds and round and round they swung thus. He went off into his horrible dance again, while the Jekyll looked on enviously. He naturally could not remember the terrible year of the mutiny they were talking about. The Mugger continued. Yes, by Alahabad, one may still in the slack water, and net twenty go by to pick one. And above all, the English were not covered with jewellery and nose rings and anklets, as my women are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for a necklace, as the saying is. All the Muggers of all the rivers grew fat then, but it was my fate to be fatter than them all. The news was that the English were being hunted into the rivers, and by the right and left of Gunga, we believed it was true. So far as I went south, I believed it to be true, and I went downstream beyond Monggir and the tombs that look over the river. I know that place, said the adjutant. Since those days, Monggir is a lost city. Very few people live there now. Thereafter, I worked upstream very slowly and lazily, and a little above Monggir, there came down a boat full of white faces alive. They were, as I remember, women, lying under a cloth spread over sticks and crying aloud. There was never a gun fired at us, the watchers of the Fords, in those days. All the guns were busy elsewhere. We could hear them day and night inland, coming and going as the wind shifted. I rose up full before the boat, because I had never seen white faces alive, although I knew them well otherwise. A naked white child, kneeled by the side of the boat, and stooping over must needs try to trail his hands in the river. Here's a pretty thing to see how a child loves running water. I had fed that day, but there was yet a little unfilled space within me. Still, it was for sport and not for food that I rose at the child's hand. There was so clear a mark that I did not even look where I closed. But they were so small that though my jaws rang true, I'm sure of that, the child drew them up swiftly unhurt. They must have passed between tooth and tooth, those small white hands. I should have caught him cross-wise at the elbow, but as I said, it was only for sport, and it is I to see new things that I rose at all. They cried out one after another in the boat, and presently I rose again to watch them. The boat was too heavy to push over. They were only women, but he who trusts a woman will walk on duckweed in a pool, as the saying is, and by the right and left of Gunga, that is truth. Once a woman gave me some dried skin from a fish, said the jackal. I had hoped to get her baby, but horse food is better than the kick of a horse, as the saying is. What did thy woman do? She fired at me with a short gun of a kind I have never seen before or since. Five times, one after another. The mugger must have met with an old fashioned revolver. And I stayed open mouth and gaping, my head in the smoke. Never did I see such a thing. Five times as swiftly as I waved my tail thus. The jackal, who had been growing more and more interested in the story, had just time to leap back as the huge tail swung by like a sigh. Not before the fifth shot, said the mugger, as though he had never dreamed of stunning one of his listeners. Not before the fifth shot did I sink. And I rose in time to hear the boatman telling all those white women that I was most certainly dead. One bullet had gone under a neck plate of mine. I know not if it is still there for the reason I cannot turn my head. Look and see, child, it will show that my tail is true. I, said the jackal, shall an eater of old shoes, a bone cracker presumed to doubt the word of the envy of the river. May my tail be bitten off by blind puppies if the shadow of such a thought has crossed my humble mind. The protector of the poor has condescended to inform me, his slave, that once in his life he has been wounded by a woman. That is sufficient, and I will tell the tale to all my children, asking for no proof. I over much civility is sometimes no better than over much discurtersy. For, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds. I do not desire that any children of thine should know that the mugger of mugger girl took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their father. He's just forgotten, long ago it was never said, there was never a white woman, there was no boat, nothing whatever happened at all. The jackal waved his brush to show how completely everything was wiped out of his memory, and sat down with an air. Indeed very many things happened, said the mugger, beaten in his second attempt that night to get the better of his friend. Neither bore malice however, eat and be eaten was fair law along the river, and the jackal came in for his share of plunder when the mugger had finished a meal. I left that boat and went upstream, and when I had reached the hour and the back waters behind it, there were no more dead English. The river was empty for a while, then came one or two dead in red coats, not English, but of one kind all, Hindus and Purbias. Then five and six abreast, had at last from Arrow to the north beyond Angra, it was as though whole villagers had walked into the water. They came out of little creeks, one after another as the logs come down in the rains. When the river rose, they rose also in companies from the shoals they had rested upon, and the falling flood dragged them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the long hair. All night too, going north, I heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing forwards, and that noise which a heavy cartwheel makes on sand under water, and every ripple brought more dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said if this thing happens to men, how shall the mugger of mugger gout escape. There were boats too that came up behind me without sails, burning continually, as the cotton boats sometimes burn, but never sinking. Ah, said the adjutant, boats like that come to Calcutta of the south. They are all tall and black, they beat up the water behind them with a tail, and they are thrice as big as my village. My boats were low and white, they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle. Was there still good food in the river? said the jackal. More than I had any desire for, even I, and I do not eat mud, even I was tired. And as I remember, a little frightened of this constant coming down of the silent ones, I heard my people say in my village that all the English were dead, but those that came facedown with the current were not English, as my people saw. Then my people said that it was best to say nothing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. After a long time the river cleared, and those that came down that had been clearly drowned by the floods, as I could well see. And though it was not as easy then to get food, I was heartily glad of it. A little killing here and there is no bad thing, but even the monger is sometimes satisfied, as the sowing is. Marvelous, most truly marvellous, said the jackal, I become fat through merely hearing about so much good eating. And afterward what, if it is be permitted to ask, did the protector of the poor do? I said to myself, and by the right and left the gunga, I locked my jaws on that fowl. I said I would never go roving any more. So I lived by the gout very close to my own people, and I watched over them year after year. And they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. Yes, and my fate has been very kind to me. And the river is good enough to respect my poor and infirm presence only. No one is all happy from his beak to his tail, said the adjutant sympathetically. What does the mugger of mugger gout need more? That little white child, which I did not get, said the mugger with a deep sigh. He was very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old now, but before I die, it is my desire to try one new thing. It is true they are heavy-footed, noisy and foolish people, and the sport would be small. But I remember the old days above Benares, and if the child lives, he will remember still. It may be that he goes up and down the bank of some river, telling how he once passed his hands between the teeth of the mugger of mugger gout, and lived to make a tale of it. My fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams. The thought of the little white child in the bowels of that boat, he yawned and closed his jaws. And now I will rest and think, keep silent, my children, and respect the aged. He turned stiffly and shuffled to the top of the sandbar, while the jackal drew back with the adjutant to the shelter of a tree, stranded on the end dearest the railway bridge. That was a pleasant and profitable life, he grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird who teared above him. And not once make, who did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left along the banks. Yet I have told him a hundred times of good things wallowing downstream. How true is the saying, all the world forgets the jackal and the barber when the news has been told. Now he is going to sleep. Ah. How can a jackal hunt with a mugger, said the adjutant coolly? Big thief and little thief, it is easy to say who gets the picking. The jackal turned, winding impatiently, and was going to curl himself up under the tree trunk, when suddenly he cowered and looked through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head. What now? Said the adjutant, hoping his wings uneasily. Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they are not looking for us, those two men. Men, is it? My office protects me. All India knows I am holy. The adjutant, being a first class scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and so this one never flinched. I am not worth a blow from anything better than an old shoe, said the jackal, and listen again. Hark to that footfall, he went on. That was no country leather, but the shod foot of a whiteface. Listen again. Iron hits iron up there. It is a gun. Friend, those heavy-footed foolish English are coming to speak with the mugger. Warn him then. He was called protector of the poor by someone not unlike a starving jackal, but a little time ago. Let my cousin protect his own hide. He has told me again and again there is nothing to fear from the whitefaces. They must be whitefaces. Not a villager of mugger gout would dare to come after him. See, I said it was a gun. Now, with good luck, we shall feed before daylight. He cannot hear well out of water, and this time, as is not a woman. A shiny barrel glittered for a minute in the moonlight on the girders. The mugger was lying on the sandbar, as still as his own shadow. His forefeet spread out of the hill. His head dropped between them, snoring like a mugger. A voice on the bridge whispered, it's an odd shot, straight down almost, but as safe as houses. Better try behind the neck. Golly, what a brute. The villagers will be wild if he's shot, though. He's the deota, godling, of these parts. Don't care a rap, another voice answered. He took about 15 of my best coolies while the bridge was building, and it's time he was put a stop to. I've been after him in a boat for weeks. Stand by with the martini, as soon as I've given him both barrels of this. Mind the kick, then? A double forebore's no joke. That's for him to decide. Here goes. There was a roar like the sound of a small cannon. The biggest sort of elephant rifle is not very different from some artillery. And the double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a martini. His long bullet makes nothing of a crocodile's plates. But the explosive bullets did the work. One of them struck just behind the mugger's neck, a hands breath to the left of the backbone, while the other burst a little lower down at the beginning of the tail. In 99 cases out of 100, a mortally wounded crocodile can scramble to deep water and get away. But the mugger of mugger gout was literally broken into three pieces. He hardly moved his head before the life went out of him, and he lay as flat as the jackal. Thunder and lightning, thunder and lightning, said the miserable little beast, has a thing that pulls the covered carts over the bridge tumble at last. It is no more than a gun, said the adjutant, though his very tail feathers quivered. Nothing more than a gun. He is certainly dead. Here come the white faces. The two Englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across to the sandbar, where they stood admiring the length of the mugger. Then a native with an axe cut off the big head, and four men dragged it across the spin. The last time that I had my hand in a mugger's mouth, said one of the Englishmen, stooping down. He was the man who had built the bridge. It was when I was about five years old, coming down the river by boat to Mongia. I was a mutiny baby, as they call it. Poor mother was in the boat too, and she often told me how she fired Dad's old pistol at the beast's head. Well, you've certainly had your revenge on the chief of the clam, even if the gun has made your nose bleed. High, you boatman, haul that head above the bank, and we'll boil it for the skull. The skins do not devout to keep. Come along to bed now. That was worth sitting up all night for, wasn't it? Curiously enough, the jackal and the adjutant made the very same remark, not three minutes after the man had left. End of Section 12 Once a ripple came to land, in the golden sunset burning, lapped against a maiden's hand by the ford returning. Dainty foot and gentle breast, hear a cross be glad and rest. Maiden wait, the ripple seth, wait a while for I am death. Where my lover calls I go, shame it were to treat him coldly, t'was a fish that circled so, turning over boldly. Dainty foot and tender heart, wait the loaded fairy-cart. Wait, ah wait, the ripple seth, maiden wait, for I am death. When my lover calls I haste, dame disdain was never wedded. Ripple ripple round her waist, clear the current eddied. Foolish heart and faithful hand, little feet that touched no land. Far away the ripple sped, ripple ripple running red. End of Section 13