At last Lutyens missed a short easy stroke, and the Skidars had to fly back helter-skelter to protect their own goal, Shikast leading. Powell stopped the ball with a backhander when it was not fifty yards from the goal-posts, and Shikast spun round with a wrench that nearly hoisted Powell out of his saddle.
‘Now’s our last chance,’ said the Cat, wheeling like a cockchafer on a pin. ‘We’ve got to ride it out. Come along.’
Lutyens felt the little chap take a deep breath, and, as it were, crouch under his rider. The ball was hopping towards the right-hand boundary, an Archangel riding for it with both spurs and a whip; but neither spur nor whip would make his pony stretch himself as he neared the crowd. The Maltese Cat glided under his very nose, picking up his hind legs sharp, for there was not a foot to spare between his quarters and the other pony’s bit. It was as neat an exhibition as fancy figure-skating. Lutyens hit with all the strength he had left, but the stick slipped a little in his hand, and the ball flew off to the left instead of keeping close to the boundary. Who’s Who was far across the ground, thinking hard as he galloped. He repeated, stride for stride, the Cat’s manoeuvres with another Archangel pony, nipping the ball away from under his bridle, and clearing his opponent by half a fraction of an inch, for Who’s Who was clumsy behind. Then he drove away towards the right as the Maltese Cat came up from the left; and Bamboo held a middle course exactly between them. The three were making a sort of Government-broad-arrow-shaped attack; and there was only the Archangels’ back to guard the goal; but immediately behind them were three Archangels racing all they knew, and mixed up with them was Powell, sending Shikast along on what he felt was their last hope. It takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of seven crazy ponies in the last quarters of a cup game, when men are riding with their necks for sale, and the ponies are delirious. The Archangels’ back missed his stroke, and pulled aside just in time to let the rush go by. Bamboo and Who’s Who shortened stride to give the Maltese Cat room, and Lutyens got the goal with a clean, smooth, smacking stroke that was heard all over the field. But there was no stopping the ponies. They poured through the goal-posts in one mixed mob, winners and losers together, for the pace had been terrific. The Maltese Cat knew by experience what would happen, and, to save Lutyens, turned to the right with one last effort that strained a back-sinew beyond hope of repair. As he did so he heard the right-hand goal-post crack as a pony cannoned into it – crack, splinter, and fall like a mast. It had been sawed three parts through in case of accidents, but it upset the pony nevertheless, and he blundered into another, who blundered into the left-hand post, and then there was confusion and dust and wood. Bamboo was lying on the ground, seeing stars; an Archangel pony rolled beside him, breathless and angry; Shikast had sat down dog-fashion to avoid falling over the others, and was sliding along on his little bobtail in a cloud of dust; and Powell was sitting on the ground, hammering with his stick and trying to cheer. All the others were shouting at the top of what was left of their voices, and the men who had been spilt were shouting too. As soon as the people saw no one was hurt, ten thousand native and English shouted and clapped and yelled, and before anyone could stop them the pipers of the Skidars broke on to the ground, with all the native officers and men behind them, and marched up and down, playing a wild Northern tune called ‘Zakhme Bagān’, and through the insolent blaring of the pipes and the high-pitched native yells you could hear the Archangels’ band hammering, ‘For they are all jolly good fellows’, and then reproachfully to the losing team, ‘Ooh, Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum!’
Besides all these things and many more, there was a Commander-in-Chief, and an Inspector-General of Cavalry, and the principal veterinary officer in all India, standing on the top of a regimental coach, yelling like school-boys; and brigadiers and colonels and commissioners, and hundreds of pretty ladies joined the chorus. But the Maltese Cat stood with his head down, wondering how many legs were left to him; and Lutyens watched the men and ponies pick themselves out of the wreck of the two goal-posts, and he patted the Cat very tenderly.
‘I say,’ said the captain of the Archangels, spitting a pebble out of his mouth, ‘will you take three thousand8 for that pony – as he stands?’
‘No, thank you. I’ve an idea he’s saved my life,’ said Lutyens, getting off and lying down at full length. Both teams were on the ground too, waving their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing deep breaths, as the saises ran up to take away the ponies, and an officious water-carrier sprinkled the players with dirty water till they sat up.
‘My Aunt!’ said Powell, rubbing his back and looking at the stumps of the goal-posts, ‘That was a game!’
They played it over again, every stroke of it, that night at the big dinner, when the Free-for-All Cup was filled and passed down the table, and emptied and filled again, and everybody made most eloquent speeches. About two in the morning, when there might have been some singing, a wise little, plain little, grey little head looked in through the open door.
‘Hurrah! Bring him in,’ said the Archangels; and his sais, who was very happy indeed, patted the Maltese Cat on the flank, and he limped in to the blaze of light and the glittering uniforms, looking for Lutyens. He was used to messes, and men’s bedrooms, and places where ponies are not usually encouraged, and in his youth had jumped on and off a mess-table for a bet. So he behaved himself very politely, and ate bread dipped in salt, and was petted all round the table, moving gingerly; and they drank his health, because he had done more to win the Cup than any man or horse on the ground.
That was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days, and the Maltese Cat did not complain much when the veterinary surgeon said that he would be no good for polo any more. When Lutyens married, his wife did not allow him to play, so he was forced to be an umpire; and his pony on these occasions was a flea-bitten grey with a neat polo-tail, lame all round, but desperately quick on his feet, and, as everybody knew, Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the Game.
Red Dog1
For our white and our excellent nights – for the nights of swift running,
Fair ranging, far-seeing, good hunting, sure cunning!
For the smells of the dawning, untainted, ere dew has departed!
For the rush through the mist, and the quarry blind-started!
For the cry of our mates when the sambhur2 has wheeled and is standing at bay,
For the risk and the riot of night!
For the sleep at the lair-mouth by day –
It is met, and we go to the fight.
Bay! O Bay!
It was after the letting in of the Jungle3 that the pleasantest part of Mowgli’s4 life began. He had the good conscience that comes from paying a just debt; and all the Jungle was his friend, for all the Jungle was afraid of him. The things that he did and saw and heard when he was wandering from one people to another, with or without his four companions, would make many, many stories, each as long as this one. So you will never be told how he met and escaped from the Mad Elephant of Mandla, who killed two-and-twenty bullocks drawing eleven carts of coined silver to the Government Treasury, and scattered the shiny rupees in the dust; how he fought Jacala, the Crocodile, all one long night in the Marshes of the North, and broke his skinning knife on the brute’s back-plates; how he found a new and longer knife round the neck of a man who had been killed by a wild boar, and how he tracked that boar and killed him as a fair price for the knife; how he was caught up in the Great Famine by the moving of the deer, and nearly crushed to death in the swaying hot herds; how he saved Hathi5 the Silent from being caught in a pit with a stake at the bottom, and how next day he himself fell into a very cunning leopard-trap, and how Hathi broke the thick wooden bars to pieces about him; how he milked the wild buffaloes in the swamp, and how –
But we must tell one tale at a time. Father and Mother Wolf died, and Mowgli rolled a big boulder against the mouth of the cave and cried the Death Song over them, and Baloo grew very old and stiff, and eve
n Bagheera, whose nerves were steel and whose muscles were iron, seemed slower at the kill. Akela 6 turned from grey to milky white with pure age; his ribs stuck out, and he walked as though he had been made of wood, and Mowgli killed for him. But the young wolves, the children of the disbanded Seeonee Pack, throve and increased, and when there were some forty of them, masterless, clean-footed five-year-olds, Akela told them that they ought to gather themselves together and follow the Law, and run under one head, as befitted the Free People.
This was not a matter in which Mowgli gave advice, for, as he said, he had eaten sour fruit, and he knew the tree it hung from; but when Phao, son of Phaona (his father was the Grey Tracker in the days of Akela’s headship), fought his way to the leadership of the Pack according to the Jungle Law, and when the old calls and the old songs began to ring under the stars once more, Mowgli came to the Council Rock for memory’s sake. If he chose to speak the Pack waited till he had finished, and he sat at Akela’s side on the rock above Phao. Those were the days of good hunting and good sleeping. No stranger cared to break into the jungles that belonged to Mowgli’s people, as they called the Pack, and the young wolves grew fat and strong, and there were many cubs to bring to the Looking-over. Mowgli always attended a Looking-over, for he remembered the night when a black panther brought a naked brown baby into the pack, and the long call, ‘Look, look well, O Wolves,’ made his heart flutter with strange feelings. Otherwise, he would be far away in the jungle; tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things.
One twilight when he was trotting leisurely across the ranges to give Akela the half of a buck that he had killed, while his four wolves were jogging behind him, sparring a little and tumbling one over another for joy of being alive, he heard a cry that he had not heard since the bad days of Shere Khan.7 It was what they call in the Jungle the Pheeal, a kind of shriek that the jackal gives when he is hunting behind a tiger, or when there is some big killing afoot. If you can imagine a mixture of hate, triumph, fear, and despair, with a kind of leer running through it, you will get some notion of the Pheeal that rose and sank and wavered and quivered far away across the Waingunga. The Four began to bristle and growl. Mowgli’s hand went to his knife and he too checked as though he had been turned into stone.
‘There is no Striped One would dare kill here,’ he said, at last.
‘That is not the cry of the Forerunner,’ said Grey Brother. ‘It is some great killing. Listen!’
It broke out again, half sobbing and half chuckling, just as though the jackal had soft human lips. Then Mowgli drew deep breath, and ran to the Council Rock, overtaking in his way hurrying wolves of the Pack. Phao and Akela were on the Rock together, and below them, every nerve strained, sat the others. The mothers and the cubs were cantering to their lairs; for when the Pheeal cries is no time for weak things to be abroad.
They could hear nothing except the Waingunga gurgling in the dark and the evening winds among the tree-tops, till suddenly across the river a wolf called. It was no wolf of the Pack, for those were all at the rock. The note changed to a long despairing bay; and ‘Dhole!’ it said, ‘Dhole! Dhole! Dhole!’ In a few minutes they heard tired feet on the rocks, and a gaunt, dripping wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right fore-paw useless, and his jaws white with foam, flung himself into the circle and lay gasping at Mowgli’s feet.
‘Good hunting? Under whose headship?’ said Phao gravely.
‘Good hunting! Won-tolla am I,’ was the answer. He meant that he was a solitary wolf, fending for himself, his mate, and his cubs in some lonely lair. Won-tolla means an outlier – one who lies out from any pack. When he panted they could see his heart shake him backwards and forwards.
‘What moves?’ said Phao, for that is the question all the Jungle asks after the Pheeal.
‘The dhole, the dhole of the Dekkan8 – Red Dog, the Killer! They came north from the south saying the Dekkan was empty and killing out by the way. When this moon was new there were four to me – my mate and three cubs. She would teach them to kill on the grass plains, hiding to drive the buck, as we do who are of the open. At midnight I heard them together full tongue on the trail. At the dawn-wind I found them stiff in the grass – four, Free people, four when this moon was new! Then sought I my Blood-Right and found the dhole.’
‘How many?’ said Mowgli: the Pack growled deep in their throats.
‘I do not know. Three of them will kill no more, but at the last they drove me like the buck; on three legs they drove me. Look, Free People!’
He thrust out his mangled fore-foot, all dark with dried blood. There were cruel bites low down on his side, and his throat was torn and worried.
‘Eat,’ said Akela, rising up from the meat Mowgli had brought him; the outlier flung himself on it famishing.
‘This shall be no loss,’ he said humbly when he had taken off the edge of his hunger. ‘Give me a little strength, Free People, and I also will kill! My lair is empty that was full when this moon was new, and the Blood Debt is not all paid.’
Phao heard his teeth crack on a haunch-bone and grunted approvingly.
‘We shall need those jaws,’ said he. ‘Were their cubs with the dhole?’
‘Nay, nay. Red hunters all: grown dogs of their pack, heavy and strong.’
That meant that the dhole, the red hunting-dog of the Dekkan, was moving to fight, and the wolves knew well that even the tiger will surrender a new kill to the dhole. They drive straight through the Jungle, and what they meet they pull down and tear to pieces. Though they are not as big nor half as cunning as the wolf, they are very strong and very numerous. The dhole, for instance, do not begin to call themselves a pack till they are a hundred strong, whereas forty wolves make a very fair pack. Mowgli’s wanderings had taken him to the edge of the high grassy downs of the Dekkan, and he had often seen the fearless dholes sleeping and playing and scratching themselves among the little hollows and tussocks that they use for lairs. He despised and hated them because they did not smell like the Free People, because they did not live in caves, and above all, because they had hair between their toes while he and his friends were clean-footed. But he knew, for Hathi had told him, what a terrible thing a dhole hunting pack was. Hathi himself moves aside from their line, and until they are all killed, or till game is scarce, they go forward killing as they go.
Akela knew something of the dholes, too; he said to Mowgli quietly: ‘It is better to die in the Full Pack than leaderless and alone. It is good hunting, and – my last. But, as men live, thou hast very many more nights and days, Little Brother. Go north and lie down, and if any wolf live after the dhole has gone by he shall bring thee word of the fight.’
‘Ah,’ said Mowgli, quite gravely, ‘must I go to the marshes and catch little fish and sleep in a tree, or must I ask help of the bandar-log9 and eat nuts while the pack fights below?’
‘It is to the death,’ said Akela. ‘Thou hast never met the dhole – the Red Killer. Even the Striped One –’
‘Aowa! Aowa!’ said Mowgli pettingly. ‘I have killed one striped ape. Listen now: There was a wolf, my father, and there was a wolf, my mother, and there was an old grey wolf (not too wise: he is white now) was my father and my mother. Therefore I – ‘ he raised his voice, ‘I say that when the dhole come, and if the dhole come, Mowgli and the Free People are of one skin for that hunting; and I say, by the Bull that bought me, by the bull Bagheera paid for me in the old days which ye of the Pack do not remember, I say, that the Trees and the River may hear and hold fast if I forget; I say that this my knife shall be as a tooth to the Pack – and I do not think it is so blunt. This is my Word which has gone from me.’
‘Thou dost not know the dhole, man with a wolf’s tongue,’ Won-tolla cried. ‘I look only to clear my blood debt against them ere they have me in many pieces. They move slowly, killing out as they go, but in two days a little strength will come back to me and I turn again for my blood debt. But for ye, Free People, my counsel is that ye go north and eat but littl
e for a while till the dhole are gone. There is no sleep in this hunting.’
‘Hear the Outlier!’ said Mowgli with a laugh. ‘Free People, we must go north and eat lizards and rats from the bank, lest by any chance we meet the dhole. He must kill out our hunting grounds while we lie hid in the north till it please him to give us our own again. He is a dog – and the pup of a dog – red, yellow-bellied, lairless, and haired between every toe! He counts his cubs six and eight at the litter, as though he were Chikai, the little leaping rat. Surely we must run away, Free People, and beg leave of the peoples of the north for the offal of dead cattle! Ye know the saying: “North are the vermin; South are the lice. We are the Jungle.” Choose ye, O choose. It is good hunting! For the Pack – for the Full Pack – for the lair and the litter; for the in-kill and the out-kill; for the mate that drives the doe and the little, little cub within the cave, it is met – it is met – it is met!’
The Pack answered with one deep crashing bark that sounded in the night like a tree falling. ‘It is met,’ they cried.
‘Stay with these,’ said Mowgli to his Four. ‘We shall need every tooth. Phao and Akela must make ready the battle. I go to count the dogs.’
‘It is death!’ Won-tolla cried, half rising. ‘What can such an hairless one do against the Red Dog. Even the Striped One, remember –’
‘Thou art indeed an outlier,’ Mowgli called back, ‘but we will speak when the dholes are dead. Good hunting all!’
He hurried off into the darkness wild with excitement, hardly looking where he set foot, and the natural consequence was that he tripped full length over Kaa’s great coils where the python lay watching a deer-path near the river.
‘Kssha!’ said Kaa angrily. ‘Is this jungle work to stamp and ramp and undo a night’s hunting – when the game are moving so well, too?’
‘The fault was mine,’ said Mowgli, picking himself up. ‘Indeed I was seeking thee, Flathead, but each time we meet thou art longer and broader by the length of my arm. There is none like thee in the Jungle, wise, old, strong, and most beautiful Kaa.’