This talk went in at one ear and out at the other, for a boy who spends his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till it actually stares him in the face. But one year Baloo’s words came true, and Mowgli saw all the jungle working under one Law.
It began when the winter rains failed almost entirely, and Sahi the Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo thicket, told him that the wild yams were drying up. Now everybody knows that Sahi is ridiculously fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very best and ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said: “What is that to me?”
“Not much now,” said Sahi, rattling his quills in a stiff, uncomfortable way, “but later we shall see. Is there any more diving into the deep rock-pool below the Bee Rocks, Little Brother?”
“No. The foolish water is going all away, and I do not wish to break my head,” said Mowgli, who was quite sure he knew as much as any five of the Jungle-People put together.
“That is thy loss. A small crack might let in some wisdom.” Sahi ducked quickly to prevent Mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and Mowgli told Baloo what Sahi had said. Baloo looked very grave, and mumbled half to himself: “If I were alone I would change my hunting-grounds now, before the others began to think. And yet—hunting among strangers ends in fighting—and they might hurt my man-cub. We must wait and see how the mohwa blooms.”
That spring the mohwa-tree, that Baloo was so fond of, never flowered. The greeny, cream-coloured, wax blossoms were heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last least foot-mark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of the stream.
The birds and the Monkey-People went north early in the year, for they knew what was coming, and the deer and the wild pig broke far away into the perished fields of the villages, dying sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to kill them. Chil the Kite stayed and grew fat, for there was a great deal of carrion, and evening after evening he brought the news to the beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunting-grounds, that the sun was killing the jungle for three days’ flight in every direction.
Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives—honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. All the game in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and Bagheera could kill thrice in a night and hardly get a full meal. But the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle-People drink seldom they must drink deep.
And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture, till at last the main channel of the Wainganga was the only stream that carried a trickle of water between its dead banks. And when Hathi the Wild Elephant, who lives for a hundred years and more, saw a long, lean blue ridge of rock show dry in the very centre of the stream, he knew that he was looking at the Peace Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father before him had proclaimed it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry hoarsely, and Chil the Kite flew in great circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning.
By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places when once the Water Truce has been declared. The reason for this is that drinking comes before eating. Every one in the jungle can scramble along somehow when only game is scarce, but water is water, and when there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops while the Jungle-People go there for their needs. In good seasons, when water was plentiful, those who came down to drink at the Wainganga—or anywhere else, for that matter—did so at the risk of their lives, and that risk made no small part of the fascination of the night’s doings. To move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all glossy-horned young bucks took a delight in, precisely because they knew that at any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap upon them and bear them down. But now that life-and-death fun was ended, and the Jungle-People came up, starved and weary, to the shrunken river—tiger, bear, deer, buffalo, and pig together—drank the fouled waters, and hung above them, too exhausted to move off.
The deer and pig had tramped all day in search of something better than dried bark and withered leaves. The buffaloes had found no wallows to be cool in, and no green crops to steal. The snakes had left the jungle and come down to the river in the hope of catching a stray frog. They curled round wet stones, and never offered to strike when the snout of a rooting pig dislodged them. The river-turtles had long ago been killed by Bagheera, cleverest of hunters, and the fish had buried themselves deep in the cracked mud. Only the Peace Rock lay across the shallows like a long snake, and the little tired ripples hissed as they dried on its hot side.
It was here that Mowgli came nightly for the cool and the companionship. The most hungry of his enemies would hardly have cared for the boy then. His naked skin made him look more lean and wretched than any of his fellows. His hair was bleached to tow-colour by the sun; his ribs stood out like the ribs of a basket, and the lumps on his knees and elbows, where he was used to track on all fours, gave his shrunken limbs the look of knotted grass-stems. But his eye, under his matted forelock, was cool and quiet, for Bagheera, his adviser in this time of trouble, told him to move quietly, hunt slowly, and never, on any account, to lose his temper.
“It is an evil time,” said the black panther, one furnace-hot evening, “but it will go if we can live till the end. Is thy stomach full, man-cub?”
“There is stuff in my stomach, but I get no good of it. Think you, Bagheera, the rains have forgotten us and will never come again?”
“Not I. We shall see the mohwa in blossom yet, and the little fawns all fat with new grass. Come down to the Peace Rock and hear the news. On my back, Little Brother.”
“This is no time to carry weight. I can still stand alone, but—indeed we be no fatted bullocks, we two.”
Bagheera looked along his ragged, dusty flank and whispered: “Last night I killed a bullock under the yoke. So low was I brought that I think I should not have dared to spring if he had been loose. Wou!”
Mowgli laughed. “Yes, we are great hunters now,” said he. “I am very bold—to eat grubs.” And the two came down together through the crackling undergrowth to the river bank and the lace-work of shoals that ran out from it in every direction.
“The water cannot live long,” said Baloo, joining them. “Look across! Yonder are trails like the roads of Man.”
On the level plain of the farther bank the stiff jungle-grass had died standing, and, dying, had mummied. The beaten tracks of the deer and the pig, all leading towards the river, had striped that colourless plain with dusty gullies driven through the ten-foot grass, and, early as it was, each long avenue was full of first-comers hastening to the water. You could hear the does and fawns coughing in the snuff-like dust.
Up-stream, at the bend of the sluggish pool around the Peace Rock, and warden of the Water Truce, stood Hathi the Wild Elephant, with his sons, gaunt and grey in the moonlight, rocking to and fro—always rocking. Below him a little were the vanguard of the deer; below these, again, the pig and the wild buffalo; and on th
e opposite bank, where the tall trees came down to the water’s edge, was the place set apart for the Eaters of Flesh—the tiger, the wolves, the panther, the bear, and the others.
“We be under one Law, indeed,” said Bagheera, wading into the water and looking across at the lines of clicking horns and staring eyes where the deer and the pig pushed each other to and fro. “Good hunting, all of you of my blood,” he added, lying down at full length, one flank thrust out of the shallows. And then, between his teeth: “But for that which is the Law it would be very good hunting.”
The quick-spread ears of the deer caught the last sentence, and a frightened whisper ran along the ranks. “The Truce! Remember the Truce!”
“Peace there, peace!” gurgled Hathi the Wild Elephant. “The Truce holds, Bagheera. This is no time to talk of hunting.”
“Who should know better than I?” Bagheera answered, rolling his yellow eyes up-stream. “I am an eater of turtle—a fisher of frogs. Ngaayah! Would I could get good from chewing branches!”
“We wish so, very greatly,” bleated a young fawn, who had only been born that spring, and did not at all like it. Wretched as the Jungle-People were, even Hathi could not help chuckling, while Mowgli, lying on his elbows in the warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the foam with his feet.
“Well spoken, little bud-horn,” Bagheera purred. “When the Truce ends that shall be remembered in thy favour.” And he looked keenly through the darkness to make sure of recognizing the fawn again.
Gradually the talk spread up and down the drinking-places. You could hear the scuffling, snorting pig asking for more room, the buffaloes grunting among themselves as they lurched out across the sandbars, and the deer telling pitiful stories of their long footsore searches in quest of food. Now and again they asked some question of the Eaters of Flesh across the river, but all the news was bad, and the roaring hot wind of the jungle came and went, between the rocks and the rattling branches, and scattered twigs and dust on the water.
“The Men-Folk too, they die beside their ploughs,” said a young sambur. “I passed three between sunset and night. They lay still, and their bullocks with them. We also shall lie still in a little.”
“The river has fallen since last night,” said Baloo. “O Hathi, hast thou ever seen the like of this drouth?”
“It will pass, it will pass,” said Hathi, squirting water along his back and sides.
“We have one here that cannot endure long,” said Baloo, and he looked towards the boy he loved.
“I?” said Mowgli indignantly, sitting up in the water. “I have no long fur to cover my bones, but—but if thy hide were pulled off, Baloo—”
Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo said severely:
“Man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher of the Law. Never have I been seen without my hide.”
“Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo, but only that thou art, as it were, like the cocoanut in the husk, and I am the same cocoanut all naked. Now that brown husk of thine—” Mowgli was sitting cross-legged, and explaining things with his forefinger in his usual way, when Bagheera put out a paddy paw and pulled him over backwards into the water.
“Worse and worse,” said the black panther, as the boy rose spluttering. “First, Baloo is to be skinned and now he is a cocoanut. Be careful that he does not do what the ripe cocoanuts do.”
“And what is that?” said Mowgli, off his guard for the minute, though that is one of the oldest catches in the jungle.
“Break thy head,” said Bagheera quietly, pulling him under again.
“It is not good to make a jest of thy teacher,” said the bear, when Mowgli had been ducked for the third time.
“Not good! What would ye have? That naked thing running to and fro makes a monkey-jest of those who have once been good hunters, and pulls the best of us by the whiskers for sport.” This was Shere Khan, the Lame Tiger, limping down to the water. He waited a little to enjoy the sensation he made among the deer on the opposite bank; then he dropped his square, frilled head and began to lap, growling: “The jungle has become a whelping-ground for naked cubs now. Look at me, man-cub!”
Mowgli looked—stared, rather—as insolently as he knew how, and in a minute Shere Khan turned away uneasily. “Man-cub this, and man-cub that,” he rumbled, going on with his drink. “The cub is neither man nor cub, or he would have been afraid. Next season I shall have to beg his leave for a drink. Aurgh!”
“That may come, too,” said Bagheera, looking him steadily between the eyes. “That may come, too…. Faugh, Shere Khan! What new shame hast thou brought here?”
The Lame Tiger had dipped his chin and jowl in the water, and dark oily streaks were floating from it down-stream.
“Man!” said Shere Khan coolly. “I killed an hour since.” He went on purring and growling to himself.
The line of beasts shook and wavered to and fro, and a whisper went up that grew to a cry: “Man! Man! He has killed Man!” Then all looked towards Hathi the Wild Elephant, but he seemed not to hear. Hathi never does anything till the time comes, and that is one of the reasons why he lives so long.
“At such a season as this to kill Man! Was there no other game afoot?” said Bagheera scornfully, drawing himself out of the tainted water, and shaking each paw, cat-fashion, as he did so.
“I killed for choice—not for food.” The horrified whisper began again, and Hathi’s watchful little white eye cocked itself in Shere Khan’s direction. “For choice,” Shere Khan drawled. “Now come I to drink and make me clean again. Is there any to forbid?”
Bagheera’s back began to curve like a bamboo in a high wind, but Hathi lifted up his trunk and spoke quietly.
“Thy kill was from choice?” he asked, and when Hathi asks a question it is best to answer.
“Even so. It was my right and my night. Thou knowest, O Hathi.” Shere Khan spoke almost courteously.
“Yea, I know,” Hathi answered. And, after a little silence: “Hast thou drunk thy fill?”
“For to-night, yes.”
“Go, then. The river is to drink, and not to defile. None but the Lame Tiger would have boasted of his right at this season when—when we suffer together—Man and Jungle-People alike. Clean or unclean, get to thy lair, Shere Khan!”
The last words rang out like silver trumpets, and Hathi’s three sons rolled forward half a pace, though there was no need. Shere Khan slunk away, not daring to growl, for he knew—what every one else knows—that when the last comes to the last Hathi is the master of the jungle.
“What is this right Shere Khan speaks of?” Mowgli whispered in Bagheera’s ear. “To kill Man is always shameful. The Law says so. And yet Hathi says—”
“Ask him. I do not know, Little Brother. Right or no right, if Hathi had not spoken I would have taught that lame butcher his lesson. To come to the Peace Rock fresh from a kill of Man—and to boast of it—is a jackal’s trick. Besides, he tainted the good water.”
Mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his courage, because no one cared to address Hathi directly, and then he cried: “What is Shere Khan’s right, O Hathi?” Both banks echoed his words, for all the people of the jungle are intensely curious, and they had just seen something that no one, except Baloo, who looked very thoughtful, seemed to understand.
“It is an old tale,” said Hathi, “a tale older than the jungle. Keep silence along the banks, and I will tell that tale.”
There was a minute or two of pushing and shouldering among the pigs and the buffalo, and then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after another: “We wait.” And Hathi strode forward till he was almost knee-deep in the pool by the Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and yellow-tusked though he was, he looked what the jungle held him to be—their master.
“Ye know, children,” he began, “that of all things ye most fear Man.” There was a mutter of agreement.
“This tale touches thee, Little Brother,” said Bagheera to Mowgli.
“I? I am of the pack—a hunter of the Fre
e People,” Mowgli answered. “What have I to do with Man?”
“And ye do not know why ye fear Man?” Hathi went on. “This is the reason. In the beginning of the jungle, and none know when that was, we of the jungle walked together, having no fear of one another. In those days there was no drouth, and leaves and flowers and fruit grew on the same tree, and we ate nothing at all except leaves and flowers and grass and fruit and bark.”
“I am glad I was not born in those days,” said Bagheera. “Bark is only good to sharpen claws.”
“And the Lord of the Jungle was Tha, the First of the Elephants. He drew the jungle out of deep waters with his trunk, and where he made furrows in the ground with his tusks, there the rivers ran, and where he struck with his foot, there rose ponds of good water, and when he blew through his trunk—thus—the trees fell. That was the manner in which the jungle was made by Tha, and so the tale was told to me.”
“It has not lost fat in the telling,” Bagheera whispered, and Mowgli laughed behind his hand.
“In those days there was no corn or melons or pepper or sugar-cane, nor were there any little huts such as ye have all seen. And the Jungle-People knew nothing of Man, but lived in the jungle together, making one people. But presently they began to dispute over their food, though there was grazing enough for all. They were lazy. Each wished to eat where he lay, as sometimes we may do now when the spring rains are good. Tha, the First of the Elephants, was busy making new jungles and leading the rivers in their beds. He could not walk everywhere, so he made the First of the Tigers the master and the judge of the jungle, to whom the Jungle-People should bring their disputes. In those days the First of the Tigers ate fruit and grass with the others. He was as large as I am, and he was very beautiful, in colour all over like the blossom of the yellow creeper. There was never stripe nor bar upon his hide in those good days when the jungle was new. All the Jungle-People came before him without fear, and his word was the Law of all the jungle. We were then, remember ye, one people. Yet, upon a night, there was a dispute between two bucks—a grazing-quarrel such as ye now try out with the head and the fore feet—and it is said that as the two spoke together before the First of the Tigers lying among the flowers, a buck pushed him with his horns, and the First of the Tigers forgot that he was the master and judge of the jungle, and, leaping upon that buck, broke his neck.