The Second Jungle Book | Page 4

true, and
Mowgli saw all the Jungle working under the Law.
It began when the winter Rains failed almost entirely, and Ikki, the
Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild
yams were drying up. Now everybody knows that Ikki 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 Ikki, 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 Mowgii, who, in those days, was quite sure that 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." Ikki
ducked quickly to prevent Mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and
Mowgli told Baloo what Ikki 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 the

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, waxy 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 footmark 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
to 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 Waingunga 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 of 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 Waingunga--or
anywhere else, for that matter--did so at the risk of