The Second Jungle Book | Page 5

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 tall-antlered 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 all 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, all together,--drank
the fouled waters, and hung above them, too exhausted to move off.
The deer and the 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 finding a stray
frog. They curled round wet stones, and never offered to strike when
the nose 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 dry 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 hide made him seem 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 was his adviser in
this time of trouble, and told him to go 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 be 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 heading toward 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 round the Peace Rock, and
Warden of the Water Truce, stood Hathi, the wild elephant, with his
sons, gaunt and gray 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 the 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 are under one Law, indeed," said Bagheera, wading into the water
and looking across at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes where
the deer and the pig pushed each other to and