The Second Jungle Book | Page 7

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 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.
"Yes, 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 so 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 none 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 a 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 nearly
knee-deep in the pool by the Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and
yellow-tusked though he was, he looked what the Jungle knew him to
be--their master.
"Ye know, children," he began, "that of all things ye most fear Man";
and 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 Free 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 drought, 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,