The Second Jungle Book | Page 8

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 can 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 in all places;
therefore 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 this 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 settle with the horns and the
fore-feet--and it is said that as the two spoke together before the First of
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.
"Till that night never one of us had died, and the First of the Tigers,
seeing what he had done, and being made foolish by the scent of the
blood, ran away into the marshes of the North, and we of the Jungle,
left without a judge, fell to fighting among ourselves; and Tha heard
the noise of it and came back. Then some of us said this and some of us
said that, but he saw the dead buck among the flowers, and asked who
had killed, and we of the Jungle would not tell because the smell of the
blood made us foolish. We ran to and fro in circles, capering and crying
out and shaking our heads. Then Tha gave an order to the trees that
hang low, and to the trailing creepers of the Jungle, that they should
mark the killer of the buck so that he should know him again, and he
said, "Who will now be master of the Jungle People?" Then up leaped
the Gray Ape who lives in the branches, and said, "I will now be master
of the Jungle."

At this Tha laughed, and said, "So be it," and went away very angry.
"Children, ye know the Gray Ape. He was then as he is now. At the
first he made a wise face for himself, but in a little while he began to
scratch and to leap up and down, and when Tha came back he found the
Gray Ape hanging, head down, from a bough, mocking those who
stood below; and they mocked him again. And so there was no Law in
the Jungle--only foolish talk and senseless words.
"Then Tha called us all together and said: 'The first of your masters has
brought Death into the Jungle, and the second Shame. Now it is time
there was a Law, and a Law that ye must not break. Now ye shall know
Fear, and when ye have found him ye shall know that he is your master,
and the rest shall follow.' Then we of the jungle said, 'What is Fear?'
And Tha said, 'Seek till ye find.' So we went up and down the Jungle
seeking for Fear, and presently the buffaloes----"
"Ugh!" said Mysa, the leader of the buffaloes, from their sand-bank.
"Yes, Mysa, it was the buffaloes. They came back with the news that in
a cave in the Jungle sat Fear, and that he had no hair, and went upon his
hind legs. Then we of the Jungle followed the herd till we came to that
cave, and Fear stood at the mouth of it, and he was, as the buffaloes had
said, hairless, and he walked upon his hinder legs. When he saw us he
cried out, and his voice filled us with the fear that we have now of that
voice when we hear it, and we ran away, tramping upon and tearing
each other because we were afraid. That night, so it was told to me, we
of the Jungle did not lie down together as used to be our custom, but
each tribe drew off by itself--the pig with the pig, the deer with the deer;
horn to horn, hoof to hoof,--like keeping to like, and so lay shaking in
the