"And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man's
cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall
live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the
end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-
killer—he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by the Sambhur
that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thou goest to thy
mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest
into the world! Go!"
Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the
days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other
wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon
for compliment's sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf,
but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that
where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and
would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave mouth
growling, and when he was clear he shouted:
"Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack
will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to
my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!"
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and
Father Wolf said to her gravely:
"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown
to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?"
"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and
very hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of
my babes to one side already. And that lame butcher would have
killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the
villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him?
Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli—
for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee—the time will come when
thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee."
"But what will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf
may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he
must bring them to the Pack Council, which is generally held
once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may
identify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run
where they please, and until they have killed their first buck no
excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them.
The punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and
if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.
Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on
the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and
Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—a hilltop covered with stones
and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the
great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and
cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat
forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-
colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black
three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led
them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his
youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he
knew the manners and customs of men. There was very little
talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over each other in the
center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now
and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at
him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet.
Sometimes a mother would push her cub far out into the
moonlight to be sure that he had not been overlooked. Akela
from his rock would cry: "Ye know the Law—ye know the Law.
Look well, O Wolves!" And the anxious mothers would take up
the call: "Look—look well, O Wolves!"
At last—and Mother Wolf's neck bristles lifted as the time
came—Father Wolf pushed "Mowgli the Frog," as they called
him, into the center, where he sat laughing and playing with
some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.
Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with
the monotonous cry: "Look well!" A muffled roar came up from
behind the rocks—the voice of Shere Khan crying: "The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have the Free People to do with a
man's cub?" Akela never even twitched his ears. All he said was:
"Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the
orders of any save the Free People? Look well!"
There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his
fourth year flung back Shere Khan's question to Akela: "What
have the Free People to do with a man's cub?" Now, the Law of
the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right
of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at
least two members of the Pack who are not his father and
mother.
"Who speaks for this cub?" said Akela. "Among the Free People
who speaks?" There was no answer and Mother Wolf got ready
for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to
fighting.
Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack
Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf
cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go
where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and
honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.
"The man's cub—the man's cub?" he said. "I speak for the
man's cub. There is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift of
words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be
entered with the others. I myself will teach him."
"We need yet another," said Akela. "Baloo has spoken, and he
is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?"
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera
the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther
markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered
silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his
path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild
buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a
voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin
softer than down. "O Akela, and ye the Free People," he purred, "I have no right
in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is
a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the
life of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not
say who may or may not pay that price. Am I right?"
"Good! Good!" said the young wolves, who are always hungry.
"Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the
Law."
"Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave."
"Speak then," cried twenty voices.
"To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better
sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf.
Now to Baloo's word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly
killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man's cub
according to the Law. Is it difficult?"
There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: "What matter?
He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What
harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where
is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted." And then came
Akela's deep bay, crying: "Look well—look well, O Wolves!"
Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did
not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one.
At last they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only
Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli's own wolves were left.
Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was very angry that
Mowgli had not been handed over to him.
"Ay, roar well," said Bagheera, under his whiskers, "for the
time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to
another tune, or I know nothing of man."
"It was well done," said Akela. "Men and their cubs are very
wise. He may be a help in time."
"Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the
Pack forever," said Bagheera. Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to
every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and
he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves
and a new leader comes up—to be killed in his turn.
"Take him away," he said to Father Wolf, "and train him as
befits one of the Free People."
And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf
Pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.
Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years,
and only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among
the wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so
many books. He grew up with the cubs, though they, of course,
were grown wolves almost before he was a child. And Father
Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the
jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm
night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of
a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash
of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him
as the work of his office means to a business man. When he was
not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to
sleep again. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest
pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey
and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up
for it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do. Bagheera would
lie out on a branch and call, "Come along, Little Brother," and at
first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would
fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray
ape. He took his place at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack
met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf,
the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to
stare for fun. At other times he would pick the long thorns out
of the pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns
and burs in their coats. He would go down the hillside into the
cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the villagers
in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because Bagheera
showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunningly hidden...