EPISODE: 2.

"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...