EPISODE: 8.

Master Word for the birds too while he was being pulled across

trees!"

"It was most firmly driven into him," said Bagheera. "But I am

proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs."

They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle

People ever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs

was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and

beasts seldom use a place that men have once used. The wild

boar will, but the hunting tribes do not. Besides, the monkeys

lived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere, and

no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it except

in times of drought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs

held a little water.

"It is half a night's journey—at full speed," said Bagheera, and

Baloo looked very serious. "I will go as fast as I can," he said

anxiously.

"We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on the

quick-foot—Kaa and I."

"Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four," said Kaa

shortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down

panting, and so they left him to come on later, while Bagheera

hurried forward, at the quick panther-canter. Kaa said nothing,

but, strive as Bagheera might, the huge Rock-python held level

with him. When they came to a hill stream, Bagheera gained,

because he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head and two

feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground Kaa

made up the distance.

"By the Broken Lock that freed me," said Bagheera, when

twilight had fallen, "thou art no slow goer!"

"I am hungry," said Kaa. "Besides, they called me speckled

frog."

"Worm—earth-worm, and yellow to boot." "All one. Let us go on," and Kaa seemed to pour himself along

the ground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and

keeping to it.

In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking of

Mowgli's friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost

City, and were very much pleased with themselves for the time.

Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before, and though this

was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and

splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little hill. You

could still trace the stone causeways that led up to the ruined

gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted

hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the

battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers

hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy

hanging clumps.

A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the

courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and

green, and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the

king's elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by

grasses and young trees. From the palace you could see the rows

and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like

empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of

stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met;

the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells

once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs

sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city,

and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in

the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were

made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the

hall of the king's council chamber, and scratch for fleas and

pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless

houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner,

and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in

scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the

terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose

trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall.

They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never

remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so

drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that

they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made

the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they

would all rush together in mobs and shout: "There is no one in

the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as

the Bandar-log." Then all would begin again till they grew tired

of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-

People would notice them.

Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle,

did not like or understand this kind of life. The monkeys

dragged him into the Cold Lairs late in the afternoon, and

instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli would have done after a

long journey, they joined hands and danced about and sang their

foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a speech and told his

companions that Mowgli's capture marked a new thing in the

history of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show them

how to weave sticks and canes together as a protection against

rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some creepers and began to

work them in and out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; but in a

very few minutes they lost interest and began to pull their

friends' tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.

"I wish to eat," said Mowgli. "I am a stranger in this part of

the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here."

Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts

and wild pawpaws. But they fell to fighting on the road, and it

was too much trouble to go back with what was left of the fruit.

Mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry, and he roamed

through the empty city giving the Strangers' Hunting Call from

time to time, but no one answered him, and Mowgli felt that he

had reached a very bad place indeed. "All that Baloo has said

about the Bandar-log is true," he thought to himself. "They have

no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders—nothing but foolish

words and little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or

killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jungle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is better

than chasing silly rose leaves with the Bandar-log."

No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys

pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he

was, and pinching him to make him grateful. He set his teeth

and said nothing, but went with the shouting monkeys to a

terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half-full of

rain water. There was a ruined summer-house of white marble in

the center of the terrace, built for queens dead a hundred years

ago. The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the

underground passage from the palace by which the queens used

to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble tracery—

beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians

and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the

hill it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the

ground like black velvet embroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as

he was, Mowgli could not help laughing when the Bandar-log

began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and

strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to

leave them. "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We

are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so,

and so it must be true," they shouted. "Now as you are a new

listener and can carry our words back to the Jungle-People so

that they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our

most excellent selves." Mowgli made no objection, and the

monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on the terrace to

listen to their own speakers singing the praises of the Bandar-

log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they

would all shout together: "This is true; we all say so." Mowgli

nodded and blinked, and said "Yes" when they asked him a

question, and his head spun with the noise. "Tabaqui the Jackal

must have bitten all these people," he said to himself, "and now

they have madness. Certainly this is dewanee, the madness. Do

they never go to sleep? Now there is a cloud coming to cover

that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run

away in the darkness. But I am tired."

That same cloud was being watched by two good friends in

the ruined ditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa,

knowing well how dangerous the Monkey-People were in large

numbers, did not wish to run any risks. The monkeys never fight

unless they are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle care for

those odds.

"I will go to the west wall," Kaa whispered, "and come down

swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. They will not

throw themselves upon my back in their hundreds, but—"

"I know it," said Bagheera. "Would that Baloo were here, but

we must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon I

shall go to the terrace. They hold some sort of council there over

the boy."

"Good hunting," said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the west

wall. That happened to be the least ruined of any, and the big

snake was delayed awhile before he could find a way up the

stones. The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli wondered what

would come next he heard Bagheera's light feet on the terrace.

The Black Panther had raced up the slope almost without a

sound and was striking—he knew better than to waste time in

biting—right and left among the monkeys, who were seated

round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl

of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling

kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: "There is only

one here! Kill him! Kill." A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting,

scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five

or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the

summerhouse and pushed him through the hole of the broken

dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for

the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had

taught him to fall, and landed on his feet.

"Stay there," shouted the monkeys, "till we have killed thy

friends, and later we will play with thee—if the Poison-People

leave thee alive."....