EPISODE: 13
Mowgli's Song
THAT HE SANG AT THE COUNCIL ROCK WHEN HE
DANCED ON SHERE KHAN'S HIDE
The Song of Mowgli—I, Mowgli, am singing. Let the jungle
listen to the things I have done.
Shere Khan said he would kill—would kill! At the gates in the
twilight he would kill Mowgli, the Frog!
He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou
drink again? Sleep and dream of the kill.
I am alone on the grazing-grounds. Gray Brother, come to me!
Come to me, Lone Wolf, for there is big game afoot!
Bring up the great bull buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd bulls
with the angry eyes. Drive them to and fro as I order.
Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, oh, wake! Here come I,
and the bulls are behind.
Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with his foot. Waters of
the Waingunga, whither went Shere Khan?
He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Peacock, that he should
fly. He is not Mang the Bat, to hang in the branches. Little
bamboos that creak together, tell me where he ran?
Ow! He is there. Ahoo! He is there. Under the feet of Rama
lies the Lame One! Up, Shere Khan!
Up and kill! Here is meat; break the necks of the bulls!
Hsh! He is asleep. We will not wake him, for his strength is very great. The kites have come down to see it. The black
ants have come up to know it. There is a great assembly in his
honor.
Alala! I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites will see that I am
naked. I am ashamed to meet all these people.
Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I
may go to the Council Rock.
By the Bull that bought me I made a promise—a little promise.
Only thy coat is lacking before I keep my word.
With the knife, with the knife that men use, with the knife of the
hunter, I will stoop down for my gift.
Waters of the Waingunga, Shere Khan gives me his coat for the
love
that he bears me. Pull, Gray Brother! Pull, Akela! Heavy is
the hide of Shere Khan.
The Man Pack are angry. They throw stones and talk child's talk.
My mouth is bleeding. Let me run away.
Through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly with me, my
brothers. We will leave the lights of the village and go to
the low moon.
Waters of the Waingunga, the Man-Pack have cast me out. I did
them no harm, but they were afraid of me. Why?
Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jungle is shut to me and
the village gates are shut. Why?
As Mang flies between the beasts and birds, so fly I between the
village and the jungle. Why?
I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my heart is very heavy. My
mouth is cut and wounded with the stones from the village, but
my heart is very light, because I have come back to the jungle.
Why? These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the
spring. The water comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it
falls. Why?
I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under my feet.
All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere Khan. Look—look
well, O Wolves!
Ahae! My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand.
The White Seal
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!
Seal Lullaby
All these things happened several years ago at a place called
Novastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul,
away and away in the Bering Sea. Limmershin, the Winter Wren,
told me the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a
steamer going to Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and
warmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly
back to St. Paul's again. Limmershin is a very quaint little bird,
but he knows how to tell the truth.
Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the
only people who have regular business there are the seals. They
come in the summer months by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea. For Novastoshnah Beach has
the finest accommodation for seals of any place in all the world.
Sea Catch knew that, and every spring would swim from
whatever place he happened to be in—would swim like a
torpedo-boat straight for Novastoshnah and spend a month
fighting with his companions for a good place on the rocks, as
close to the sea as possible. Sea Catch was fifteen years old, a
huge gray fur seal with almost a mane on his shoulders, and
long, wicked dog teeth. When he heaved himself up on his front
flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and his
weight, if anyone had been bold enough to weigh him, was
nearly seven hundred pounds. He was scarred all over with the
marks of savage fights, but he was always ready for just one
fight more. He would put his head on one side, as though he
were afraid to look his enemy in the face; then he would shoot it
out like lightning, and when the big teeth were firmly fixed on
the other seal's neck, the other seal might get away if he could,
but Sea Catch would not help him.
Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against
the Rules of the Beach. He only wanted room by the sea for his
nursery. But as there were forty or fifty thousand other seals
hunting for the same thing each spring, the whistling, bellowing,
roaring, and blowing on the beach was something frightful.
From a little hill called Hutchinson's Hill, you could look over
three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and
the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to
land and begin their share of the fighting. They fought in the
breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the
smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries, for they were just as
stupid and unaccommodating as men. Their wives never came to
the island until late in May or early in June, for they did not
care to be torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, and four-
year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping went inland
about half a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played
about on the sand dunes in droves and legions, and rubbed off
every single green thing that grew. They were called the holluschickie—the bachelors—and there were perhaps two or
three hundred thousand of them at Novastoshnah alone.
Sea Catch had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring
when Matkah, his soft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife, came up out of
the sea, and he caught her by the scruff of the neck and dumped
her down on his reservation, saying gruffly: "Late as usual.
Where have you been?"
It was not the fashion for Sea Catch to eat anything during the
four months he stayed on the beaches, and so his temper was
generally bad. Matkah knew better than to answer back. She
looked round and cooed: "How thoughtful of you. You've taken
the old place again."
"I should think I had," said Sea Catch. "Look at me!"
He was scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was
almost out, and his sides were torn to ribbons.
"Oh, you men, you men!" Matkah said, fanning herself with
her hind flipper. "Why can't you be sensible and settle your
places quietly? You look as though you had been fighting with
the Killer Whale."
"I haven't been doing anything but fight since the middle of
May. The beach is disgracefully crowded this season. I've met at
least a hundred seals from Lukannon Beach, house hunting. Why
can't people stay where they belong?"
"I've often thought we should be much happier if we hauled
out at Otter Island instead of this crowded place," said Matkah.
"Bah! Only the holluschickie go to Otter Island. If we went
there they would say we were afraid. We must preserve
appearances, my dear."
Sea Catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders
and pretended to go to sleep for a few minutes, but all the time
he was keeping a sharp lookout for a fight. Now that all the
seals and their wives were on the land, you could hear their
clamor miles out to sea above the loudest gales. At the lowest....