Free The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

knows that Sahi is ridiculously fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very best and ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said, “What is that to me?”
    “Not much
now
,” said Sahi, rattling his quills in a stiff, uncomfortable way, “but later we shall see. Is there any more diving into the deep rock pool below the Bee Rocks, Little Brother?”
    “No. The foolish water is going all away, and I do not wishto break my head,” said Mowgli, who was quite sure he knew as much as any five of the Jungle-People put together.
    “That is thy loss. A small crack might let in some wisdom.” Sahi ducked quickly to prevent Mowgli from pulling his nose bristles, and Mowgli told Baloo what Sahi had said. Baloo looked very grave, and mumbled half to himself: “If I were alone I would change my hunting grounds now, before the others began to think. And yet—hunting among strangers ends in fighting—and they might hurt my man-cub. We must wait and see how the
mohwa
blooms.”
    That spring the
mohwa
tree, that Baloo was so fond of, never flowered. The greeny, cream-colored, waxy blossoms were heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last least footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the jungle, till they were as bareand as hot as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of the stream.
    The birds and the Monkey-People went north early in the year, for they knew what was coming; and the deer and the wild pig broke far away into the perished fields of the villages, dying sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to kill them. Chil the Kite stayed and grew fat, for there was a great deal of carrion, and evening after evening he brought the news to the beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunting grounds, that the sun was killing the jungle for three days’ flight in every direction.
    Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock hives—honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. All the game in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and Bagheera could kill thrice in a night and hardly get a full meal. But the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle-People drink seldom they must drink deep.
    And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture, till at last the main channel of the Wainganga was the only stream that carried a trickle of water between its dead banks; and when Hathi the Wild Elephant, who lives for ahundred years and more, saw a long, lean blue ridge of rock show dry in the very center of the stream, he knew that he was looking at the Peace Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father before him had proclaimed it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry hoarsely; and Chil the Kite flew in great circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning.
    By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking places when once the Water Truce has been declared. The reason for this is that drinking comes before eating. Everyone in the jungle can scramble along somehow when only game is scarce; but water is water, and when there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops while the Jungle-People go there for their needs. In good seasons, when water