Free The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling Page B

gray in the moonlight, rocking to and fro—always rocking. Below him a little were the vanguard of the deer; below these, again, the pig and the wild buffalo; and on the opposite bank, where the tall trees came down to the water’s edge, was the place set apart for the eaters of flesh—the tiger, the wolves, the panther, the bear, and the others.
    “We be under one Law, indeed,” said Bagheera, wading into the water and looking across at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes where the deer and the pig pushed each other to and fro. “Good hunting, all of you of my blood,” headded, lying down at full length, one flank thrust out of the shallows; and then, between his teeth, “But for that which is the Law it would be
very
good hunting.”
    The quick-spread ears of the deer caught the last sentence, and a frightened whisper ran along the ranks. “The Truce! Remember the Truce!”
    “Peace there, peace!” gurgled Hathi the Wild Elephant. “The Truce holds, Bagheera. This is no time to talk of hunting.”
    “Who should know better than I?” Bagheera answered, rolling his yellow eyes upstream. “I am an eater of turtle—a fisher of frogs.
Ngaayah!
Would I could get good from chewing branches!”
    “
We
wish so, very greatly,” bleated a young fawn, who had only been born that spring, and did not at all like it. Wretched as the Jungle-People were, even Hathi could not help chuckling; while Mowgli, lying on his elbows in the warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the foam with his feet.
    “Well spoken, little bud-horn,” Bagheera purred. “When the Truce ends that shall be remembered in thy favor,” and he looked keenly through the darkness to make sure of recognizing the fawn again.
    Gradually the talk spread up and down the drinking places. You could hear the scuffling, snorting pig asking formore room; the buffaloes grunting among themselves as they lurched out across the sandbars, and the deer telling pitiful stories of their long footsore searches in quest of food. Now and again they asked some question of the eaters of flesh across the river, but all the news was bad, and the roaring hot wind of the jungle came and went, between the rocks and the rattling branches, and scattered twigs and dust on the water.
    “The menfolk too, they die beside their plows,” said a young sambur. “I passed three between sunset and night. They lay still, and their bullocks with them. We also shall lie still in a little.”
    “The river has fallen since last night,” said Baloo. “O Hathi, hast thou ever seen the like of this drought?”
    “It will pass, it will pass,” said Hathi, squirting water along his back and sides.
    “We have one here that cannot endure long,” said Baloo; and he looked towards the boy he loved.
    “I?” said Mowgli indignantly, sitting up in the water. “I have no long fur to cover my bones, but—but if thy hide were pulled off, Baloo—”
    Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo said severely:
    “Man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher of the Law.
Never
have I been seen without my hide.”
    “Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo; but only that thou art, asit were, like the coconut in the husk, and I am the same coconut all naked. Now that brown husk of thine—” Mowgli was sitting cross-legged, and explaining things with his forefinger in his usual way, when Bagheera put out a paddy paw and pulled him over backwards into the water.
    “Worse and worse,” said the Black Panther, as the boy rose spluttering. “First, Baloo is to be skinned and now he is a coconut. Be careful that he does not do what the ripe coconuts do.”
    “And what is that?” said Mowgli, off his guard for the minute, though that is one of the oldest catches in the jungle.
    “Break thy head,” said Bagheera quietly, pulling him under again.
    “It is not good to make a jest of thy teacher,” said the Bear, when Mowgli had been ducked for the third time.
    “Not good! What would ye have? That naked