Free The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling, Alev Lytle Croutier Page A

out of that trap; I can do no more,” Bagheera gasped. “Let us take the man-cub and go. They may attack again.”
    “They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!” Kaa hissed, and the city was silent once more. “I could not come before, Brother, but I
think
I heard thee call”—this was to Bagheera.
    “I—I may have cried out in the battle,” Bagheera answered. “Baloo, art thou hurt?”
    “I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little bearlings,” said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other.
Wow!
I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee. I think, our lives—Bagheera and I.”
    “No matter. Where is the manling?”
    “Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out,” cried Mowgli. The curve of the broken dome was above his head.
    “Take him away. He dances like Mor the Peacock. He will crush our young,” said the cobras inside.
    “Hah!” said Kaa with a chuckle, “he has friends everywhere, this manling. Stand back, manling, and hide you, O Poison-People. I break down the wall.”
    Kaa looked carefully till he found a discoloured crack in the marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get the distance, and then, lifting up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows, nose-first. The screen-work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself between Baloo and Bagheera—an arm round each big neck.
    “Art thou hurt?” said Baloo, hugging him softly.
    “I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised, but, oh, they have handled ye grievously, my brothers! Ye bleed.”
    “Others also,” said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.
    “It is nothing, it is nothing if thou art safe, oh, my pride of all little frogs!” whimpered Baloo.
    “Of that we shall judge later,” said Bagheera, in a dry voice that Mowgli did not at all like. “But here is Kaa to whom we owe the battle and thou owest thy life. Thank him according to our customs, Mowgli.”
    Mowgli turned and saw the great python’s head swaying a foot above his own.
    “So this is the manling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not unlike the
Bandar-log.
Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”
    “We be one blood, thou and I,” Mowgli answered. “I take my life from thee to-night. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa.”
    “All thanks, Little Brother,” said Kaa, though his eyes twinkled. “And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I may follow when next he goes abroad.”
    “I kill nothing—I am too little—but I drive goats towards such as can use them. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the truth. I have some skill in these”—he held out his hands—“and if ever thou art in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee, to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good hunting to ye all, my masters.”
    “Well said,” growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned thanks very prettily. The python dropped his head lightly for a minute on Mowgli’s shoulder. “A brave heart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see.”
    The moon was sinking behind the hills and the linesof trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged shaky fringes of things. Baloo went down to the tank for a drink and Bagheera began to put his fur in order, as Kaa glided out into the centre of the terrace and brought his jaws together with a ringing snap that drew all the monkeys’ eyes upon him.
    “The moon sets,” he said. “Is there yet light enough to see?”
    From the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-tops: “We