Rudyard Kipling

“ Only the smell of the new grass on their door-steps can take away that smell. It burns in my mouth. Let in the Jungle, Hathi!”
“Ah!” said Hathi. “So did the scar of the stake burn on my hide till we watched the villages die under in the spring growth. Now I see. Thy war shall he our war. We will let in the jungle!”
Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath--he was shaking all over with rage and hate before the place where the elephants had stood was empty, and Bagheera was looking at him with terror. ”

“ Man does not eat Man!” Mowgli shrieked.
“Who was a wolf but now? Who drove the knife at me for thinking he might be Man?” said Akela, as the four wolves turned back sullenly and dropped to heel.
“Am I to give reason for all I choose to do?” said Mowgli furiously.
“That is Man! There speaks Man!” Bagheera muttered under his whiskers. “Even so did men talk round the King’s cages at Oodeypore. We of the Jungle know that Man is wisest of all. If we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he is most foolish.” Raising his voice, he added, “The Man-cub is right in this. Men hunt in packs. ”

“ He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow, but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on. ”

“ Mowgli helped Messua through the window, and the cool night air revived her, but the Jungle in the starlight looked very dark and terrible.
“Ye know the trail to Khanhiwara?” Mowgli whispered.
They nodded.
“Good. Remember, now, not to be afraid. And there is no need to go quickly. Only--only there may be some small singing in the Jungle behind you and before.”
“Think you we would have risked a night in the Jungle through anything less than the fear of burning? It is better to be killed by beasts than by men,” said Messua’s husband; but Messua looked at Mowgli and smiled. ”

“ That was the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, which I and my three sons did; and now I ask, Man-cub, how the news of it came to thee?” said Hathi.
“A man told me, and now I see even Buldeo can speak truth. It was well done, Hathi with the white mark; but the second time it shall be done better, for the reason that there is a man to direct. Thou knowest the village of the Man-Pack that cast me out? They are idle, senseless, and cruel; they play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport. When they are full-fed they would throw their own breed into the Red Flower. ”

“ Hathi and his sons are like Kaa, the Rock Python. They never hurry till they have to.
At the end of that time--and none knew who had started it--a rumour went through the Jungle that there was better food and water to be found in such and such a valley. The pig--who, of course, will go to the ends of the earth for a full meal--moved first by companies, scuffling over the rocks, and the deer followed, with the small wild foxes that live on the dead and dying of the herds; and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps came after the nilghai. ”

“ Leave Men alone.” Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: “Leave Men alone.”
Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf’s side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again.
“But what,” said Akela, cocking one ear--“but what if men do not leave thee alone, Little Brother?”
“We be five,” said Grey Brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word.
“We also might attend to that hunting,” said Bagheera, with a little switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. “But why think of men now, Akela?” ”

“ You will remember that Mowgli had left the village with the heavy weight of Shere Khan’s raw hide on his shoulders, while Akela and Grey Brother trotted behind, so that the triple trail was very clearly marked. Presently Buldeo came to where Akela, as you know, had gone back and mixed it all up. Then he sat down, and coughed and grunted, and made little casts round and about into the Jungle to pick it up again, and, all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him. No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be heard ”

“ Said Mang, “The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet’s nest.”
“It was a big stone that I threw,” chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet’s nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him.
“I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now I know, for I have good cause,”--Akela looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,--“that men do not carry guns for pleasure. ”

“ After that they would dispose of Messua and her husband, and divide their lands and buffaloes among the village. Messua’s husband had some remarkably fine buffaloes, too. It was an excellent thing to destroy wizards, Buldeo thought; and people who entertained Wolf-children out of the Jungle were clearly the worst kind of witches.
But, said the charcoal-burners, what would happen if the English heard of it? The English, they had heard, were a perfectly mad people, who would not let honest farmers kill witches in peace. ”

“ As much good ground as I can walk over in two nights from the east to the west, and from the north to the south as much as I can walk over in three nights, the Jungle took. We let in the Jungle upon five villages; and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the soft crop-grounds, there is not one man today who takes his food from the ground. ”

“ The stuff that passes from hand to hand and never grows warmer. Do they need it outside this place also?” said Mowgli.
The man stared angrily. “He is a fool, and no devil,” he muttered. With the money I can buy a horse. We are too bruised to walk far, and the village will follow us in an hour.”
“I say they will not follow till I choose; but a horse is well thought of, for Messua is tired.” ”

“ The Eaters of Flesh had fallen back and left an open path to the south, and drove upon drove of buck fled along it. Others, who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal next night.
But the work was practically done. When the villagers looked in the morning they saw their crops were lost. And that meant death if they did not get away, for they lived year in and year out as near to starvation as the Jungle was near to them. ”

“ He says that he never saw such a trail in his life. He says he is tired.”
“He will be rested before he picks it up again,” said Bagheera coolly, as he slipped round a tree-trunk, in the game of blind-man’s buff that they were playing. “Now, what does the lean thing do?”
“Eat, or blow smoke out of his mouth. Men always play with their mouths,” said Mowgli; and the silent trailers saw the old man fill and light and puff at a water-pipe, and they took good note of the smell of the tobacco, so as to be sure of Buldeo in the darkest night, if necessary. ”

“ They are all mad together. What have Messua and her man to do with me that they should be put in a trap; and what is all this talk about the Red Flower? I must look to this. Whatever they would do to Messua they will not do till Buldeo returns. And so--” Mowgli thought hard, with his fingers playing round the haft of the skinning-knife, while Buldeo and the charcoal-burners went off very valiantly in single file.
“I go hot-foot back to the Man-Pack,” Mowgli said at last.
“And those?” said Grey Brother, looking hungrily after the brown backs of the charcoal-burners. ”

“ Khanhiwara is thirty miles from here, but at Khanhiwara we may find the English--”
“And what Pack are they?” said Mowgli.
“I do not know. They be white, and it is said that they govern all the land, and do not suffer people to burn or beat each other without witnesses. If we can get thither tonight, we live. Otherwise we die.”
“Live, then. No man passes the gates tonight. But what does he do?” Messua’s husband was on his hands and knees digging up the earth in one corner of the hut. ”

“ Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean earth. Let them go and find a fresh lair. They cannot stay here. I have seen and smelled the blood of the woman that gave me food--the woman whom they would have killed but for me. ”