"Over-much civility is sometimes no better than over-much discourtesy, for, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds. I do not not desire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their father." desire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their father."
"It is forgotten long ago! It was never said! There never was a white woman! There was no boat! Nothing whatever happened at all."
The Jackal waved his brush to show how completely everything was wiped out of his memory, and sat down with an air.
"Indeed, very many things happened," said the Mugger, beaten in his second attempt that night to get the better of his friend. (Neither bore malice, however. Eat and be eaten was fair law along the river, and the Jackal came in for his share of plunder when the Mugger had finished a meal.) "I left that boat and went up-stream, and, when I had reached Arrah and the back-waters behind it, there were no more dead English. The river was empty for a while. Then came one or two dead, in red coats, not English, but of one kind all-Hindus and Purbeeahs-then five and six abreast, and at last, from Arrah to the North beyond Agra, it was as though whole villages had walked into the water. They came out of little creeks one after another, as the logs come down in the Rains. When the river rose they rose also in companies from the shoals they had rested upon; and the falling flood dragged them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the long hair. All night, too, going North, I heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy cart-wheel makes on sand under water: and every ripple brought more dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said: "If this thing happen to men how shall the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut escape?" There were boats, too, that came up behind me without sails, burning continually, as the cotton-boats sometimes burn, but never sinking."
"Ah!" said the Adjutant. "Boats like those come to Calcutta of the South. They are tall and black, they beat up the water behind them with a tail, and they-"
"Are thrice as big as my village. My My boats were low and white; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle." boats were low and white; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle."
"Was there still good food in the river?" said the Jackal.
"More than I had any desire for. Even I-and I do not eat mud-even I was tired, and, as I remember, a little frightened of this constant coming down of the silent ones. I heard my people say in my village that all the English were dead; but those that came, face-down, with the current were not English, as my people saw. Then my people said that it was best to say nothing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. After a long time the river cleared, and those that came down it had been clearly drowned by the floods, as I could well see; and, though it was not so easy then to get food, I was heartily glad of it. A little killing here and there is no bad thing-but even the Mugger is sometimes satisfied, as the saying is."
"Marvelous! Most truly marvelous!" said the Jackal. "I am become fat through merely hearing about so much good eating. And afterward what, if it be permitted to ask, did the Protector of the Poor do?"
"I said to myself-and by the Right and Left of Gunga! I locked my jaws on that vow-I said I would never go roving any more. So I lived by the Ghaut, very close to my own people, and I watched over them year after year; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. Yes, and my Fate has been very kind to me, and the river is good enough to respect my poor and infirm presence; only-"
"No one is all happy from his beak to his tail," said the Adjutant sympathetically. "What does the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut need more?"
"That little white child which I did not get," said the Mugger, with a deep sigh. "He was very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old now, but before I die it is my desire to try one new thing. It is true they are a heavy-footed, noisy, and foolish people, and the sport would be small, but I remember the old days above Benares, and, if the child lives, he will remember still. It may be he goes up and down the bank of some river, telling how he once pa.s.sed his hands between the teeth of the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, and lived to make a tale of it. My Fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams-the thought of the little white child in the bows of that boat." He yawned, and closed his jaws. "And now I will rest and think. Keep silent, my children, and respect the aged."
He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the Jackal drew back with the Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on the end nearest the railway bridge.
"That was a pleasant and profitable life," he grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird who towered above him. "And not once, mark you, did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left along the banks. Yet I have told him him a hundred times of good things wallowing down-stream. How true is the saying, "All the world forgets the Jackal and the Barber when the news has been told!" Now he is going to sleep! a hundred times of good things wallowing down-stream. How true is the saying, "All the world forgets the Jackal and the Barber when the news has been told!" Now he is going to sleep! Arrh!" Arrh!"
"How can a Jackal hunt with a Mugger?" said the Adjutant coolly. "Big thief and little thief; it is easy to say who gets the pickings."
The Jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going to curl himself up under the tree-trunk, when suddenly he cowered, and looked up through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head.
"What now?" said the Adjutant, opening his wings uneasily.
"Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they are not looking for us-those two men."
"Men, is it? My office protects me. All India knows I am holy." The Adjutant, being a first-cla.s.s scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and so this one never flinched.
"I am not worth a blow from anything greater than an old shoe," said the Jackal, and listened again. "Hark to that footfall!" he went on. "That was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white-face. Listen again! Iron hits iron up there! It is a gun! Friend, those heavy-footed, foolish English are coming to speak with the Mugger."
"Warn him, then. He was called Protector of the Poor by some one not unlike a starving Jackal but a little time ago."
"Let my cousin protect his own hide. He has told me again and again there is nothing to fear from the white-faces. They must be white-faces. Not a villager of Mugger-Ghaut would dare to come after him. See, I said it was a gun! Now, with good luck, we shall feed before daylight. He cannot hear well out of water, and-this time it is not a woman!"
A shiny barrel glittered for a minute in the moonlight on the girders. The Mugger was lying on the sand-bar as still as his own shadow, his fore feet spread out a little, his head dropped between them, snoring like a-mugger.
A voice on the bridge whispered: "It"s an odd shot-straight down almost-but as safe as houses. Better try behind the neck. Golly! what a brute! The villagers will be wild if he"s shot, though. He"s the deota deota (G.o.dling) of these parts." (G.o.dling) of these parts."
"Don"t care a rap," another voice answered; "he took about fifteen of my best coolies while the bridge was building, and it"s time he was put a stop to. I"ve been after him in a boat for weeks. Stand by with the Martinicv as soon as I"ve given him both barrels of this." as soon as I"ve given him both barrels of this."
"Mind the kick, then. A double four-bore"s no joke."
"That"s for him to decide. Here goes!"
There was a roar like the sound of small cannon (the biggest sort of elephant-rifle is not very different from some artillery), and a double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a Martini, whose long bullet makes nothing of a crocodile"s plates. But the explosive bullets did the work. One of them struck just behind the Mugger"s neck, a hand"s breadth to the left of the backbone, while the other burst a little lower down, at the beginning of the tail. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mortally wounded crocodile can scramble to deep water and get away: but the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut was literally broken into three pieces. He hardly moved his head before the life went out of him, and he lay as flat as the Jackal.
"Thunder and lightning! Lightning and thunder!" said that miserable little beast. "Has the thing that pulls the covered carts over the bridge tumbled at last?"
"It is no more than a gun," said the Adjutant, though his very tail-feathers quivered. "Nothing more than a gun. He is certainly dead. Here come the white-faces."
The two Englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across to the sand-bar, where they stood admiring the length of the Mugger. Then a native with an axe cut off the big head, and four men dragged it across the spit.
"The last time that I had my hand in a Mugger"s mouth," said one of the Englishmen, stooping down (he was the man who had built the bridge), "it was when I was about five years old-coming down the river by boat to Monghyr. I was a Mutiny baby, as they call it. Poor mother was in the boat, too, and she often told me how she fired dad"s old pistol at the beast"s head."
"Well, you"ve certainly had your revenge on the chief of the clan-even if the gun has made your nose bleed. Hi, you boatman! Haul that head up the bank, and we"ll boil it for the skull. The skin"s too knocked about to keep. Come along to bed now. This was worth sitting up all night for, wasn"t it?"
Curiously enough, the Jackal and the Adjutant made the very same remark not three minutes after the men had left.
A RIPPLE SONG.
O O.
nce a ripple came to land In the golden sunset burning- Lapped against a maiden"s hand, By the ford returning.
Dainty foot and gentle breast- Here, across, be glad and rest.
"Maiden, wait, " the ripple saith; "Wait, awhile, for I am Death!"
"Where my lover calls I go- Shame it were to treat him coldly- "T was a fish that circled so, Turning over boldly."
Dainty foot and tender heart, Wait the loaded ferry-cart.
"Wait, ah, wait!" the ripple saith; "Maiden, wait, for I am Death!
"When my lover calls I haste- Dame Disdain was never wedded!"
Ripple-ripple round her waist, Clear the current eddied.
Foolish heart and faithful hand, Little feet that touched no land.
Far away the ripple sped, Ripple-ripple-running red!
The King"s Ankus6
These are the Four that are never content, that have never been filled since the Dews began- Jacala"s mouth, and the glut of the Kite, and the hands of the Ape, and the Eyes of Man.
-Jungle Saying.
Kaa, the big Rock Python, had changed his skin for perhaps the two hundredth time since his birth; and Mowgli, who never forgot that he owed his life to Kaa for a night"s work at Cold Lairs, which you may perhaps remember, went to congratulate him. Skin-changing always makes a snake moody and depressed till the new skin begins to shine and look beautiful. Kaa never made fun of Mowgli any more, but accepted him, as the other Jungle People did, for the Master of the Jungle, and brought him all the news that a python of his size would naturally hear. What Kaa did not know about the Middle Jungle, as they call it,-the life that runs close to the earth or under it, the boulder, burrow, and the tree-bole life,-might have been written upon the smallest of his scales.
That afternoon Mowgli was sitting in the circle of Kaa"s great coils, fingering the flaked and broken old skin that lay all looped and twisted among the rocks just as Kaa had left it. Kaa had very courteously packed himself under Mowgli"s broad, bare shoulders, so that the boy was really resting in a living arm-chair.
"Even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect," said Mowgli, under his breath, playing with the old skin. "Strange to see the covering of one"s own head at one"s own feet!"
"Aye, but I lack feet," said Kaa; "and since this is the custom of all my people, I do not find it strange. Does thy skin never feel old and harsh?"
"Then go I and wash, Flathead; but, it is true, in the great heats I have wished I could slough my skin without pain, and run skinless."
"I wash, and also also I take off my skin. How looks the new coat?" I take off my skin. How looks the new coat?"
Mowgli ran his hand down the diagonal checkerings of the immense back. "The Turtle is harder-backed, but not so gay," he said judgmatically. "The Frog, my name-bearer, is more gay, but not so hard. It is very beautiful to see-like the mottling in the mouth of a lily."
"It needs water. A new skin never comes to full color before the first bath. Let us go bathe."
"I will carry thee," said Mowgli; and he stooped down, laughing, to lift the middle section of Kaa"s great body, just where the barrel was thickest. A man might just as well have tried to heave up a two-foot water-main: and Kaa lay still, puffing with quiet amus.e.m.e.nt. Then the regular evening game began-the boy in the flush of his great strength, and the Python in his sumptuous new skin, standing up one against the other for a wrestling-match-a trial of eye and strength. Of course, Kaa could have crushed a dozen Mowglis if he had let himself go; but he played carefully, and never loosed one tenth of his power. Ever since Mowgli was strong enough to endure a little rough handling, Kaa had taught him this game, and it suppled his limbs as nothing else could. Sometimes Mowgli would stand lapped almost to his throat in Kaa"s shifting coils, striving to get one arm free and catch him by the throat. Then Kaa would give way limply, and Mowgli, with both quick-moving feet, would try to cramp the purchase of that huge tail as it flung backward feeling for a rock or a stump. They would rock to and fro, head to head, each waiting for his chance, till the beautiful, statue-like group melted in a whirl of black-and-yellow coils and struggling legs and arms, to rise up again and again. "Now! now! now!" said Kaa, making feints with his head that even Mowgli"s quick hand could not turn aside. "Look! I touch thee here, Little Brother! Here, and here! Are thy hands numb? Here again!"
The game always ended in one way-with a straight, driving blow of the head that knocked the boy over and over. Mowgli could never learn the guard for that lightning lunge, and, as Kaa said, there was not the least use in trying.
"Good hunting!" Kaa grunted at last; and Mowgli, as usual, was shot away half a dozen yards, gasping and laughing. He rose with his fingers full of gra.s.s, and followed Kaa to the wise snake"s pet bathing-place-a deep, pitchy-black pool surrounded with rocks, and made interesting by sunken tree-stumps. The boy slipped in, Jungle-fashion, without a sound, and dived across; rose, too, without a sound, and turned on his back, his arms behind his head, watching the moon rising above the rocks, and breaking up her reflection in the water with his toes. Kaa"s diamond-shaped head cut the pool like a razor, and came out to rest on Mowgli"s shoulder. They lay still, soaking luxuriously in the cool water.
"It is very very good," said Mowgli at last, sleepily. "Now, in the Man-Pack, at this hour, as I remember, they laid down upon hard pieces of wood in the inside of a mud-trap, and, having carefully shut out all the clean winds, drew foul cloth over their heavy heads, and made evil songs through their noses. It is better in the Jungle." good," said Mowgli at last, sleepily. "Now, in the Man-Pack, at this hour, as I remember, they laid down upon hard pieces of wood in the inside of a mud-trap, and, having carefully shut out all the clean winds, drew foul cloth over their heavy heads, and made evil songs through their noses. It is better in the Jungle."
A hurrying cobra slipped down over a rock and drank, gave them "Good hunting!" and went away.
"Sssh!" said Kaa, as though he had suddenly remembered something. "So the Jungle gives thee all that thou hast ever desired, Little Brother?"
"Not all," said Mowgli, laughing; "else there would be a new and strong Shere Khan to kill once a moon. Now, I could kill with my own hands, asking no help of buffaloes. And also I have wished the sun to shine in the middle of the Rains, and the Rains to cover the sun in the deep of summer; and also I have never gone empty but I wished that I had killed a goat; and also I have never killed a goat but I wished it had been buck; nor buck but I wished it had been nilghai. But thus do we feel, all of us."
"Thou hast no other desire?" the big snake demanded.
"What more can I wish? I have the Jungle, and the favor of the Jungle! Is there more anywhere between sunrise and sunset?"
"Now, the Cobra said-" Kaa began.
"What cobra? He that went away just now said nothing. He was hunting."
"It was another."
"Hast thou many dealings with the Poison People? I give them their own path. They carry death in the fore-tooth, and that is not good-for they are so small. But what hood is this thou hast spoken with?"
Kaa rolled slowly in the water like a steamer in a beam sea. "Three or four moons since," said he. "I hunted in Cold Lairs, which place thou hast not forgotten. And the thing I hunted fled shrieking past the tanks and to that house whose side I once broke for thy sake, and ran into the ground."
"But the people of Cold Lairs do not live in burrows." Mowgli knew that Kaa was talking of the Monkey People.
"This thing was not living, but seeking to live," Kaa replied, with a quiver of his tongue. "He ran into a burrow that led very far. I followed, and having killed, I slept. When I waked I went forward."
"Under the earth?"
"Even so, coming at last upon a White Hood [a white cobra], who spoke of things beyond my knowledge, and showed me many things I had never before seen."
"New game? Was it good hunting?" Mowgli turned quickly on his side.
"It was no game, and would have broken all my teeth; but the White Hood said that a man-he spoke as one that knew the breed-that a man would give the breath under his ribs for only the sight of those things."
"We will look," said Mowgli. "I now remember that I was once a man.
"Slowly-slowly. It was haste killed the Yellow Snake that ate the sun. We two spoke together under the earth, and I spoke of thee, naming thee as a man. Said the White Hood (and he is indeed as old as the Jungle): "It is long since I have seen a man. Let him come, and he shall see all these things, for the least of which very many men would die.""
"That must must be new game. And yet the Poison People do not tell us when game is afoot. They are an unfriendly folk." be new game. And yet the Poison People do not tell us when game is afoot. They are an unfriendly folk."
"It is not not game. It is-it is-I cannot say what it is." game. It is-it is-I cannot say what it is."
"We will go there. I have never seen a White Hood, and I wish to see the other things. Did he kill them?"
"They are all dead things. He says he is the keeper of them all."
"Ah! As a wolf stands above meat he has taken to his own lair. Let us go."
Mowgli swam to bank, rolled on the gra.s.s to dry himself, and the two set off for Cold Lairs, the deserted city of which you may have heard. Mowgli was not the least afraid of the Monkey People in those days, but the Monkey People had the liveliest horror of Mowgli. Their tribes, however, were raiding in the Jungle, and so Cold Lairs stood empty and silent in the moonlight. Kaa led up to the ruins of the queen"s pavilion that stood on the terrace, slipped over the rubbish, and dived down the half-choked staircase that went underground from the center of the pavilion. Mowgli gave the snake-call-"We be of one blood, ye and I,"-and followed on his hands and knees. They crawled a long distance down a sloping pa.s.sage that turned and twisted several times, and at last came to where the root of some great tree, growing thirty feet overhead, had forced out a solid stone in the wall. They crept through the gap, and found themselves in a large vault, whose domed roof had been also broken away by tree-roots so that a few streaks of light dropped down into the darkness.
"A safe lair," said Mowgli, rising to his firm feet, "but over far to visit daily. And now what do we see?"
"Am I nothing?" said a voice in the middle of the vault; and Mowgli saw something white move till, little by little, there stood up the hugest cobra he had ever set eyes on-a creature nearly eight feet long, and bleached by being in darkness to an old ivory-white. Even the spectacle-marks of his spread hood had faded to faint yellow. His eyes were as red as rubies, and altogether he was most wonderful.
"Good hunting!" said Mowgli, who carried his manners with his knife, and that never left him.
"What of my city?" said the White Cobra, without answering the greeting. "What of the great, the walled city-the city of a hundred elephants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle past counting-the city of the King of Twenty Kings? I grow deaf here, and it is long since I heard their war-gongs."
"The Jungle is above our heads," said Mowgli. "I know only Hathi and his sons among elephants. Bagheera has slain all the horses in one village, and-what is a King?"
"I told thee," said Kaa softly to the Cobra-"I told thee, four moons ago, that thy city was not."
"The city-the great city of the forest whose gates are guarded by the King"s towers-can never pa.s.s. They builded it before my father"s father came from the egg, and it shall endure when my son"s sons are as white as I! Salomdhi, son of Chandrabija, son of Viyeja, son of Yegasuri, made it in the days of Bappa Rawal.cw Whose cattle are Whose cattle are ye?" ye?"
"It is a lost trail," said Mowgli, turning to Kaa. "I know not his talk."
"Nor I. He is very old. Father of Cobras, there is only the Jungle here, as it has been since the beginning."