"They must swim the Waingunga. I thought to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the Pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting we a little might turn them down-stream, or cool their throats."
"The dhole do not turn and their throats are hot," said Kaa. "There will be neither Manling nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry bones."
"_Alala!_ If we die, we die. It will be most good hunting. But my stomach is young, and I have not seen many Rains. I am not wise nor strong. Hast thou a better plan, Kaa?"
"I have seen a hundred and a hundred Rains. Ere Hathi cast his milk-tushes my trail was big in the dust. By the First Egg I am older than many trees, and I have seen all that the Jungle has done."
"But _this_ is new hunting," said Mowgli. "Never before have the dhole crossed our trail."
"What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward. Be still while I count those my years."
For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff pa.s.ses with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night.
Then he felt Kaa"s back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard.
"I have seen all the dead seasons," Kaa said at last, "and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art _thou_ still alive, Manling?"
"It is only a little after moonset," said Mowgli. "I do not understand--"
"_Hssh!_ I am again Kaa. I knew it was but a little time. Now we will go to the river, and I will show thee what is to be done against the dhole."
He turned, straight as an arrow, for the main stream of the Waingunga, plunging in a little above the pool that hid the Peace Rock, Mowgli at his side.
"Nay, do not swim. I go swiftly. My back, Little Brother!"
Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa"s neck, dropped his right close to his body, and straightened his feet. Then Kaa breasted the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked water stood up in a frill round Mowgli"s neck, and his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under the python"s lashing sides. A mile or two above the Peace Rock the Waingunga narrows between a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred feet high, and the current runs like a mill-race between and over all manner of ugly stones. But Mowgli did not trouble his head about the water; little water in the world could have given him a moment"s fear. He was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day. Instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his head to breathe from time to time, and Kaa came to anchor with a double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in the hollow of a coil, while the water raced on.
"This is the Place of Death," said the boy. "Why do we come here?"
"They sleep," said Kaa. "Hathi will not turn aside for the Striped One. Yet Hathi and the Striped One together turn aside for the dhole, and the dhole they say turn aside for nothing. And yet for whom do the Little People of the Rocks turn aside? Tell me, Master of the Jungle, who is the Master of the Jungle?"
"These," Mowgli whispered. "It is the Place of Death. Let us go."
"Nay, look well, for they are asleep. It is as it was when I was not the length of thy arm."
The split and weatherworn rocks of the gorge of the Waingunga had been used since the beginning of the Jungle by the Little People of the Rocks--the busy, furious, black wild bees of India; and, as Mowgli knew well, all trails turned off half a mile before they reached the gorge. For centuries the Little People had hived and swarmed from cleft to cleft, and swarmed again, staining the white marble with stale honey, and made their combs tall and deep in the dark of the inner caves, where neither man nor beast nor fire nor water had ever touched them. The length of the gorge on both sides was hung as it were with black shimmery velvet curtains, and Mowgli sank as he looked, for those were the clotted millions of the sleeping bees.
There were other lumps and festoons and things like decayed tree-trunks studded on the face of the rock, the old combs of past years, or new cities built in the shadow of the windless gorge, and huge ma.s.ses of spongy, rotten trash had rolled down and stuck among the trees and creepers that clung to the rock-face. As he listened he heard more than once the rustle and slide of a honey-loaded comb turning over or falling away somewhere in the dark galleries; then a booming of angry wings and the sullen drip, drip, drip, of the wasted honey, guttering along till it lipped over some ledge in the open air and sluggishly trickled down on the twigs. There was a tiny little beach, not five feet broad, on one side of the river, and that was piled high with the rubbish of uncounted years. There were dead bees, drones, sweepings, and stale combs, and wings of marauding moths that had strayed in after honey, all tumbled in smooth piles of the finest black dust. The mere sharp smell of it was enough to frighten anything that had no wings, and knew what the Little People were.
Kaa moved up-stream again till he came to a sandy bar at the head of the gorge.
"Here is this season"s kill," said he. "Look!"
On the bank lay the skeletons of a couple of young deer and a buffalo.
Mowgli could see that neither wolf nor jackal had touched the bones, which were laid out naturally.
"They came beyond the line: they did not know the Law," murmured Mowgli, "and the Little People killed them. Let us go ere they wake."
"They do not wake till the dawn," said Kaa. "Now I will tell thee. A hunted buck from the south, many, many Rains ago, came hither from the south, not knowing the Jungle, a Pack on his trail. Being made blind by fear, he leaped from above, the Pack running by sight, for they were hot and blind on the trail. The sun was high, and the Little People were many and very angry. Many too were those of the Pack who leaped into the Waingunga, but they were dead ere they took water.
Those who did not leap died also in the rocks above. But the buck lived."
"How?"
"Because he came first, running for his life, leaping ere the Little People were aware, and was in the river when they gathered to kill.
The Pack, following, was altogether lost under the weight of the Little People."
"The buck lived?" Mowgli repeated slowly.
"At least he did not die _then_, though none waited his coming down with a strong body to hold him safe against the water, as a certain old fat, deaf, yellow Flathead would wait for a Manling--yea, though there were all the dholes of the Dekkan on his trail. What is in thy stomach?" Kaa"s head was close to Mowgli"s ear; and it was a little time before the boy answered.
"It is to pull the very whiskers of Death, but--Kaa, thou art, indeed, the wisest of all the Jungle."
"So many have said. Look now, if the dhole follow thee--"
"As surely they will follow. Ho! ho! I have many little thorns under my tongue to p.r.i.c.k into their hides."
"If they follow thee hot and blind, looking only at thy shoulders, those who do not die up above will take water either here or lower down, for the Little People will rise up and cover them. Now the Waingunga is hungry water, and they will have no Kaa to hold them, but will go down, such as live, to the shallows by the Seeonee lairs, and there thy Pack may meet them by the throat."
"_Ahai! Eowawa!_ Better could not be till the Rains fall in the dry season. There is now only the little matter of the run and the leap. I will make me known to the dholes, so that they shall follow me very closely."
"Hast thou seen the rocks above thee? From the landward side?"
"Indeed, no. That I had forgotten."
"Go look. It is all rotten ground, cut and full of holes. One of thy clumsy feet set down without seeing would end the hunt. See, I leave thee here, and for thy sake only I will carry word to the Pack that they may know where to look for the dhole. For myself, I am not of one skin with _any_ wolf."
When Kaa disliked an acquaintance he could be more unpleasant than any of the Jungle People, except perhaps Bagheera. He swam down-stream and opposite the Rock he came on Phao and Akela listening to the night noises.
"_Hssh!_ Dogs," he said cheerfully. "The dholes will come down-stream.
If ye be not afraid ye can kill them in the shallows."
"When come they?" said Phao. "And where is my Man-cub?" said Akela.
"They come when they come," said Kaa. "Wait and see. As for _thy_ Man-cub, from whom thou hast taken a Word and so laid him open to Death, _thy_ Man-cub is with _me_, and if he be not already dead the fault is none of thine, bleached dog! Wait here for the dhole, and be glad that the Man-cub and I strike on thy side."
He flashed up-stream again, and moored himself in the middle of the gorge, looking upward at the line of the cliff. Presently he saw Mowgli"s head move against the stars, and then there was a whizz in the air, the keen, clean _schloop_ of a body falling feet first, and next minute the boy was at rest again in the loop of Kaa"s body.
"It is no leap by night," said Mowgli quietly. "I have jumped twice as far for sport; but that is an evil place above--low bushes and gullies that go down very deep, all full of the Little People. I have put big stones one above the other by the side of three gullies. These I shall throw down with my feet in running, and the Little People will rise up behind me, very angry."
"That is Man"s talk and Man"s cunning," said Kaa. "Thou art wise, but the Little People are always angry."
"Nay, at twilight all wings near and far rest for a while. I will play with the dhole at twilight, for the dhole hunts best by day. He follows now Won-tolla"s blood-trail."
"Chil does not leave a dead ox, nor the dhole the blood-trail," said Kaa.
"Then I will make him a new blood-trail, of his own blood, if I can, and give him dirt to eat. Thou wilt stay here, Kaa, till I come again with my dholes?"
"Ay, but what if they kill thee in the Jungle, or the Little People kill thee before thou canst leap down to the river?"