THE JUNGLE BOOK

By Rudyard Kipling

Contents

Mowgli's Brothers
Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack
Kaa's Hunting
Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
"Tiger! Tiger!"
Mowgli's Song
The White Seal
Lukannon
"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
Darzee's Chant
Toomai of the Elephants
Shiv and the Grasshopper
Her Majesty's Servants
Parade Song of the Camp Animals

Mowgli's Brothers

Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free—
The herds are shut in barn and hut,
For we run free till dawn.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Claw and tooth and fang.
Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
—Night-Song in the Jungle

It was seven o'clock on a warm evening in the Seeonee hills. Father Wolf woke up from his daytime nap, scratched himself, yawned, and stretched out his paws one at a time to shake off the sleepiness. Mother Wolf lay curled around her four wriggling, squeaking cubs, her big gray nose resting across them. Moonlight poured into the mouth of the cave where the wolf family lived.

"It is time to hunt again," said Father Wolf. He was about to leap down the hill when a small shadow with a bushy tail crossed into the cave and whined, "Good luck to you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck to your fine children, so they never forget the hungry creatures of this world."

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, whose nickname meant Dish-licker. Indian wolves looked down on Tabaqui because he stirred up trouble, spread gossip, and ate scraps of rags and leather from the village trash piles. But they were also a little afraid of him, because Tabaqui sometimes went mad. When that happened, he forgot he was ever afraid of anyone and ran through the forest biting everything in his path. Even the tiger would hide when little Tabaqui went mad, because madness (a sickness that makes animals act wild and dangerous, sometimes called dewanee) was the most shameful thing that could happen to a wild creature.

"Come in and look," said Father Wolf stiffly, "though there's no food here."

"Not for a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for someone as humble as me, even a dry bone is a feast." He scurried to the back of the cave, found a leftover bone with a bit of meat on it, and happily began cracking it open.

"Thank you for this fine meal," he said, licking his lips. "What beautiful children! Such big eyes, and so young! Truly, the children of great ones are wise from the very start."

Now, Tabaqui knew perfectly well that complimenting children to their faces brings bad luck. He enjoyed seeing Mother and Father Wolf grow uneasy.

Tabaqui sat quietly, pleased with the trouble he'd stirred up, then added slyly, "Shere Khan, the Big One, has moved his hunting grounds. He plans to hunt in these hills for the next month—he told me so himself."

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty miles away.

"He has no right!" Father Wolf said angrily. "By the Law of the Jungle, he cannot move his territory without warning us first. He'll scare off every animal for ten miles around, and these days, I have to hunt enough for two."

"His mother didn't name him Lungri, the Lame One, for nothing," said Mother Wolf calmly. "He's been lame in one foot since birth. That's why he only hunts cattle. Now the villagers by the Waingunga are angry with him, so he's come here to stir up trouble with our villagers instead. They'll search the jungle for him long after he's gone, and we and our cubs will have to flee when they set the grass on fire. We should be very grateful to Shere Khan indeed!"

"Should I tell him how grateful you are?" asked Tabaqui.

"Get out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out, and go hunt with your master. You've caused enough trouble tonight."

"I'm going," said Tabaqui calmly. "You can already hear Shere Khan down in the bushes. I could have saved myself the trip."

Father Wolf listened. Down in the valley by the little river, he heard the dry, angry, whining growl of a tiger who has caught nothing and doesn't care who knows it.

"What a fool!" said Father Wolf. "To start off a night's hunt with all that noise! Does he think our deer are like his fat Waingunga cattle?"

"Shh. It's not deer he's hunting tonight," said Mother Wolf. "It's Man."

The growl changed into a strange humming purr that seemed to come from every direction at once. This was the sound that confused woodcutters and travelers sleeping outdoors, sometimes causing them to run straight toward the tiger instead of away.

"Man!" said Father Wolf, baring his teeth. "As if there aren't enough beetles and frogs for him to eat! Must he hunt Man, and on our territory too?"

The Law of the Jungle—rules that governed animal behavior for good reasons—forbid any animal to kill Man, except when a parent was teaching cubs to hunt, and even then only outside the pack's own territory. The real reason was this: killing a human eventually brought white men riding elephants, carrying guns, along with local hunters bearing gongs, fireworks, and torches. Then every creature in the jungle suffered. But the reason animals gave each other was that Man was the weakest, most helpless creature alive, and it wasn't fair to hunt him. They also said—and this was true—that man-eating tigers eventually got mangy fur and lost their teeth.

The purring grew louder and ended in a full roar as Shere Khan charged.

Then came a howl—not a tiger's usual sound at all. "He missed!" said Mother Wolf. "What happened?"

Father Wolf ran outside and heard Shere Khan grumbling and thrashing around in the bushes.

"That fool jumped straight into a woodcutter's campfire and burned his feet," Father Wolf said with a grunt. "Tabaqui is with him."

"Something's coming up the hill," said Mother Wolf, her ear twitching. "Get ready."

The bushes rustled. Father Wolf crouched low, ready to spring. Then something amazing happened—if you'd been watching, you would have seen Father Wolf stop his leap in midair! He had jumped before seeing what he was jumping at, and then tried desperately to stop. He shot straight up into the air and landed almost exactly where he'd started.

"It's a man!" he said. "A man's baby! Look!"

Right in front of him stood a naked brown baby, holding onto a low branch, just barely able to walk—soft, round, and as unafraid as could be. He looked up at Father Wolf's face and laughed.

"Is that a man's baby?" asked Mother Wolf. "I've never seen one before. Bring him here."

A wolf mother who is used to carrying her own cubs can pick up even an egg without cracking it. So even though Father Wolf's jaws closed right around the baby's back, not a single tooth scratched his skin. He set the child down gently among his own cubs.

"So tiny! So bare of fur—and so brave!" said Mother Wolf softly. The baby was already pushing between the cubs to reach her warm fur for milk. "Look, he's feeding right alongside the others! So this is a man's cub. Has any wolf mother ever raised a man's baby among her own children before?"

"I've heard stories of it happening long ago, but never in our pack, and never in my lifetime," said Father Wolf. "He has no hair at all, and I could kill him with one tap of my paw. But look—he stares right back at me, and shows no fear."

Just then, moonlight vanished from the cave entrance as Shere Khan's huge head and shoulders blocked the doorway. Tabaqui squeaked from behind him, "My lord, my lord, it went in there!"

"What an honor, Shere Khan," said Father Wolf, though his eyes flashed with anger. "What does Shere Khan want?"

"My prey. A man's cub came this way," said Shere Khan. "His parents ran off. Give him to me."

Shere Khan really had jumped into a woodcutter's fire, just as Father Wolf guessed, and the pain in his burned feet made him furious. But Father Wolf knew the cave entrance was too narrow for a tiger to fit through. Even where he stood, Shere Khan's shoulders were squeezed tight—like a man trying to fight inside a barrel.

"We wolves are free," said Father Wolf. "We take orders from our Pack Leader, not from a striped cattle-killer. The man's cub belongs to us now—to keep or kill as we decide."

"What talk is this of deciding? By the bull I killed, do you expect me to poke my nose into your den and beg for what's rightfully mine? I am Shere Khan, and I am speaking!"

The tiger's roar shook the cave like thunder. Mother Wolf shook free of her cubs and jumped forward, her eyes glowing like two green moons, facing Shere Khan's blazing stare.

"And I am Raksha—The Demon—and I answer you! The man's cub is mine, Lungri, mine to keep! No one will kill him. He will grow up to run with the Pack and hunt with the Pack. And one day, hunter of helpless babies, frog-eater, fish-killer, he will hunt you! Now leave, before I—by the deer I killed myself, I never eat starved cattle like you—send you home to your mother even lamer than when you were born! Go!"

Father Wolf watched, amazed. He remembered, suddenly, the days long ago when he'd won Mother Wolf by defeating five other wolves in fair combat—back when everyone simply called her Raksha as a compliment, not a warning. Shere Khan might have stood up to Father Wolf, but he couldn't face Mother Wolf. He knew she had every advantage here, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave, growling, and once outside he shouted:

"Every dog is brave in his own yard! We'll see what the Pack thinks about you raising a man's cub! That baby belongs to me, and one day he'll end up between my teeth, you bushy-tailed thieves!"

Mother Wolf dropped down among her cubs, breathing hard. Father Wolf said seriously,

"Shere Khan speaks some truth. We must show the cub to the Pack. Will you still keep him, Mother?"

"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came to us naked, alone, in the night, starving—yet not afraid! Look, he's already nudged one of my own cubs aside! That lame butcher would have killed him, then run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here searched every den in our jungle for revenge! Of course I'll keep him. Be still, little frog. I'll call you Mowgli, the Frog. Someday, you will hunt Shere Khan just as he hunted you."

"But what will the Pack say?" asked Father Wolf.

The Law of the Jungle clearly stated that a wolf could leave the Pack when he married and start his own family. But once his cubs could stand on their own feet, he had to bring them before the Pack Council—a meeting held once a month, at full moon, so the other wolves could see and recognize them. After that, the cubs were free to roam wherever they liked. But until a cub made its first kill, no excuse was accepted if a grown wolf from the Pack harmed it. Breaking this rule meant death for the wolf who broke it