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 loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Claw, tooth, and tusk tonight.
Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
—Night-Song in the Jungle

It was seven o'clock on a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's sleep. He scratched himself, yawned, and stretched out his paws one after another to shake off the drowsiness in his toes. Mother Wolf lay curled around her four tumbling, squealing cubs, her big gray nose resting across them, while moonlight poured into the mouth of the cave where the family lived. "It is time to hunt again," said Father Wolf.

He was about to spring down the hillside when a small shadow with a bushy tail slipped across the cave entrance. It was Tabaqui, the jackal—sometimes called the Dish-licker because he wandered about causing trouble, spreading gossip, and eating scraps of rags and leather from the village garbage piles. The wolves of India looked down on Tabaqui, but they also feared him a little. That's because Tabaqui, more than any other jungle creature, could suddenly go mad. When that happened, he forgot all his usual fear and dashed through the forest biting anything in his path. Even the tiger would run and hide from a mad Tabaqui, since madness (what we call rabies, though the animals called it "dewanee") was the most shameful thing that could happen to a wild creature.

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

"Not for a wolf, perhaps," said Tabaqui, "but for someone as humble as me, even a dry bone makes a fine meal. Who am I, one of the jackal-people, to be picky?" He scurried to the back of the cave, found a buck's bone with a bit of meat still on it, and settled down to crack it cheerfully.

"Thank you for this wonderful meal," he said, licking his lips. "What beautiful children you have! Such big eyes—and so young, too! I really should have remembered that the children of great ones are born wise."

Tabaqui knew perfectly well that praising children to their faces was considered bad luck. It amused him to watch Mother and Father Wolf squirm with discomfort.

He sat quietly for a moment, enjoying the trouble he'd stirred up, then added spitefully:

"Shere Khan, the Big One, has moved his hunting grounds. He'll be hunting in these hills for the next month—he told me so himself."

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

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

"His mother named him Lungri—the Lame One—for good reason," Mother Wolf said calmly. "He's been lame in one foot since birth. That's why he only hunts cattle instead of wild game. Now the villagers along the Waingunga are furious with him, so he's come here to stir up trouble with our villagers instead. They'll search the whole jungle for him even after he's left, and we—along with our cubs—will have to flee when they set fire to the grass to flush him out. We really do owe Shere Khan our thanks!"

"Shall I pass along your gratitude?" asked Tabaqui.

"Get out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Go hunt with your master. You've caused enough trouble for one night."

"I'm going," Tabaqui said calmly. "You can already hear Shere Khan down in the bushes. I hardly needed to deliver the message at all."

Father Wolf listened. Down in the valley that led to a small river, he heard the tiger's harsh, angry, singsong whine—the sound of a tiger who has caught nothing and doesn't care who knows it.

"What a fool," said Father Wolf. "Starting the night's hunt with all that noise! Does he think our deer are as slow and fat as his Waingunga cattle?"

"Shh. It's neither cattle nor deer he's hunting tonight," said Mother Wolf. "It's Man."

The whine shifted into a low, humming growl that seemed to come from every direction at once—the very sound that confuses woodcutters and travelers sleeping outdoors, sometimes causing them to run straight toward the tiger instead of away from it.

"Man!" said Father Wolf, baring his white teeth. "As if there aren't enough beetles and frogs in the water holes—he has to hunt Man, and on our territory, too!"

The Law of the Jungle never forbids anything without good reason, and it strictly forbids any animal from killing Man—except when a parent is teaching cubs how to hunt, and even then only outside the pack's normal territory. The real reason behind this rule is that killing humans eventually brings white men riding elephants, armed with guns, along with crowds of local hunters carrying gongs, rockets, and torches. When that happens, every creature in the jungle suffers. But the excuse the animals give each other is that Man is the weakest and most helpless of all living things, and it's simply not fair play to harm him. They also say—and it's true—that tigers who start eating humans eventually develop mangy fur and lose their teeth.

The growling grew louder and ended in the tiger's full-throated roar as he charged.

Then came a howl—not a proper tiger sound at all—from Shere Khan. "He missed," said Mother Wolf. "What happened?"

Father Wolf trotted out a few steps and heard Shere Khan grumbling and cursing as he thrashed around in the bushes.

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

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

The bushes rustled softly in the thicket. Father Wolf crouched low, haunches tensed, ready to leap. Then something remarkable happened—right in the middle of his jump, he tried to stop himself. He'd already launched into the air before seeing what he was leaping at, and now he attempted to pull back. The result was that he shot straight up several feet and landed almost exactly where he'd started.

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

Standing right in front of him, holding onto a low branch, was a small naked brown baby just old enough to walk—soft, round, and dimpled, the last creature you'd expect to find at a wolf's cave door at night. He looked up at Father Wolf and laughed.

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

A mother wolf who's used to carrying her own cubs can carry an egg in her mouth without cracking the shell if she needs to. So even though Father Wolf's jaws closed firmly around the baby's back, not a single tooth so much as scratched his skin as he set him down gently among the cubs.

"So small! So bare-skinned—and yet so brave!" Mother Wolf said softly, as the baby pushed his way between the cubs to reach her warm fur. "He's already nursing along with the others. So this is what a man's cub looks like. Has any wolf mother ever raised a human child among her own before?"

"I've heard stories like this now and then, but never in our pack, and never in my lifetime," said Father Wolf. "He has no fur at all, and I could kill him with one tap of my paw. But look—he's staring right at us, and he's not the least bit afraid."

Suddenly the moonlight at the cave entrance went dark, blocked by Shere Khan's huge, square head and shoulders pushing into the opening. Behind him, Tabaqui squeaked, "My lord, my lord, it went in there!"

"Shere Khan honors us greatly," 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 have fled. Hand him over."

Shere Khan had indeed jumped into a woodcutter's fire, just as Father Wolf guessed, and the pain in his burned feet had left him furious. But Father Wolf knew something important: the cave entrance was too narrow for a full-grown tiger to enter. Even standing where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and front paws were cramped for space—like a man trying to fight inside a barrel.

"The Wolves are a free people," said Father Wolf. "We take orders only from the leader of our own pack, not from some striped killer of cattle. The man's cub belongs to us—we decide whether he lives or dies."

"You decide, you don't decide—what kind of talk is that? By the bull I killed last night, do you expect me to poke my nose into your den just to beg for what's rightfully mine? I am Shere Khan, and I am speaking!"

The tiger's roar shook the whole cave like thunder. Mother Wolf shook herself free of her cubs and leaped forward, her eyes glowing like two green moons as she faced 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 in the end—mark my words, hunter of helpless babies, eater of frogs and fish—he will hunt you down! Now leave, before I let loose on you the way I did the buck I killed last season (I don't eat scrawny starved cattle like you do). Go back to your mother, you burned old wreck, lamer now than the day you were born! Go!"

Father Wolf watched, amazed. He'd nearly forgotten the days when he'd won Mother Wolf in a real fight, besting five other wolves for her—back when she wasn't yet nicknamed "The Demon" out of respect. Shere Khan might have dared to face Father Wolf alone, but he couldn't stand up to Mother Wolf. He knew she had every advantage fighting on her own ground, and that she'd fight to the death for it. So he backed slowly out of the cave, growling, and once clear, he shouted:

"Every dog barks loudest in his own yard! We'll see what the Pack thinks about you raising a human cub. That baby belongs to me, and sooner or later he'll end up between my teeth, you thieving, bushy-tailed cowards!"

Mother Wolf collapsed, breathing hard, among her cubs. Father Wolf said to her seriously:

"Shere Khan speaks some truth, at least. The cub must be presented to the Pack. Will you still keep him, Mother?"

"Keep him!" she gasped. "He arrived naked, alone, in the middle of the night, starving—and yet unafraid! Look, he's already pushed one of my own cubs aside to get closer to me. And that lame butcher would have killed him, then run off to the Waingunga while our villagers searched every den in these hills for revenge! Of course I'll keep him. Lie still, little frog. I'll call you Mowgli—Mowgli the Frog. And someday you will hunt Shere Khan, just as he once hunted you."

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

According to the Law of the Jungle, any wolf who marries may leave the Pack he was born into. But once his cubs are old enough to stand and walk, he must bring them before the