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,
Talon and tusk and claw.
Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!

—Night-Song in the Jungle

It was seven in the evening, still warm, in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke from his day's sleep, scratched himself, yawned, and stretched each paw in turn to shake off the drowsiness in his toes. Mother Wolf lay with her broad gray nose resting across her four squirming, squealing cubs, and moonlight spilled into the mouth of the cave that was their home. "It is time to hunt again," said Father Wolf. He was about to leap down the hillside when a small shadow with a bushy tail crossed the doorway and whimpered, "Good luck to you, Chief of the Wolves—and good luck and strong white teeth to your noble children, that they may never forget what it is to go hungry in this world."

It was the jackal, Tabaqui—nicknamed "the Dish-licker." Indian wolves look down on Tabaqui because he stirs up trouble, spreads gossip, and scavenges rags and scraps of leather from the village trash heaps. But they also fear him, because more than any other creature in the jungle, Tabaqui is prone to fits of madness. When it strikes, he forgets he was ever afraid of anyone and tears through the forest biting whatever crosses his path. Even the tiger flees and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, because madness—what we would call rabies, though the animals call it dewanee—is the most shameful fate that can befall a wild creature.

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

"Not for a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for someone as lowly as I am, even a dry bone is a feast. Who are we, the jackal people, to be particular?" He scurried to the back of the cave, found the bone of a buck with some meat still clinging to it, and settled down happily to gnaw the end.

"What a fine meal—many thanks," he said, licking his lips. "How handsome your noble children are! What large eyes! And so young, too! Truly, I should have remembered—the children of kings are grown men from the moment they're born."

Now, Tabaqui knew perfectly well that complimenting children to their faces brings bad luck. It pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf grow uneasy.

Tabaqui sat quietly for a moment, savoring the mischief he'd stirred up, then added spitefully:

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

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

"He has no right!" Father Wolf snapped. "By the Law of the Jungle, he can't change his territory without proper warning. He'll frighten 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," said Mother Wolf calmly. "He's been lame in one foot since birth. That's why he only kills cattle instead of hunting properly. 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 once he's long gone, and we and our cubs will have to run when they set the grass on fire. We really do owe Shere Khan our thanks."

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

"Get out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out, and go hunt with your master. You've done enough damage for one night."

"I'm going," said Tabaqui calmly. "You can already hear Shere Khan down in the thickets. I needn't have bothered delivering the message."

Father Wolf listened, and from the valley below, where a small river ran, came the dry, snarling, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing—and doesn't care who knows it.

"What a fool," said Father Wolf, "to start the night's hunt with that racket! Does he think our deer are as slow as his fat Waingunga cattle?"

"Hush. It isn't deer he's hunting tonight," said Mother Wolf. "It's Man."

The whine shifted into a low, humming purr that seemed to come from every direction at once—the sound that confuses woodcutters and travelers sleeping outdoors, sometimes driving them to run straight into the tiger's jaws.

"Man!" said Father Wolf, baring all his teeth. "As if there weren't enough beetles and frogs in the ponds—he has to eat Man, and on our territory besides!"

The Law of the Jungle, which never forbids anything without good reason, bars every animal from killing Man—except when a parent is teaching its young to hunt, and even then the lesson must take place outside the pack's own hunting grounds. The real reason behind this rule is that killing a human being sooner or later brings white hunters on elephants, armed with guns, along with hundreds of local men carrying gongs, rockets, and torches—and then every creature in the jungle suffers for it. The reason the animals give each other is different: Man is the weakest, most defenseless creature alive, and it's simply not sporting to harm him. They also say—and it's true—that man-eaters eventually develop mange and lose their teeth.

The purring grew louder and broke into the full-throated roar of a tiger's charge.

Then came a howl—not a tiger's howl at all—from Shere Khan. "He's missed his kill," said Mother Wolf. "What happened?"

Father Wolf trotted out a few paces and heard Shere Khan snarling and cursing as he thrashed about in the underbrush.

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

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

The bushes rustled faintly in the thicket. Father Wolf dropped low, haunches gathered beneath him, set to spring. Then—if you'd been watching—you would have seen something remarkable: the wolf stopped himself in mid-leap. He'd jumped before he saw what he was jumping at, and then tried to pull back. The result was that he shot straight up into the air, four or five feet, and landed almost exactly where he'd started.

"A man!" he barked. "A man's cub. Look!"

Standing right in front of him, gripping a low branch for balance, was a naked brown baby just old enough to walk—as soft and round and dimpled a little creature as ever wandered into a wolf's den at night. He looked up into Father Wolf's face and laughed.

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

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

"So small! So bare-skinned—and so bold!" said Mother Wolf softly. The baby was already pushing his way between the cubs to reach her warm side. "Look, he's taking his meal right along with the rest. So this is a man's cub. Has any wolf ever been able to boast of raising a man's cub among her own children?"

"I've heard of such things happening 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 me, and he isn't afraid."

Just then the moonlight at the cave's entrance went dark, blocked by Shere Khan's massive, square head and shoulders forcing their way in. Beh