GEHY PONY RIDERS UNITED UNDER ONE BUTTJOOS ASSPUPPETS NEED FINGER IN THE BUTT
has been moved to https://8kun.top/qresearch/catalog.html
gamora
needs salt
oink oink
@grounddavidhoggheavenday
koch brothers launches trannywhoreing political echo chamber for sucking water privileges
gitmo and chill
try fronthole tranny shillin with tredeau
‘Thou art a Brahmin. I am thy cow. Make thou the matter plain, and save my honour if it can be saved!’
A second time then Gisborne plunged into the rukh and called Mowgli. The answer came from high overhead, and in
no submissive tones.
‘Speak softly,’ said Gisborne, looking up. ‘There is yet time to strip thee of thy place and hunt thee with thy wolves. The
girl must go back to her father’s house tonight. To-morrow there will be the shadi, by the Mussulman law, and then thou
canst take her away. Bring her to Abdul Gafur.’
‘I hear.’ There was a murmur of two voices conferring among the leaves. ‘Also, we will obey — for the last time.’
A year later Muller and Gisborne were riding through the rukh together, talking of their business. They came out
among the rocks near the Kanye stream; Muller riding a little in advance. Under the shade of a thorn thicket sprawled a
naked brown baby, and from the brake immediately behind him peered the head of a gray wolf. Gisborne had just time to
strike up Muller’s rifle, and the bullet tore spattering through the branches above.
‘Are you mad?’ thundered Muller. ‘Look!’
‘I see,’ said Gisborne quietly. ‘The mother’s somewhere near. You’ll wake the whole pack, by Jove!’
The bushes parted once more, and a woman unveiled snatched up the child.
‘Who fired, Sahib?’ she cried to Gisborne.
‘This Sahib. He had not remembered thy man’s people.’
‘Not remembered? But indeed it may be so, for we who live with them forget that they are strangers at all. Mowgli is
down the stream catching fish. Does the Sahib wish to see him? Come out, ye lacking manners. Come out of the bushes,
and make your service to the Sahibs.’
Muller’s eyes grew rounder and rounder. He swung himself off the plunging mare and dismounted, while the jungle
gave up four wolves who fawned round Gisborne. The mother stood nursing her child and spurning them aside as they
brushed against her bare feet.
‘You were quite right about Mowgli,’ said Gisborne. T meant to have told you, but I’ve got so used to these fellows in
the last twelve months that it slipped my mind.’
‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ said Muller. ‘It’s nothing. Gott in Himmel! “Und I work miracles — und dey come off too!”’
‘Indeed it is all more wonderful than magic. These then drove the nilghai?’
‘Ay, as they would drive Eblis if I gave the order. They are my eyes and feet to me.’
‘Look to it, then, that Eblis does not carry a double rifle. They have yet something to learn, thy devils, for they stand
one behind the other, so that two shots would kill the three.’
‘Ah, but they know they will be thy servants as soon as I am a forest-guard.’
‘Guard or no guard, Mowgli, thou hast done a great shame to Abdul Gafur. Thou hast dishonoured his house and
blackened his face.’
‘For that, it was blackened when he took thy money, and made blacker still when he whispered in thy ear a little while
since to kill a naked man. I myself will talk to Abdul Gafur, for I am a man of the Government service, with a pension. He
shall make the marriage by whatsoever rite he will, or he shall run once more. I will speak to him in the dawn. For the rest,
the Sahib has his house and this is mine. It is time to sleep again, Sahib.’
Mowgli turned on his heel and disappeared into the grass, leaving Gisborne alone. The hint of the wood-god was not to
be mistaken; and Gisborne went back to the bungalow, where Abdul Gafur, torn by rage and fear, was raving in the
verandah.
‘Peace, peace,’ said Gisborne, shaking him, for he looked as though he were going to have a fit. ‘Muller Sahib has made
the man a forest-guard, and as thou knowest there is a pension at the end of that business, and it is Government service.’
‘He is an outcaste — a mlech — a dog among dogs; an eater of carrion! What pension can pay for that?’
‘Allah knows; and thou hast heard that the mischief is done. Wouldst thou blaze it to all the other servants? Make the
shadi swiftly, and the girl will make him a Mussulman. He is very comely. Canst thou wonder that after thy beatings she
went to him?’
‘Did he say that he would chase me with his beasts?’
‘So it seemed to me. If he be a wizard, he is at least a very strong one.’
Abdul Gafur thought awhile, and then broke down and howled, forgetting that he was a Mussulman:—
‘That is well done,’ said Mowgli, slipping his arm round the girl again. ‘Dogs or no dogs, they were with me through a
thousand villages.’
‘Ahi, and where was thy heart then? Through a thousand villages. Thou hast seen a thousand maids. I— that am — that
am a maid no more, have I thy heart?’
‘What shall I swear by? By Allah, of whom thou speakest?’
‘Nay, by the life that is in thee, and I am well content. Where was thy heart in those days?’
Mowgli laughed a little. ‘In my belly, because I was young and always hungry. So I learned to track and to hunt,
sending and calling my brothers back and forth as a king calls his armies. Therefore I drove the nilghai for the foolish
young Sahib, and the big fat mare for the big fat Sahib, when they questioned my power. It were as easy to have driven the
men themselves. Even now,’ his voice lifted a little —‘even now I know that behind me stand thy father and Gisborne
Sahib. Nay, do not run, for no ten men dare move a pace forward. Remembering that thy father beat thee more than once,
shall I give the word and drive him again in rings through the rukh?’ A wolf stood up with bared teeth.
Gisborne felt Abdul Gafur tremble at his side. Next, his place was empty, and the fat man was skimming down the
glade.
‘Remains only Gisborne Sahib,’ said Mowgli, still without turning; ‘but I have eaten Gisborne Sahib’s bread, and
presently I shall be in his service, and my brothers will be his servants to drive game and carry the news. Hide thou in the
grass.’
The girl fled, the tall grass closed behind her and the guardian wolf that followed, and Mowgli turning with his three
retainers faced Gisborne as the Forest Officer came forward.
‘That is all the magic,’ he said, pointing to the three. ‘The fat Sahib knew that we who are bred among wolves run on
our elbows and our knees for a season. Feeling my arms and legs, he felt the truth which thou didst not know. Is it so
wonderful, Sahib?’
‘But I was a wolf among wolves none the less till a time came when Those of the jungle bade me go because I was a
man.’
‘Who bade thee go? That is not like a true man’s talk.’
‘The very beasts themselves. Little one, thou wouldst never believe that telling, but so it was. The beasts of the jungle
bade me go, but these four followed me because I was their brother. Then was I a herder of cattle among men, having
learned their language. Ho! ho! The herds paid toll to my brothers, till a woman, an old woman, beloved, saw me playing
by night with my brethren in the crops. They said that I was possessed of devils, and drove me from that village with sticks
and stones, and the four came with me by stealth and not openly. That was when I had learned to eat cooked meat and to
talk boldly. From village to village I went, heart of my heart, a herder of cattle, a tender of buffaloes, a tracker of game, but
there was no man that dared lift a finger against me twice.’ He stooped down and patted one of the heads. ‘Do thou also
like this. There is neither hurt nor magic in them. See, they know thee.’
‘The woods are full of all manner of devils,’ said the girl with a shudder.
‘A lie. A child’s lie,’ Mowgli returned confidently. ‘I have lain out in the dew under the stars and in the dark night, and I
know. The jungle is my house. Shall a man fear his own roof-beams or a woman her man’s hearth? Stoop down and pat
them.’
‘They are dogs and unclean,’ she murmured, bending forward with averted head.
‘Having eaten the fruit, now we remember the Law!’ said Abdul Gafur bitterly. ‘What is the need of this waiting, Sahib?
Kill!’
‘H’sh, thou. Let us learn what has happened,’ said Gisborne.
‘But what is it? What is the trouble, Abdul?’
‘Mowgli, and his devils. Also my own daughter,’ said Abdul Gafur. Gisborne whistled and followed his guide. Not for
nothing, he knew, had Abdul Gafur beaten his daughter of nights, and not for nothing had Mowgli helped in the housework
a man whom his own powers, whatever those were, had convicted of theft. Also, a forest wooing goes quickly.
There was the breathing of a flute in the rukh, as it might have been the song of some wandering wood-god, and, as
they came nearer, a murmur of voices. The path ended in a little semicircular glade walled partly by high grass and partly
by trees. In the centre, upon a fallen trunk, his back to the watchers and his arm round the neck of Abdul Gafur’s daughter,
sat Mowgli, newly crowned with flowers, playing upon a rude bamboo flute, to whose music four huge wolves danced
solemnly on their hind legs.
‘Those are his devils,’ Abdul Gafur whispered. He held a bunch of cartridges in his hand. The beasts dropped to a
longdrawn quavering note and lay still with steady green eyes, glaring at the girl.
‘Behold,’ said Mowgli, laying aside the flute. ‘Is there anything of fear in that? I told thee, little Stout-heart, that there
was not, and thou didst believe. Thy father said — and oh, if thou couldst have seen thy father being driven by the road of
the nilghai! — thy father said that they were devils; and by Allah, who is thy God, I do not wonder that he so believed.’
The girl laughed a little rippling laugh, and Gisborne heard Abdul grind his few remaining teeth. This was not at all the
girl that Gisborne had seen with a half-eye slinking about the compound veiled and silent, but another — a woman full
blown in a night as the orchid puts out in an hour’s moist heat.
‘But they are my playmates and my brothers, children of that mother that gave me suck, as I told thee behind the
cookhouse,’ Mowgli went on. ‘Children of the father that lay between me and the cold at the mouth of the cave when I was
a little naked child. Look’— a wolf raised his gray jowl, slavering at Mowgli’s knee —‘my brother knows that I speak of
them. Yes, when I was a little child he was a cub rolling with me on the clay.’
‘But thou hast said that thou art human-born,’ cooed the girl, nestling closer to the shoulder. ‘Thou art human-born?’
‘Said! Nay, I know that I am human born, because my heart is in thy hold, little one.’ Her head dropped under
Mowgli’s chin. Gisborne put up a warning hand to restrain Abdul Gafur, who was not in the least impressed by the wonder
of the sight.
Libidina dy moder, Briapus
Dy fader, a God und a Greek.
Now I know dot, Bagan or Christian, I shall nefer know der inwardness of der rukh!’
It was midnight in the bungalow a week later when Abdul Gafur, ashy gray with rage, stood at the foot of Gisborne’s
bed and whispering bade him awake.
‘Up, Sahib,’ he stammered. ‘Up and bring thy gun. Mine honour is gone. Up and kill before any see.’
The old man’s face had changed, so that Gisborne stared stupidly.
‘It was for this, then, that that jungle outcaste helped me to polish the Sahib’s table, and drew water and plucked fowls.
They have gone off together for all my beatings, and now he sits among his devils dragging her soul to the Pit. Up, Sahib,
and come with me!’
He thrust a rifle into Gisborne’s half-wakened hand and almost dragged him from the room on to the verandah.
‘They are there in the rukh; even within gunshot of the house. Come softly with me.’
‘That’s just what I—’ Gisborne began.
‘My Sahib spoke this morning of such a service. I walked all day alone considering the matter, and my answer is ready
here. I serve, if I serve in this rukh and no other; with Gisborne Sahib and with no other.’
‘It shall be so. In a week comes the written order that pledges the honour of the Government for the pension. After that
thou wilt take up thy hut where Gisborne Sahib shall appoint.’
‘I was going to speak to you about it,’ said Gisborne.
‘I did not want to be told when I saw that man. Dere will never be a forest-guard like him. He is a miracle. I tell you,
Gisborne, some day you will find it so. Listen, he is blood-brother to every beast in der rukh!’
‘I should be easier in my mind if I could understand him.’
‘Dot will come. Now I tell you dot only once in my service, and dot is thirty years, haf I met a boy dot began as this man
began. Und he died. Sometimes you hear of dem in der census reports, but dey all die. Dis man haf lived, and he is an
anachronism, for he is before der Iron Age, and der Stone Age. Look here, he is at der beginnings of der history of man —
Adam in der Garden, and now we want only an Eva! No! He is older than dot child-tale, shust as der rukh is older dan der
gods. Gisborne, I am a Bagan now, once for all.’
Through the rest of the long evening Muller sat smoking and smoking, and staring and staring into the darkness, his
lips moving in multiplied quotations, and great wonder upon his face. He went to his tent, but presently came out again in
his majestic pink sleeping-suit, and the last words that Gisborne heard him address to the rukh through the deep hush of
midnight were these, delivered with immense emphasis:—
‘Dough we shivt und bedeck und bedrape us.
Dou art noble und nude und andeek;
‘Can I bring the mare to the Sahib without frightening her!’ Mowgli repeated, raising his voice a little above its normal
pitch. ‘What is more easy if the heel-ropes are loose?’
‘Loosen the head and heel-pegs,’ shouted Muller to the groom. They were hardly out of the ground before the mare, a
huge black Australian, flung up her head and cocked her ears.
‘Careful! I do not wish her driven into the rukh,’ said Muller.
Mowgli stood still fronting the blaze of the fire — in the very form and likeness of that Greek god who is so lavishly
described in the novels. The mare whickered, drew up one hind leg, found that the heel-ropes were free, and moved swiftly
to her master, on whose bosom she dropped her head, sweating lightly.
‘She came of her own accord. My horses will do that,’ cried Gisborne.
‘Feel if she sweats,’ said Mowgli.
Gisborne laid a hand on the damp flank.
‘It is enough,’ said Muller.
‘It is enough,’ Mowgli repeated, and a rock behind him threw back the word.
‘That’s uncanny, isn’t it?’ said Gisborne.
‘No, only wonderful — most wonderful. Still you do not know, Gisborne?’
‘I confess I don’t.’
‘Well then, I shall not tell. He says dot some day he will show you what it is. It would be gruel if I told. But why he is
not dead I do not understand. Now listen thou.’ Muller faced Mowgli, and returned to the vernacular. ‘I am the head of all
the rukhs in the country of India and others across the Black Water. I do not know how many men be under me — perhaps
five thousand, perhaps ten. Thy business is this — to wander no more up and down the rukh and drive beasts for sport or
for show, but to take service under me, who am the Government in the matter of Woods and Forests, and to live in this
rukh as a forest-guard; to drive the villagers’ goats away when there is no order to feed them in the rukh; to admit them
when there is an order; to keep down, as thou canst keep down, the boar and the nilghai when they become too many; to
tell Gisborne Sahib how and where tigers move, and what game there is in the forests; and to give sure warning of all the
fires in the rukh, for thou canst give warning more quickly than any other. For that work there is a payment each month in
silver, and at the end, when thou hast gathered a wife and cattle and, may be, children, a pension. What answer?’
puff of smoke, and began to quote Heine to himself.
‘Yes, it is very goot. Very goot. “Yes, I work miracles, and, by Gott, dey come off too.” I remember when dere was no
rukh more big than your knee, from here to der plough-lands, and in drought-time der cattle ate bones of dead cattle up
und down. Now der trees haf come back. Dey were planted by a Freethinker, because he know just de cause dot made der
effect. But der trees dey had der cult of der old gods —“und der Christian Gods howl loudly.” Dey could not live in der rukh,
Gisborne.’
A shadow moved in one of the bridle-paths — moved and stepped out into the starlight.
‘I haf said true. Hush! Here is Faunus himself come to see der Insbector-General. Himmel, he is der god! Look!’
It was Mowgli, crowned with his wreath of white flowers and walking with a half-peeled branch — Mowgli, very
mistrustful of the fire-light and ready to fly back to the thicket on the least alarm.
‘That’s a friend of mine,’ said Gisborne. ‘ He’s looking for me. Ohe, Mowgli!’
Muller had barely time to gasp before the man was at Gisborne’s side, crying: ‘I was wrong to go. I was wrong, but I
did not know then that the mate of him that was killed by this river was awake looking for thee. Else I should not have gone
away. She tracked thee from the back-range, Sahib.’
‘He is a little mad,’ said Gisborne, ‘and he speaks of all the beasts about here as if he was a friend of theirs.’
‘Of course — of course. If Faunus does not know, who should know?’ said Muller gravely. ‘What does he say about
tigers — dis god who knows you so well?’
Gisborne relighted his cheroot, and before he had finished the story of Mowgli and his exploits it was burned down to
moustache-edge. Muller listened without interruption. ‘Dot is not madness,’ he said at last when Gisborne had described
the driving of Abdul Gafur. ‘Dot is not madness at all.’
‘What is it, then? He left me in a temper this morning because I asked him to tell how he did it. I fancy the chap’s
possessed in some way.’
‘No, dere is no bossession, but it is most wonderful. Normally they die young — dese beople. Und you say now dot your
thief-servant did not say what drove der poney, and of course der nilghai he could not speak.’
‘No, but, confound it, there wasn’t anything. I listened, and I can hear most things. The bull and the man simply came
headlong — mad with fright.’
For answer Muller looked Mowgli up and down from head to foot, then beckoned him nearer. He came as a buck
treads a tainted trail.
‘There is no harm,’ said Muller in the vernacular. ‘Hold out an arm.’
He ran his hand down to the elbow, felt that, and nodded. ‘So I thought. Now the knee.’ Gisborne saw him feel the
knee-cap and smile. Two or three white scars just above the ankle caught his eye.
‘Those came when thou wast very young?’ he said.
‘Ay,’ Mowgli answered with a smile. ‘They were love-tokens from the little ones.’ Then to Gisborne over his shoulder.
‘This Sahib knows everything. Who is he?’
‘That comes after, my friend. Now where are they?’ said Muller.
Mowgli swept his hand round his head in a circle.
‘So! And thou canst drive nilghai? See! There is my mare in her pickets. Canst thou bring her to me without frightening
her?’
Mowgli was speaking as he would speak to an impatient child. Gisborne, puzzled, baffled, and a great deal annoyed,
said nothing, but stared on the ground and thought. When he looked up the man of the woods had gone.
‘It is not good,’ said a level voice from the thicket, ‘for friends to be angry. Wait till the evening, Sahib, when the air
cools.’
Left to himself thus, dropped as it were in the heart of the rukh, Gisborne swore, then laughed, remounted his pony,
and rode on. He visited a ranger’s hut, overlooked a couple of new plantations, left some orders as to the burning of a patch
of dry grass, and set out for a camping-ground of his own choice, a pile of splintered rocks roughly roofed over with
branches and leaves, not far from the banks of the Kanye stream. It was twilight when he came in sight of his resting-place,
and the rukh was waking to the hushed ravenous life of the night.
A camp-fire flickered on the knoll, and there was the smell of a very good dinner in the wind.
‘Um,’ said Gisborne, ‘that’s better than cold meat at any rate. Now the only man who’d be likely to be here’d be Muller,
and, officially, he ought to be looking over the Changamanga rukh. I suppose that’s why he’s on my ground.’
The gigantic German who was the head of the Woods and Forests of all India, Head Ranger from Burma to Bombay,
had a habit of flitting batlike without warning from one place to another, and turning up exactly where he was least looked
for. His theory was that sudden visitations, the discovery of shortcomings and a word-of-mouth upbraiding of a
subordinate were infinitely better than the slow processes of correspondence, which might end in a written and official
reprimand — a thing in after years to be counted against a Forest Officer’s record. As he explained it: ‘If I only talk to my
boys like a Dutch uncle, dey say, “It was only dot damned old Muller,’’ and dey do better next dime. But if my fat-head clerk
he write and say dot Muller der Inspecdor-General fail to onderstand and is much annoyed, first dot does no goot because
I am not dere, and, second, der fool dot comes after me he may say to my best boys: “Look here, you haf been wigged by my
bredecessor.” I tell you der big brass-hat pizness does not make der trees grow.’
Muller’s deep voice was coming out of the darkness behind the firelight as he bent over the shoulders of his pet cook.
‘Not so much sauce, you son of Belial! Worcester sauce he is a gondiment and not a fluid. Ah, Gisborne, you haf come to a
very bad dinner. Where is your camp?’ and he walked up to shake hands.
‘I’m the camp, sir,’ said Gisborne. ‘I didn’t know you were about here.’
Muller looked at the young man’s trim figure. ‘Goot! That is very goot! One horse and some cold things to eat. When I
was young I did my camp so. Now you shall dine with me. I went into Headquarters to make up my rebort last month. I haf
written half — ho! ho! — and der rest I haf leaved to my glerks and come out for a walk. Der Government is mad about dose
reborts. I dold der Viceroy so at Simla.’
Gisborne chuckled, remembering the many tales that were told of Muller’s conflicts with the Supreme Government.
He was the chartered libertine of all the offices, for as a Forest Officer he had no equal.
‘If I find you, Gisborne, sitting in your bungalow and hatching reborts to me about der blantations instead of riding
der blantations, I will dransfer you to der middle of der Bikaneer Desert to reforest him. I am sick of reborts and chewing
paper when we should do our work.’
‘There’s not much danger of my wasting time over my annuals. I hate them as much as you do, sir.’
The talk went over at this point to professional matters. Muller had some questions to ask, and Gisborne orders and
hints to receive, till dinner was ready. It was the most civilised meal Gisborne had eaten for months. No distance from the
base of supplies was allowed to interfere with the work of Muller’s cook; and that table spread in the wilderness began with
devilled small fresh-water fish, and ended with coffee and cognac.
‘Ah!’ said Muller at the end, with a sigh of satisfaction as he lighted a cheroot and dropped into his much worn
campchair. ‘When I am making reborts I am Freethinker und Atheist, but here in der rukh I am more than Christian. I am
Bagan also.’ He rolled the cheroot-butt luxuriously under his tongue, dropped his hands on his knees, and stared before
him into the dim shifting heart of the rukh, full of stealthy noises; the snapping of twigs like the snapping of the fire behind
him; the sigh and rustle of a heat-bended branch recovering her straightness in the cool night; the incessant mutter of the
Kanye stream, and the undernote of the many-peopled grass uplands out of sight beyond a swell of hill. He blew out a thick
>The gigantic German who was the head of the Woods and Forests of all India, Head Ranger from Burma to Bombay,
>
>had a habit of flitting batlike without warning from one place to another, and turning up exactly where he was least looked
>
>for.
‘That also I can believe. Go then back to my house, and when I return I will send the notes by a runner to the Bank,
and there shall be no more said. Thou art too old for the jail-khana. Also thy household is guiltless.’
For answer Abdul Gafur sobbed between Gisborne’s cowhide riding-boots.
‘Is there no dismissal then?’ he gulped.
‘That we shall see. It hangs upon thy conduct when we return. Get upon the mare and ride slowly back.’
‘But the devils! The rukh is full of devils.’
‘No matter, my father. They will do thee no more harm unless, indeed, the Sahib’s orders be not obeyed,’ said Mowgli.
‘Then, perchance, they may drive thee home — by the road of the nilghai.’
Abdul Gafur’s lower jaw dropped as he twisted up his waist-cloth, staring at Mowgli.
‘Are they his devils? His devils! And I had thought to return and lay the blame upon this warlock!’
‘That was well thought of, Huzrut; but before we make a trap we see first how big the game is that may fall into it. Now
I thought no more than that a man had taken one of the Sahib’s horses. I did not know that the design was to make me a
thief before the Sahib, or my devils had haled thee here by the leg. It is not too late now.’
Mowgli looked inquiringly at Gisborne; but Abdul Gafur waddled hastily to the white mare, scrambled on her back and
fled, the woodways crashing and echoing behind him.
‘That was well done,’ said Mowgli. ‘But he will fall again unless he holds by the mane.’
‘Now it is time to tell me what these things mean,’ said Gisborne a little sternly. ‘What is this talk of thy devils? How
can men be driven up and down the rukh like cattle? Give answer.’
‘Is the Sahib angry because I have saved him his money?’
‘No, but there is trick-work in this that does not please me.’
‘Very good. Now if I rose and stepped three paces into the rukh there is no one, not even the Sahib, could find me till I
choose. As I would not willingly do this, so I would not willingly tell. Have patience a little, Sahib, and some day I will show
thee everything, for, if thou wilt, some day we will drive the buck together. There is no devil-work in the matter at all. Only
… I know the rukh as a man knows the cooking-place in his house.’
‘Ho! ho!’ said Mowgli lazily, with shut eyes. ‘He has dropped off. Well, first the mare will come and then the man.’
Then he yawned as Gisborne’s pony stallion neighed. Three minutes later Gisborne’s white mare, saddled, bridled, but
riderless, tore into the glade where they were sitting, and hurried to her companion.
‘She is not very warm,’ said Mowgli, ‘but in this heat the sweat comes easily. Presently we shall see her rider, for a man
goes more slowly than a horse — especially if he chance to be a fat man and old.’
‘Allah! This is the devil’s work,’ cried Gisborne leaping to his feet, for he heard a yell in the jungle.
‘Have no care, Sahib. He will not be hurt. He also will say that it is devil’s work. Ah! Listen! Who is that?’
It was the voice of Abdul Gafur in an agony of terror, crying out upon unknown things to spare him and his gray hairs.
‘Nay, I cannot move another step,’ he howled. ‘I am old and my turban is lost. Arre! Arre! But I will move. Indeed I will
hasten. I will run! Oh, Devils of the Pit, I am a Mussulman!’
The undergrowth parted and gave up Abdul Gafur, turbanless, shoeless, with his waist-cloth unbound, mud and grass
in his clutched hands, and his face purple. He saw Gisborne, yelled anew, and pitched forward, exhausted and quivering, at
his feet. Mowgli watched him with a sweet smile.
‘This is no joke,’ said Gisborne sternly. ‘The man is like to die, Mowgli.’
‘He will not die. He is only afraid. There was no need that he should have come out of a walk.’
Abdul Gafur groaned and rose up, shaking in every limb.
‘It was witchcraft — witchcraft and devildom! ‘ he sobbed, fumbling with his hand in his breast. ‘Because of my sin I
have been whipped through the woods by devils. It is all finished. I repent. Take them, Sahib!’ He held out a roll of dirty
paper.
‘What is the meaning of this, Abdul Gafur?’ said Gisborne, already knowing what would come.
‘Put me in the jail-khana — the notes are all here — but lock me up safely that no devils may follow. I have sinned
against the Sahib and his salt which I have eaten; and but for those accursed wood-demons, I might have bought land afar
off and lived in peace all my days.’ He beat his head upon the ground in an agony of despair and mortification. Gisborne
turned the roll of notes over and over. It was his accumulated back-pay for the last nine months — the roll that lay in the
drawer with the home-letters and the recapping machine. Mowgli watched Abdul Gafur, laughing noiselessly to himself.
‘There is no need to put me on the horse again. I will walk home slowly with the Sahib, and then he can send me under
guard to the jail-khana. The Government gives many years for this offence,’ said the butler sullenly.
Loneliness in the rukh affects very many ideas about very many things. Gisborne stared at Abdul Gafur, remembering
that he was a very good servant, and that a new butler must be broken into the ways of the house from the beginning, and
at the best would be a new face and a new tongue.
‘Listen, Abdul Gafur,’ he said. 'Thou hast done great wrong, and altogether lost thy izzat and thy reputation. But I
think that this came upon thee suddenly.’
‘Allah! I had never desired the notes before. The Evil took me by the throat while I looked.’
‘If a man could herd clouds he might do that thing; but, Mowgli, if as thou sayest, thou art herder in the rukh for no
gain and for no pay —’
‘It is the Sahib’s rukh,’ said Mowgli, quickly looking up. Gisborne nodded thanks and went on: ‘Would it not be better
to work for pay from the Government? There is a pension at the end of long service.’
‘Of that I have thought,’ said Mowgli, ‘but the rangers live in huts with shut doors, and all that is all too much a trap to
me. Yet I think —’
‘Think well then and tell me later. Here we will stay for breakfast.’
Gisborne dismounted, took his morning meal from his home-made saddle-bags, and saw the day open hot above the
rukh. Mowgli lay in the grass at his side staring up to the sky.
Presently he said in a lazy whisper: ‘Sahib, is there any order at the bungalow to take out the white mare today.’
‘No, she is fat and old and a little lame beside. Why?’
‘She is being ridden now and not slowly on the road that runs to the railway line.’
‘Bah, that is two koss away. It is a woodpecker.’
Mowgli put up his forearm to keep the sun out of his eyes.
‘The road curves in with a big curve from the bungalow. It is not more than a koss, at the farthest, as the kite goes; and
sound flies with the birds. Shall we see?’
‘What folly! To run a koss in this sun to see a noise in the forest.’
‘Nay, the pony is the Sahib’s pony. I meant only to bring her here. If she is not the Sahib’s pony, no matter. If she is,
the Sahib can do what he wills. She is certainly being ridden hard.’
‘And how wilt thou bring her here, madman?’
‘Has the Sahib forgotten? By the road of the nilghai and no other.’
‘Up then and run if thou art so full of zeal.’
‘Oh, I do not run!’ He put out his hand to sign for silence, and still lying on his back called aloud thrice — with a deep
gurgling cry that was new to Gisborne.
‘She will come,’ he said at the end. ‘Let us wait in the shade.’ The long eyelashes drooped over the wild eyes as Mowgli
began to doze in the morning hush. Gisborne waited patiently Mowgli was surely mad, but as entertaining a companion as
a lonely Forest Officer could desire.
‘He has no caste,’ said Abdul Gafur. He will do anything. Look to it, Sahib, that he does not do too much. A snake is a
snake, and a jungle-gipsy is a thief till the death.’
‘Be silent, then,’ said Gisborne. ‘I allow thee to correct thy own household if there is not too much noise, because I
know thy customs and use. My custom thou dost not know. The man is without doubt a little mad.’
‘Very little mad indeed,’ said Abdul Gafur. ‘But we shall see what comes thereof.’
A few days later on his business took Gisborne into the rukh for three days. Abdul Gafur being old and fat was left at
home. He did not approve of lying up in rangers’ huts, and was inclined to levy contributions in his master’s name of grain
and oil and milk from those who could ill afford such benevolences. Gisborne rode off early one dawn a little vexed that his
man of the woods was not at the verandah to accompany him. He liked him — liked his strength, fleetness, and silence of
foot, and his ever-ready open smile; his ignorance of all forms of ceremony and salutations, and the childlike tales that he
would tell (and Gisborne would credit now) of what the game was doing in the rukh. After an hour’s riding through the
greenery, he heard a rustle behind him, and Mowgli trotted at his stirrup.
‘We have a three days’ work toward,’ said Gisborne, ‘among the new trees.’
‘Good,’ said Mowgli. ‘It is always good to cherish young trees. They make cover if the beasts leave them alone. We must
shift the pig again.’
‘Again? How?’ Gisborne smiled.
‘Oh, they were rooting and tusking among the young sal last night, and I drove them off. Therefore I did not come to
the verandah this morning. The pig should not be on this side of the rukh at all. We must keep them below the head of the
Kanye river.’
>‘Oh, they were rooting and tusking among the young sal last night, and I drove them off. Therefore I did not come to
>
>the verandah this morning. The pig should not be on this side of the rukh at all. We must keep them below the head of the
>
>Kanye river.’
‘That is a new trick to me. Canst thou run as swiftly as the nilghai, then?’
‘The Sahib has seen. If the Sahib needs more knowledge at any time of the movings of the game, I, Mowgli, am here.
This is a good rukh, and I shall stay.’
‘Stay then, and if thou hast need of a meal at any time my servants shall give thee one.’
‘Yes, indeed, I am fond of cooked food,’ Mowgli answered quickly. ‘No man may say that I do not eat boiled and roast
as much as any other man. I will come for that meal. Now, on my part, I promise that the Sahib shall sleep safely in his
house by night, and no thief shall break in to carry away his so rich treasures.’
The conversation ended itself on Mowgli’s abrupt departure. Gisborne sat long smoking, and the upshot of his
thoughts was that in Mowgli he had found at last that ideal ranger and forest-guard for whom he and the Department were
always looking.
‘I must get him into the Government service somehow. A man who can drive nilghai would know more about the rukh
than fifty men. He’s a miracle — a lusus naturae— but a forest-guard he must be if he’ll only settle down in one place,’ said
Gisborne.
Abdul Gafur’s opinion was less favourable. He confided to Gisborne at bedtime that strangers from God-knew-where
were more than likely to be professional thieves, and that he personally did not approve of naked outcastes who had not
the proper manner of addressing white people. Gisborne laughed and bade him go to his quarters, and Abdul Gafur
retreated growling. Later in the night he found occasion to rise up and beat his thirteen-year-old daughter. Nobody knew
the cause of dispute, but Gisborne heard the cry.
Through the days that followed Mowgli came and went like a shadow. He had established himself and his wild house¬
keeping close to the bungalow, but on the edge of the rukh, where Gisborne, going out on to the verandah for a breath of
cool air, would see him sometimes sitting in the moonlight, his forehead on his knees, or lying out along the fling of a
branch, closely pressed to it as some beast of the night. Thence Mowgli would throw him a salutation and bid him sleep at
ease, or descending would weave prodigious stories of the manners of the beasts in the rukh. Once he wandered into the
stables and was found looking at the horses with deep interest.
‘That,’ said Abdul Gafur pointedly, ‘is sure sign that some day he will steal one. Why, if he lives about this house, does
he not take an honest employment? But no, he must wander up and down like a loose camel, turning the heads of fools and
opening the jaws of the unwise to folly.’ So Abdul Gafur would give harsh orders to Mowgli when they met, would bid him
fetch water and pluck fowls, and Mowgli, laughing unconcernedly, would obey.
‘As for the sow’s carcase, I will show thee her bones tomorrow,’ Mowgli returned, absolutely unmoved. ‘Touching the
matter of the nilghai, if the Sahib will sit here very still I will drive one nilghai up to this place, and by listening to the
sounds carefully, the Sahib can tell whence that nilghai has been driven.’
‘Mowgli, the jungle has made thee mad,’ said Gisborne. ‘Who can drive nilghai?’
‘Still — sit still, then. I go.’
‘Gad, the man’s a ghost!’ said Gisborne; for Mowgli had faded out into the darkness and there was no sound of feet.
The rukh lay out in great velvety folds in the uncertain shimmer of the stardust — so still that the least little wandering
wind among the tree-tops came up as the sigh of a child sleeping equably. Abdul Gafur in the cook-house was clicking
plates together.
‘Be still there!’ shouted Gisborne, and composed himself to listen as a man can who is used to the stillness of the rukh.
It had been his custom, to preserve his self-respect in his isolation, to dress for dinner each night, and the stiff white
shirtfront creaked with his regular breathing till he shifted a little sideways. Then the tobacco of a somewhat foul pipe
began to purr, and he threw the pipe from him. Now, except for the nightbreath in the rukh, everything was dumb.
From an inconceivable distance, and drawled through immeasurable darkness, came the faint, faint echo of a wolf s
howl. Then silence again for, it seemed, long hours. At last, when his legs below the knees had lost all feeling, Gisborne
heard something that might have been a crash far off through the undergrowth. He doubted till it was repeated again and
yet again.
‘That’s from the west,’ he muttered; ‘there’s something on foot there.’ The noise increased — crash on crash, plunge on
plunge — with the thick grunting of a hotly pressed nilghai, flying in panic terror and taking no heed to his course.
A shadow blundered out from between the tree-trunks, wheeled back, turned again grunting, and with a clatter on the
bare ground dashed up almost within reach of his hand. It was a bull nilghai, dripping with dew — his withers hung with a
torn trail of creeper, his eyes shining in the light from the house. The creature checked at sight of the man, and fled along
the edge of the rukh till he melted in the darkness. The first idea in Gisborne’s bewildered mind was the indecency of thus
dragging out for inspection the big blue bull of the rukh — the putting him through his paces in the night which should
have been his own.
Then said a smooth voice at his ear as he stood staring:
‘He came from the water-head where he was leading the herd. From the west he came. Does the Sahib believe now, or
shall I bring up the herd to be counted? The Sahib is in charge of this rukh.’
Mowgli had reseated himself on the verandah, breathing a little quickly. Gisborne looked at him with open mouth.
‘How was that accomplished?’ he said.
The Sahib saw. The bull was driven — driven as a buffalo is. Ho! ho! He will have a fine tale to tell when he returns to
the herd.’
‘Only a thief from the jungle would rob here,’ said Abdul Gafur, setting down a plate with a clatter. Mowgli opened his
eyes wide and stared at the white-bearded Mohammedan.
‘In my country when goats bleat very loud we cut their throats,’ he returned cheerfully. ‘But have no fear, thou. I am
going.’
He turned and disappeared into the rukh. Gisborne looked after him with a laugh that ended in a little sigh. There was
not much outside his regular work to interest the Forest Officer, and this son of the forest, who seemed to know tigers as
other people know dogs, would have been a diversion.
‘He’s a most wonderful chap,’ thought Gisborne; ‘he’s like the illustrations in the Classical Dictionary. I wish I could
have made him a gunboy. There’s no fun in shikarring alone, and this fellow would have been a perfect shikarri. I wonder
what in the world he is.’
That evening he sat on the verandah under the stars smoking as he wondered. A puff of smoke curled from the
pipebowl. As it cleared he was aware of Mowgli sitting with arms crossed on the verandah edge. A ghost could not have
drifted up more noiselessly. Gisborne started and let the pipe drop.
‘There is no man to talk to out there in the rukh,’ said Mowgli; ‘I came here, therefore.’ He picked up the pipe and
returned it to Gisborne.
‘Oh,’ said Gisborne, and after a long pause, ‘What news is there in the rukh? Hast thou found another tiger?’
‘The nilghai are changing their feeding-ground against the new moon, as is their custom. The pig are feeding near the
Kanye river now, because they will not feed with the nilghai, and one of their sows has been killed by a leopard in the long
grass at the water-head. I do not know any more.’
‘And how didst thou know all these things?’ said Gisborne, leaning forward and looking at the eyes that glittered in the
starlight.
‘How should I not know? The nilghai has his custom and his use, and a child knows that pig will not feed with him.’
‘I do not know this,’ said Gisborne.
‘Tck! Tck! And thou art in charge — so the men of the huts tell me — in charge of all this rukh.’ He laughed to himself.
‘It is well enough to talk and to tell child’s tales,’ Gisborne retorted, nettled at the chuckle. ‘To say that this and that
goes on in the rukh. No man can deny thee.’
‘A dog’s death for a dog,’ said Mowgli quietly. ‘Indeed there is nothing in that carrion worth taking away.’
‘The whiskers. Dost thou not take the whiskers?’ said Gisborne, who knew how the rangers valued such things.
‘I? Am I a lousy shikarri of the jungle to paddle with a tiger’s muzzle? Let him lie. Here come his friends already.’
A dropping kite whistled shrilly overhead, as Gisborne snapped out the empty shells, and wiped his face.
‘And if thou art not a shikarri, where didst thou learn thy knowledge of the tiger-folk?’ said he. ‘No tracker could have
done better.’
‘I hate all tigers,’ said Mowgli curtly. ‘Let the Sahib give me his gun to carry. Arre, it is a very fine one. And where does
the Sahib go now?’
‘To my house.’
‘May I come? I have never yet looked within a white man’s house.’
Gisborne returned to his bungalow, Mowgli striding noiselessly before him, his brown skin glistening in the sunlight.
He stared curiously at the verandah and the two chairs there, fingered the split bamboo shade curtains with suspicion,
and entered, looking always behind him. Gisborne loosed a curtain to keep out the sun. It dropped with a clatter, but
almost before it touched the flagging of the verandah Mowgli had leaped clear, and was standing with heaving chest in the
open.
‘It is a trap,’ he said quickly.
Gisborne laughed. ‘White men do not trap men. Indeed thou art altogether of the jungle.’
‘I see,’ said Mowgli, ‘it has neither catch nor fall. I— I never beheld these things till today.’
He came in on tiptoe and stared with large eyes at the furniture of the two rooms. Abdul Gafur, who was laying lunch,
looked at him with deep disgust.
‘So much trouble to eat, and so much trouble to lie down after you have eaten!’ said Mowgli with a grin. ‘We do better
in the jungle. It is very wonderful. There are very many rich things here. Is the Sahib not afraid that he may be robbed? I
have never seen such wonderful things.’ He was staring at a dusty Benares brass plate on a rickety bracket.
‘What do men call thee?’
‘Mowgli, Sahib. And what is the Sahib’s name?’
‘I am the warden of this rukh — Gisborne is my name.’
‘How? Do they number the trees and the blades of grass here?’
‘Even so; lest such gipsy fellows as thou set them afire.’
‘I! I would not hurt the jungle for any gift. That is my home.’
He turned to Gisborne with a smile that was irresistible, and held up a warning hand.
‘Now, Sahib, we must go a little quietly. There is no need to wake the dog, though he sleeps heavily enough. Perhaps it
were better if I went forward alone and drove him down wind to the Sahib.’
‘Allah! Since when have tigers been driven to and fro like cattle by naked men?’ said Gisborne, aghast at the man’s
audacity.
He laughed again softly. ‘Nay, then, come along with me and shoot him in thy own way with the big English rifle.’
Gisborne stepped in his guide’s track, twisted, crawled, and clomb and stooped and suffered through all the many
agonies of a jungle-stalk. He was purple and dripping with sweat when Mowgli at the last bade him raise his head and peer
over a blue baked rock near a tiny hill pool. By the waterside lay the tiger extended and at ease, lazily licking clean again an
enormous elbow and fore paw. He was old, yellow-toothed, and not a little mangy, but in that setting and sunshine,
imposing enough.
Gisborne had no false ideas of sport where the man-eater was concerned. This thing was vermin, to be killed as
speedily as possible. He waited to recover his breath, rested the rifle on the rock and whistled. The brute’s head turned
slowly not twenty feet from the rifle-mouth, and Gisborne planted his shots, business-like, one behind the shoulder and
the other a little below the eye. At that range the heavy bones were no guard against the rending bullets.
‘Well, the skin was not worth keeping at any rate,’ said he, as the smoke cleared away and the beast lay kicking and
gasping in the last agony.
Payment was good, but vengeance was also necessary, and he took that when he could. One night of many nights a
runner, breathless and gasping, came to him with the news that a forest-guard lay dead by the Kanye stream, the side of his
head smashed in as though it had been an eggshell. Gisborne went out at dawn to look for the murderer. It is only
travellers and now and then young soldiers who are known to the world as great hunters. The Forest Officers take their
shikar as part of the day’s work, and no one hears of it. Gisborne went on foot to the place of the kill: the widow was wailing
over the corpse as it lay on a bedstead, while two or three men were looking at footprints on the moist ground. ‘That is the
Red One,’ said a man. ‘I knew he would turn to man in time, but surely there is game enough even for him. This must have
been done for devilry.’
‘The Red One lies up in the rocks at the back of the sal trees,’ said Gisborne. He knew the tiger under suspicion.
‘Not now, Sahib, not now. He will be raging and ranging to and fro. Remember that the first kill is a triple kill always.
Our blood makes them mad. He may be behind us even as we speak.’
‘He may have gone to the next hut,’ said another. ‘It is only four koss. Wallah, who is this?’
Gisborne turned with the others. A man was walking down the dried bed of the stream, naked except for the loin-cloth,
but crowned with a wreath of the tasselled blossoms of the white convolvulus creeper. So noiselessly did he move over the
little pebbles, that even Gisborne, used to the soft-footedness of trackers, started.
‘The tiger that killed,’ he began, without any salute, ‘has gone to drink, and now he is asleep under a rock beyond that
hill.’ His voice was clear and bell-like, utterly different from the usual whine of the native, and his face as he lifted it in the
sunshine might have been that of an angel strayed among the woods. The widow ceased wailing above the corpse and
looked round-eyed at the stranger, returning to her duty with double strength.
‘Shall I show the Sahib?’ he said simply.
‘If thou art sure —’ Gisborne began.
‘Sure indeed. I saw him only an hour ago — the dog. It is before his time to eat man’s flesh. He has yet a dozen sound
teeth in his evil head.’
The men kneeling above the footprints slunk off quietly, for fear that Gisborne should ask them to go with him, and
the young man laughed a little to himself.
‘Come, Sahib,’ he cried, and turned on his heel, walking before his companion.
‘Not so fast. I cannot keep that pace,’ said the white man. ‘Halt there. Thy face is new to me.’
‘That may be. I am but newly come into this forest.’
‘From what village?’
‘I am without a village. I came from over there.’ He flung out his arm towards the north.
‘A gipsy then?’
‘No, Sahib. I am a man without caste, and for matter of that without a father.’
Abdul Gafur, his fat Mohammedan butler, fed him when he was at home, and spent the rest of the time gossiping with
the little band of native servants whose huts lay behind the bungalow. There were two grooms, a cook, a water-carrier, and
a sweeper, and that was all. Gisborne cleaned his own guns and kept no dog. Dogs scared the game, and it pleased the man
to be able to say where the subjects of his kingdom would drink at moonrise, eat before dawn, and lie up in the day’s heat.
The rangers and forest-guards lived in little huts far away in the rukh, only appearing when one of them had been injured
by a falling tree or a wild beast. There Gisborne was alone.
In spring the rukh put out few new leaves, but lay dry and still untouched by the finger of the year, waiting for rain.
Only there was then more calling and roaring in the dark on a quiet night; the tumult of a battle-royal among the tigers, the
bellowing of arrogant buck, or the steady wood-chopping of an old boar sharpening his tushes against a bole. Then
Gisborne laid aside his little-used gun altogether, for it was to him a sin to kill. In summer, through the furious May heats,
the rukh reeled in the haze, and Gisborne watched for the first sign of curling smoke that should betray a forest fire. Then
came the Rains with a roar, and the rukh was blotted out in fetch after fetch of warm mist, and the broad leaves drummed
the night through under the big drops; and there was a noise of running water, and of juicy green stuff crackling where the
wind struck it, and the lightning wove patterns behind the dense matting of the foliage, till the sun broke loose again and
the rukh stood with hot flanks smoking to the newly-washed sky. Then the heat and the dry cold subdued everything to
tiger-colour again. So Gisborne learned to know his rukh and was very happy. His pay came month by month, but he had
very little need for money. The currency notes accumulated in the drawer where he kept his homeletters and the
recapping-machine. If he drew anything, it was to make a purchase from the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, or to pay a
ranger’s widow a sum that the Government of India would never have sanctioned for her man’s death.
Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the trooping sambhur go,
But I can hear the little fawn that bleats behind the doe!
Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the crop and the upland meet,
But I can smell the warm wet wind that whispers through the wheat!’
— The Only Son.
OF the wheels of public service that turn under the Indian Government, there is none more important than the
Department of Woods and Forests. The reboisement of all India is in its hands; or will be when Government has the money
to spend. Its servants wrestle with wandering sand-torrents and shifting dunes wattling them at the sides, damming them
in front, and pegging them down atop with coarse grass and spindling pine after the rules of Nancy. They are responsible
for all the timber in the State forests of the Himalayas, as well as for the denuded hillsides that the monsoons wash into dry
gullies and aching ravines; each cut a mouth crying aloud what carelessness can do. They experiment with battalions of
foreign trees, and coax the blue gum to take root and, perhaps, dry up the Canal fever. In the plains the chief part of their
duty is to see that the belt fire-lines in the forest reserves are kept clean, so that when drought comes and the cattle starve,
they may throw the reserve open to the villager’s herds and allow the man himself to gather sticks. They poll and lop for
the stacked railway-fuel along the lines that burn no coal; they calculate the profit of their plantations to five points of
decimals; they are the doctors and midwives of the huge teak forests of Upper Burma, the rubber of the Eastern Jungles,
and the gall-nuts of the South; and they are always hampered by lack of funds. But since a Forest Officer’s business takes
him far from the beaten roads and the regular stations, he learns to grow wise in more than wood-lore alone; to know the
people and the polity of the jungle; meeting tiger, bear, leopard, wild-dog, and all the deer, not once or twice after days of
beating, but again and again in the execution of his duty. He spends much time in saddle or under canvas — the friend of
newly-planted trees, the associate of uncouth rangers and hairy trackers — till the woods, that show his care, in turn set
their mark upon him, and he ceases to sing the naughty French songs he learned at Nancy, and grows silent with the silent
things of the underbrush.
Gisborne of the Woods and Forests had spent four years in the service. At first he loved it without comprehension,
because it led him into the open on horseback and gave him authority. Then he hated it furiously, and would have given a
year’s pay for one month of such society as India affords. That crisis over, the forests took him back again, and he was
content to serve them, to deepen and widen his fire-lines, to watch the green mist of his new plantation against the older
foliage, to dredge out the choked stream, and to follow and strengthen the last struggle of the forest where it broke down
and died among the long pig-grass. On some still day that grass would be burned off, and a hundred beasts that had their
homes there would rush out before the pale flames at high noon. Later, the forest would creep forward over the blackened
ground in orderly lines of saplings, and Gisborne, watching, would be well pleased. His bungalow, a thatched white-walled
cottage of two rooms, was set at one end of the great rukh and overlooking it. He made no pretence at keeping a garden, for
the rukh swept up to his door, curled over in a thicket of bamboo, and he rode from his verandah into its heart without the
need of any carriage-drive.
In the Rukh
The Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream.
The last ash dropped from the dying fire with the click of a falling spark,
And the Only Son woke up again and called across the dark:—
‘Now, was I born of womankind and laid in a mother’s breast?
For I have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon I went to rest.
And was I born of womankind and laid on a father’s arm?
For I have dreamed of long white teeth that guarded me from harm.
Oh, was I born of womankind and did I play alone?
For I have dreamed of playmates twain that bit me to the bone.
And did I break the barley bread and steep it in the tyre?
For I have dreamed of a youngling kid new riven from the byre.
An hour it lacks and an hour it lacks to the rising of the moon —
But I can see the black roof-beams as plain as it were noon!
Bagheera
In the cage my life began;
Well I know the worth of Man.
By the Broken Lock that freed —
Man-cub, ‘ware the Man-cub’s breed!
Scenting-dew or starlight pale,
Choose no tangled tree-cat trail.
Pack or council, hunt or den,
Cry no truce with Jackal-Men.
Feed them silence when they say:
“Come with us an easy way.”
Feed them silence when they seek
Help of thine to hurt the weak.
Make no banaar’s boast of skill;
Hold thy peace above the kill.
Let nor call nor song nor sign
Turn thee from thy hunting-line.
(Morning mist or twilight clear,
Serve him, Wardens of the Deer!)
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
The Three
On the trail that thou must tread
To the thresholds of our dread,
Where the Flower blossoms red;
Through the nights when thou shalt lie
Prisoned from our Mother-sky,
Hearing us, thy loves, go by;
In the dawns when thou shalt wake
To the toil thou canst not break,
Heartsick for the Jungle’s sake:
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Wisdom, Strength, and Courtesy,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
Kaa
Anger is the egg of Fear —
Only lidless eyes are clear.
Cobra-poison none may leech.
Even so with Cobra-speech.
Open talk shall call to thee
Strength, whose mate is Courtesy.
Send no lunge beyond thy length;
Lend no rotten bough thy strength.
Gauge thy gape with buck or goat,
Lest thine eye should choke thy throat,
After gorging, wouldst thou sleep?
Look thy den is hid and deep,
Lest a wrong, by thee forgot,
Draw thy killer to the spot.
East and West and North and South,
Wash thy hide and close thy mouth.
(Pit and rift and blue pool-brim,
Middle-Jungle follow him!)
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
The Outsong
[This is the song that Mowgli heard behind him in the Jungle till he came to Messua’s door again.]
Baloo
For the sake of him who showed
One wise Frog the Jungle-Road,
Keep the Law the Man-Pack make —
For thy blind old Baloo’s sake!
Clean or tainted, hot or stale,
Flold it as it were the Trail,
Through the day and through the night,
Questing neither left nor right.
For the sake of him who loves
Thee beyond all else that moves,
When thy Pack would make thee pain,
Say: “Tabaqui sings again.”
When thy Pack would work thee ill,
Say: “Shere Khan is yet to kill.”
When the knife is drawn to slay,
Keep the Law and go thy way.
(Root and honey, palm and spathe,
Guard a cub from harm and scathe!)
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
“I taught thee the Law. It is for me to speak,” he said; “and, though I cannot now see the rocks before me, I see far.
Little Frog, take thine own trail; make thy lair with thine own blood and pack and people; but when there is need of foot or
tooth or eye, or a word carried swiftly by night, remember, Master of the Jungle, the Jungle is thine at call.”
“The Middle Jungle is thine also,” said Kaa. “I speak for no small people.”
“Hai-mai, my brothers,” cried Mowgli, throwing up his arms with a sob. “I know not what I know! I would not go; but I
am drawn by both feet. How shall I leave these nights?”
“Nay, look up, Little Brother,” Baloo repeated. “There is no shame in this hunting. When the honey is eaten we leave
the empty hive.”
“Having cast the skin,” said Kaa, “we may not creep into it afresh. It is the Law.”
“Listen, dearest of all to me,” said Baloo. There is neither word nor will here to hold thee back. Look up! Who may
question the Master of the Jungle? I saw thee playing among the white pebbles yonder when thou wast a little frog; and
Bagheera, that bought thee for the price of a young bull newly killed, saw thee also. Of that Looking Over we two only
remain; for Raksha, thy lair-mother, is dead with thy lair-father; the old Wolf-Pack is long since dead; thou knowest
whither Shere Khan went, and Akela died among the dholes, where, but for thy wisdom and strength, the second Seeonee
Pack would also have died. There remains nothing but old bones. It is no longer the Man-cub that asks leave of his Pack,
but the Master of the Jungle that changes his trail. Who shall question Man in his ways?”
“But Bagheera and the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli. “I would not-”
His words were cut short by a roar and a crash in the thicket below, and Bagheera, light, strong, and terrible as always,
stood before him.
“Therefore,” he said, stretching out a dripping right paw, “I did not come. It was a long hunt, but he lies dead in the
bushes now — a bull in his second year — the Bull that frees thee, Little Brother. All debts are paid now. For the rest, my
word is Baloo’s word.” He licked Mowgli’s foot. “Remember, Bagheera loved thee,” he cried, and bounded away. At the foot
of the hill he cried again long and loud, “Good hunting on a new trail, Master of the Jungle! Remember, Bagheera loved
thee.”
“Thou hast heard,” said Baloo. “There is no more. Go now; but first come to me. O wise Little Frog, come to me!”
“It is hard to cast the skin,” said Kaa as Mowgli sobbed and sobbed, with his head on the blind bear’s side and his arms
round his neck, while Baloo tried feebly to lick his feet.
“The stars are thin,” said Gray Brother, snuffing at the dawn wind. “Where shall we lair today? for from now, we follow
new trails.”
At any other season the news would have called all the Jungle together with bristling necks, but now they were busy
hunting and fighting and killing and singing. From one to another Gray Brother ran, crying, “The Master of the Jungle goes
back to Man! Come to the Council Rock.” And the happy, eager People only answered, “He will return in the summer heats.
The Rains will drive him to lair. Run and sing with us, Gray Brother.”
“But the Master of the Jungle goes back to Man,” Gray Brother would repeat.
“Eee — Yoawa? Is the Time of New Talk any less sweet for that?” they would reply. So when Mowgli, heavy-hearted,
came up through the well-remembered rocks to the place where he had been brought into the Council, he found only the
Four, Baloo, who was nearly blind with age, and the heavy, cold-blooded Kaa coiled around Akela’s empty seat.
“Thy trail ends here, then, Manling?” said Kaa, as Mowgli threw himself down, his face in his hands. “Cry thy cry. We
be of one blood, thou and I— man and snake together.”
“Why did I not die under Red Dog?’’ the boy moaned. “My strength is gone from me, and it is not any poison. By night
and by day I hear a double step upon my trail. When I turn my head it is as though one had hidden himself from me that
instant. I go to look behind the trees and he is not there. I call and none cry again; but it is as though one listened and kept
back the answer. I lie down, but I do not rest. I run the spring running, but I am not made still. I bathe, but I am not made
cool. The kill sickens me, but I have no heart to fight except I kill. The Red Flower is in my body, my bones are water — and
— I know not what I know.”
“What need of talk?” said Baloo slowly, turning his head to where Mowgli lay. “Akela by the river said it, that Mowgli
should drive Mowgli back to the Man-Pack. I said it. But who listens now to Baloo? Bagheera — where is Bagheera this
night? — he knows also. It is the Law.”
“When we met at Cold Lairs, Manling, I knew it,” said Kaa, turning a little in his mighty coils. “Man goes to Man at the
last, though the Jungle does not cast him out.”
The Four looked at one another and at Mowgli, puzzled but obedient.
“The Jungle does not cast me out, then?” Mowgli stammered.
Gray Brother and the Three growled furiously, beginning, “So long as we live none shall dare-” But Baloo checked
them.
“If ye had come when I called, this had never been,” said Mowgli, running much faster.
“And now what is to be?” said Gray Brother. Mowgli was going to answer when a girl in a white cloth came down some
path that led from the outskirts of the village. Gray Brother dropped out of sight at once, and Mowgli backed noiselessly
into a field of high-springing crops. He could almost have touched her with his hand when the warm, green stalks closed
before his face and he disappeared like a ghost. The girl screamed, for she thought she had seen a spirit, and then she gave
a deep sigh. Mowgli parted the stalks with his hands and watched her till she was out of sight.
“And now I do not know,” he said, sighing in his turn. “WHY did ye not come when I called?”
“We follow thee — we follow thee,” Gray Brother mumbled, licking at Mowgli’s heel. “We follow thee always, except in
the Time of the New Talk.”
“And would ye follow me to the Man-Pack?” Mowgli whispered.
“Did I not follow thee on the night our old Pack cast thee out? Who waked thee lying among the crops?”
“Ay, but again?”
“Have I not followed thee to-night?”
“Ay, but again and again, and it may be again, Gray Brother?”
Gray Brother was silent. When he spoke he growled to himself, “The Black One spoke truth.”
“And he said?”
“Man goes to Man at the last. Raksha, our mother, said-”
“So also said Akela on the night of Red Dog,” Mowgli muttered.
“So also says Kaa, who is wiser than us all.”
“What dost thou say, Gray Brother?”
“They cast thee out once, with bad talk. They cut thy mouth with stones. They sent Buldeo to slay thee. They would
have thrown thee into the Red Flower. Thou, and not I, hast said that they are evil and senseless. Thou, and not I— I follow
my own people — didst let in the Jungle upon them. Thou, and not I, didst make song against them more bitter even than
our song against Red Dog.”
“I ask thee what THOU sayest?”
They were talking as they ran. Gray Brother cantered on a while without replying, and then he said — between bound
and bound as it were — “Man-cub — Master of the Jungle — Son of Raksha, Lair-brother to me — though I forget for a little
while in the spring, thy trail is my trail, thy lair is my lair, thy kill is my kill, and thy death-fight is my death-fight. I speak
for the Three. But what wilt thou say to the Jungle?”
“That is well thought. Between the sight and the kill it is not good to wait. Go before and cry them all to the Council
Rock, and I will tell them what is in my stomach. But they may not come — in the Time of New Talk they may forget me.”
“Hast thou, then, forgotten nothing?” snapped Gray Brother over his shoulder, as he laid himself down to gallop, and
Mowgli followed, thinking.
Messua laughed, and set the evening meal before him. There were only a few coarse cakes baked over the smoky fire,
some rice, and a lump of sour preserved tamarinds — just enough to go on with till he could get to his evening kill. The
smell of the dew in the marshes made him hungry and restless. He wanted to finish his spring running, but the child
insisted on sitting in his arms, and Messua would have it that his long, blue-black hair must be combed out. So she sang, as
she combed, foolish little baby-songs, now calling Mowgli her son, and now begging him to give some of his jungle power
to the child. The hut door was closed, but Mowgli heard a sound he knew well, and saw Messua’s jaw drop with horror as a
great gray paw came under the bottom of the door, and Gray Brother outside whined a muffled and penitent whine of
anxiety and fear.
“Out and wait! Ye would not come when I called,” said Mowgli in Jungle-talk, without turning his head, and the great
gray paw disappeared.
“Do not — do not bring thy — thy servants with thee,” said Messua. “I— we have always lived at peace with the
Jungle.”
“It is peace,” said Mowgli, rising. “Think of that night on the road to Khanhiwara. There were scores of such folk before
thee and behind thee. But I see that even in springtime the Jungle People do not always forget. Mother, I go.”
Messua drew aside humbly — he was indeed a wood-god, she thought; but as his hand was on the door the mother in
her made her throw her arms round Mowgli’s neck again and again.
“Come back!” she whispered. “Son or no son, come back, for I love thee — Look, he too grieves.”
The child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going away.
“Come back again,” Messua repeated. “By night or by day this door is never shut to thee.”
Mowgli’s throat worked as though the cords in it were being pulled, and his voice seemed to be dragged from it as he
answered, “I will surely come back.”
“And now,” he said, as he put by the head of the fawning wolf on the threshold, “I have a little cry against thee, Gray
Brother. Why came ye not all four when I called so long ago?”
“So long ago? It was but last night. I— we — were singing in the Jungle the new songs, for this is the Time of New Talk.
Rememberest thou?”
“Truly, truly.”
“And as soon as the songs were sung,” Gray Brother went on earnestly, “I followed thy trail. I ran from all the others
and followed hot-foot. But, O Little Brother, what hast THOU done, eating and sleeping with the Man-Pack?”
Beyond question, the fever had soaked thee to the marrow.” Mowgli smiled a little at the idea of anything in the Jungle
hurting him. “I will make a fire, and thou shalt drink warm milk. Put away the jasmine wreath: the smell is heavy in so
small a place.”
Mowgli sat down, muttering, with his face in his hands. All manner of strange feelings that he had never felt before
were running over him, exactly as though he had been poisoned, and he felt dizzy and a little sick. He drank the warm milk
in long gulps, Messua patting him on the shoulder from time to time, not quite sure whether he were her son Nathoo of the
long ago days, or some wonderful Jungle being, but glad to feel that he was at least flesh and blood.
“Son,” she said at last — her eyes were full of pride — “have any told thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men?”
“Hah?” said Mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the kind. Messua laughed softly and happily. The
look in his face was enough for her.
“I am the first, then? It is right, though it comes seldom, that a mother should tell her son these good things. Thou art
very beautiful. Never have I looked upon such a man.”
Mowgli twisted his head and tried to see over his own hard shoulder, and Messua laughed again so long that Mowgli,
not knowing why, was forced to laugh with her, and the child ran from one to the other, laughing too.
“Nay, thou must not mock thy brother,” said Messua, catching him to her breast. “When thou art one-half as fair we
will marry thee to the youngest daughter of a king, and thou shalt ride great elephants.”
Mowgli could not understand one word in three of the talk here; the warm milk was taking effect on him after his long
run, so he curled up and in a minute was deep asleep, and Messua put the hair back from his eyes, threw a cloth over him,
and was happy. Jungle-fashion, he slept out the rest of that night and all the next day; for his instincts, which never wholly
slept, warned him there was nothing to fear. He waked at last with a bound that shook the hut, for the cloth over his face
made him dream of traps; and there he stood, his hand on his knife, the sleep all heavy in his rolling eyes, ready for any
fight.
As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders,
the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken
for some wild god of a jungle legend. The child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked aloud with terror. Messua
turned to soothe him, while Mowgli stood still, looking in at the water-jars and the cooking-pots, the grain-bin, and all the
other human belongings that he found himself remembering so well.
“What wilt thou eat or drink?” Messua murmured. “This is all thine. We owe our lives to thee. But art thou him I called
Nathoo, or a Codling, indeed?”
“I am Nathoo,” said Mowgli, “I am very far from my own place. I saw this light, and came hither. I did not know thou
wast here.”
“After we came to Khanhiwara,” Messua said timidly, “the English would have helped us against those villagers that
sought to burn us. Rememberest thou?”
“Indeed, I have not forgotten.”
“But when the English Law was made ready, we went to the village of those evil people, and it was no more to be
found.”
“That also I remember,” said Mowgli, with a quiver of his nostril.
“My man, therefore, took service in the fields, and at last — for, indeed, he was a strong man — we held a little land
here. It is not so rich as the old village, but we do not need much — we two.”
“Where is he the man that dug in the dirt when he was afraid on that night?”
“He is dead — a year.”
“And he?” Mowgli pointed to the child.
“My son that was born two Rains ago. If thou art a Codling, give him the Favour of the Jungle, that he may be safe
among thy — thy people, as we were safe on that night.”
She lifted up the child, who, forgetting his fright, reached out to play with the knife that hung on Mowgli’s chest, and
Mowgli put the little fingers aside very carefully.
“And if thou art Nathoo whom the tiger carried away,” Messua went on, choking, “he is then thy younger brother. Give
him an elder brother’s blessing.”
“Hai-mai! What do I know of the thing called a blessing? I am neither a Codling nor his brother, and — O mother,
mother, my heart is heavy in me.” He shivered as he set down the child.
“Like enough,” said Messua, bustling among the cooking-pots. “This comes of running about the marshes by night.
“My strength is not altogether gone,” he said. “It may be that the poison is not to the bone. There is a star sitting low
yonder.” He looked at it between his half-shut hands. “By the Bull that bought me, it is the Red Flower — the Red Flower
that I lay beside before — before I came even to the first Seeonee Pack! Now that I have seen, I will finish the running.”
The marsh ended in a broad plain where a light twinkled. It was a long time since Mowgli had concerned himself with
the doings of men, but this night the glimmer of the Red Flower drew him forward.
“I will look,” said he, “as I did in the old days, and I will see how far the Man-Pack has changed.”
Forgetting that he was no longer in his own Jungle, where he could do what he pleased, he trod carelessly through the
dew-loaded grasses till he came to the hut where the light stood. Three or four yelping dogs gave tongue, for he was on the
outskirts of a village.
“Ho!” said Mowgli, sitting down noiselessly, after sending back a deep wolf-growl that silenced the curs. “What comes
will come. Mowgli, what hast thou to do any more with the lairs of the Man-Pack?” He rubbed his mouth, remembering
where a stone had struck it years ago when the other Man-Pack had cast him out.
The door of the hut opened, and a woman stood peering out into the darkness. A child cried, and the woman said over
her shoulder, “Sleep. It was but a jackal that waked the dogs. In a little time morning comes.”
Mowgli in the grass began to shake as though he had fever. He knew that voice well, but to make sure he cried softly,
surprised to find how man’s talk came back, “Messua! O Messua!”
“Who calls?” said the woman, a quiver in her voice.
“Hast thou forgotten?” said Mowgli. His throat was dry as he spoke.
“If it be THOU, what name did I give thee? Say!” She had half shut the door, and her hand was clutching at her breast.
“Nathoo! Ohe, Nathoo!” said Mowgli, for, as you remember, that was the name Messua gave him when he first came to
the Man-Pack.
“Come, my son,” she called, and Mowgli stepped into the light, and looked full at Messua, the woman who had been
good to him, and whose life he had saved from the Man-Pack so long before. She was older, and her hair was gray, but her
eyes and her voice had not changed. Woman-like, she expected to find Mowgli where she had left him, and her eyes
travelled upward in a puzzled way from his chest to his head, that touched the top of the door.
“My son,” she stammered; and then, sinking to his feet: “But it is no longer my son. It is a Codling of the Woods!
Ahai!”
“Uhh!” said the cow, dropping her head again to graze, “I thought it was Man.”
“I say no. Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?” lowed Mysa.
“Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?” the boy called back mockingly. “That is all Mysa thinks for: Is it danger? But for Mowgli,
who goes to and fro in the Jungle by night, watching, what do ye care?”
“How loud he cries!” said the cow. “Thus do they cry,” Mysa answered contemptuously, “who, having torn up the
grass, know not how to eat it.”
“For less than this,” Mowgli groaned to himself, “for less than this even last Rains I had pricked Mysa out of his
wallow, and ridden him through the swamp on a rush halter.” He stretched a hand to break one of the feathery reeds, but
drew it back with a sigh. Mysa went on steadily chewing the cud, and the long grass ripped where the cow grazed. “I will
not die HERE,” he said angrily. “Mysa, who is of one blood with Jacala and the pig, would see me. Let us go beyond the
swamp and see what comes. Never have I run such a spring running — hot and cold together. Up, Mowgli!”
He could not resist the temptation of stealing across the reeds to Mysa and pricking him with the point of his knife.
The great dripping bull broke out of his wallow like a shell exploding, while Mowgli laughed till he sat down.
“Say now that the hairless wolf of the Seeonee Pack once herded thee, Mysa,” he called.
“Wolf! THOU?” the bull snorted, stamping in the mud. “All the jungle knows thou wast a herder of tame cattle — such
a man’s brat as shouts in the dust by the crops yonder. THOU of the Jungle! What hunter would have crawled like a snake
among the leeches, and for a muddy jest — a jackal’s jest — have shamed me before my cow? Come to firm ground, and I
will — I will…” Mysa frothed at the mouth, for Mysa has nearly the worst temper of any one in the Jungle.
Mowgli watched him puff and blow with eyes that never changed. When he could make himself heard through the
pattering mud, he said: “What Man-Pack lair here by the marshes, Mysa? This is new Jungle to me.”
“Go north, then,” roared the angry bull, for Mowgli had pricked him rather sharply. “It was a naked cow-herd’s jest. Go
and tell them at the village at the foot of the marsh.”
“The Man-Pack do not love jungle-tales, nor do I think, Mysa, that a scratch more or less on thy hide is any matter for
a council. But I will go and look at this village. Yes, I will go. Softly now. It is not every night that the Master of the Jungle
comes to herd thee.”
He stepped out to the shivering ground on the edge of the marsh, well knowing that Mysa would never charge over it
and laughed, as he ran, to think of the bull’s anger.