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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. Augrh! said Father Wolf. It is time to hunt again. He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819913092
Langue	English

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Mowgli's Brothers
Now Rann the Kite brings home thenight
That Mang the Bat sets free -
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call! - Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
Night-Song in the Jungle
It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in theSeeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest,scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after theother to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolflay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling,squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave wherethey all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to huntagain." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow witha bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go withyou, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth gowith noble children that they may never forget the hungry in thisworld."
It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - andthe wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about makingmischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leatherfrom the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too,because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to gomad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, andruns through the forest biting everything in his way. Even thetiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness isthe most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. Wecall it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee - the madness - andrun.
"Enter, then, and look," said Father Wolf stiffly,"but there is no food here."
"For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for so mean aperson as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, theGidur-log [the jackal people] , to pick and choose?"He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of abuck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.
"All thanks for this good meal," he said, lickinghis lips. "How beautiful are the noble children! How large aretheir eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might haveremembered that the children of kings are men from thebeginning."
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that thereis nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces. Itpleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that hehad made, and then he said spitefully:
"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his huntinggrounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so hehas told me."
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near theWaingunga River, twenty miles away.
"He has no right!" Father Wolf began angrily - "Bythe Law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarterswithout due warning. He will frighten every head of game within tenmiles, and I - I have to kill for two, these days."
"His mother did not call him Lungri [the LameOne] for nothing," said Mother Wolf quietly. "He has beenlame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killedcattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, andhe has come here to make our villagers angry. They will scour thejungle for him when he is far away, and we and our children mustrun when the grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful toShere Khan!"
"Shall I tell him of your gratitude?" saidTabaqui.
"Out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out and hunt with thymaster. Thou hast done harm enough for one night."
"I go," said Tabaqui quietly. "Ye can hear ShereKhan below in the thickets. I might have saved myself themessage."
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley thatran down to a little river he heard the dry, angry, snarly,singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not careif all the jungle knows it.
"The fool!" said Father Wolf. "To begin a night'swork with that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fatWaingunga bullocks?"
"H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he huntsto-night," said Mother Wolf. "It is Man."
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr thatseemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the noisethat bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, andmakes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
"Man!" said Father Wolf, showing all his whiteteeth. "Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanksthat he must eat Man, and on our ground too!"
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anythingwithout a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he iskilling to show his children how to kill, and then he must huntoutside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reasonfor this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival ofwhite men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men withgongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the junglesuffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man isthe weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it isunsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too - and it is true - thatman-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated"Aaarh!" of the tiger's charge.
Then there was a howl - an untigerish howl - fromShere Khan. "He has missed," said Mother Wolf. "What is it?"
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khanmuttering and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in thescrub.
"The fool has had no more sense than to jump at awoodcutter's campfire, and has burned his feet," said Father Wolfwith a grunt. "Tabaqui is with him."
"Something is coming uphill," said Mother Wolf,twitching one ear. "Get ready."
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, andFather Wolf dropped with his haunches under him, ready for hisleap. Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the mostwonderful thing in the world - the wolf checked in mid-spring. Hemade his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, andthen he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot upstraight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost wherehe left ground.
"Man!" he snapped. "A man's cub. Look!"
Directly in front of him, holding on by a lowbranch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk - as soft andas dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. Helooked up into Father Wolf's face, and laughed.
"Is that a man's cub?" said Mother Wolf. "I havenever seen one. Bring it here."
A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, ifnecessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though FatherWolf's jaws closed right on the child's back not a tooth evenscratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs.
"How little! How naked, and - how bold!" said MotherWolf softly. The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to getclose to the warm hide. "Ahai! He is taking his meal with theothers. And so this is a man's cub. Now, was there ever a wolf thatcould boast of a man's cub among her children?"
"I have heard now and again of such a thing, butnever in our Pack or in my time," said Father Wolf. "He isaltogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of myfoot. But see, he looks up and is not afraid."
The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of thecave, for Shere Khan's great square head and shoulders were thrustinto the entrance. Tabaqui, behind him, was squeaking: "My lord, mylord, it went in here!"
"Shere Khan does us great honor," said Father Wolf,but his eyes were very angry. "What does Shere Khan need?"
"My quarry. A man's cub went this way," said ShereKhan. "Its parents have run off. Give it to me."
Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter's campfire, asFather Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his burnedfeet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was toonarrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan'sshoulders and forepaws were cramped for want of room, as a man'swould be if he tried to fight in a barrel.
"The Wolves are a free people," said Father Wolf."They take orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from anystriped cattle-killer. The man's cub is ours - to kill if wechoose."
"Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is thisof choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing intoyour dog's den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, whospeak!"
The tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder.Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, hereyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyesof Shere Khan.
"And it is I, Raksha [The Demon] , whoanswers. The man's cub is mine, Lungri - mine to me! He shall notbe killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with thePack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs -frog-eater - fish-killer - he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or bythe Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thougoest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than everthou camest into the world! Go!"
Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almostforgotten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from fiveother wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demonfor compliment's sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, buthe could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that wherehe was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight tothe death. So he backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when hewas clear he shouted:
"Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see whatthe Pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine,and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailedthieves!"
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among thecubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely:
"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must beshown to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?"
"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night,alone and very