("Can ye hear?" saith Kabir), a bairagi avowed!



LETTING IN THE JUNGLE

Veil them, cover them, wall them round--
Blossom, and creeper, and weed--
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
The smell and the touch of the breed!

Fat black ash by the altar-stone,
Here is the white-foot rain,
And the does bring forth in the fields unsown,
And none shall affright them again;
And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown
And none shall inhabit again!


You will remember that after Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan's hide
to the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee
Pack that henceforward he would hunt in the Jungle alone; and
the four children of Mother and Father Wolf said that they would
hunt with him. But it is not easy to change one's life all in
a minute--particularly in the Jungle. The first thing Mowgli
did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was to go to the
home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told Mother
Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his
adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker
up and down the blade of his skinning-knife,--the same he had
skinned Shere Khan with,--they said he had learned something.
Then Akela and Gray Brother had to explain their share of the
great buffalo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the
hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched himself all
over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli had managed
his war.

It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep,
and from time to time, during the talk, Mother Wolf would throw
up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind
brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.

"But for Akela and Gray Brother here," Mowgli said, at the end,
"I could have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst
seen the black herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through
the gates when the Man-Pack flung stones at me!"

"I am glad I did not see that last," said Mother Wolf stiffly.
"It is not MY custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro
like jackals. _I_ would have taken a price from the Man-Pack;
but I would have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes,
I would have spared her alone."

"Peace, peace, Raksha!" said Father Wolf, lazily. "Our Frog has
come back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet;
and what is a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Men alone.
"Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: "Leave Men alone."

Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf's side, smiled contentedly, and
said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or
smell Man again.

"But what," said Akela, cocking one ear--"but what if men do not
leave thee alone, Little Brother?"

"We be FIVE," said Gray Brother, looking round at the company,
and snapping his jaws on the last word.

"We also might attend to that hunting," said Bagheera, with a
little switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. "But why
think of men now, Akela?"

"For this reason," the Lone Wolf answered: "when that yellow
chief's hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our
trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and
lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one should follow us.
But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it
again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung
up above me. Said Mang, "The village of the Man-Pack, where they
cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest."

"It was a big stone that I threw," chuckled Mowgli, who had often
amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's
nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets
caught him.

"I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower
blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it
carrying guns. Now _I_ know, for I have good cause,"--Akela
looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,--"that
men do not carry guns for pleasure. Presently, Little Brother,
a man with a gun follows our trail--if, indeed, he be not
already on it."

"But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they
need?" said Mowgli angrily.

"Thou art a man, Little Brother," Akela returned. "It is not
for US, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do,
or why."


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