the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung
to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when
the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in
the Jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering
blue boulders in the bed of the stream.

The birds and the monkey-people went north early in the year,
for they knew what was coming; and the deer and the wild pig
broke far away to the perished fields of the villages, dying
sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to kill them. Chil,
the Kite, stayed and grew fat, for there was a great deal of
carrion, and evening after evening he brought the news to the
beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunting-grounds,
that the sun was killing the Jungle for three days" flight in
every direction.

Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back
on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted
rock-hives--honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar.
He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the
trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. All the game
in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and Bagheera
could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. But
the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle People
drink seldom they must drink deep.

And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture,
till at last the main channel of the Waingunga was the only
stream that carried a trickle of water between its dead banks;
and when Hathi, the wild elephant, who lives for a hundred
years and more, saw a long, lean blue ridge of rock show dry
in the very centre of the stream, he knew that he was looking
at the Peace Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk
and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father before him had
proclaimed it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and buffalo
took up the cry hoarsely; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great
circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning.

By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the
drinking-places when once the Water Truce has been declared.
The reason of this is that drinking comes before eating. Every
one in the Jungle can scramble along somehow when only game is
scarce; but water is water, and when there is but one source of
supply, all hunting stops while the Jungle People go there for
their needs. In good seasons, when water was plentiful, those
who came down to drink at the Waingunga--or anywhere else, for
that matter--did so at the risk of their lives, and that risk
made no small part of the fascination of the night's doings.
To move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade
knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from
behind; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every
muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror;
to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and
well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all
tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely because
they knew that at any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap
upon them and bear them down. But now all that life-and-death
fun was ended, and the Jungle People came up, starved and
weary, to the shrunken river,--tiger, bear, deer, buffalo,
and pig, all together,--drank the fouled waters, and hung above
them, too exhausted to move off.

The deer and the pig had tramped all day in search of something
better than dried bark and withered leaves. The buffaloes had
found no wallows to be cool in, and no green crops to steal.
The snakes had left the Jungle and come down to the river in
the hope of finding a stray frog. They curled round wet stones,
and never offered to strike when the nose of a rooting pig
dislodged them. The river-turtles had long ago been killed by
Bagheera, cleverest of hunters, and the fish had buried
themselves deep in the dry mud. Only the Peace Rock lay across
the shallows like a long snake, and the little tired ripples
hissed as they dried on its hot side.

It was here that Mowgli came nightly for the cool and the
companionship. The most hungry of his enemies would hardly have
cared for the boy then, His naked hide made him seem more lean
and wretched than any of his fellows. His hair was bleached to
tow colour by the sun; his ribs stood out like the ribs of a
basket, and the lumps on his knees and elbows, where he was used
to track on all fours, gave his shrunken limbs the look of
knotted grass-stems. But his eye, under his matted forelock,
was cool and quiet, for Bagheera was his adviser in this time
of trouble, and told him to go quietly, hunt slowly, and never,
on any account, to lose his temper.

"It is an evil time," said the Black Panther, one furnace-hot
evening, "but it will go if we can live till the end. Is thy
stomach full, Man-cub?"

"There is stuff in my stomach, but I get no good of it.
Think you, Bagheera, the Rains have forgotten us and will
never come again?"

"Not I! We shall see the mohwa in blossom yet, and the little
fawns all fat with new grass. Come down to the Peace Rock and
hear the news. On my back, Little Brother."

"This is no time to carry weight. I can still stand alone,
but--indeed we be no fatted bullocks, we two."


<< previous page | next page >>

Jump to page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 |