"Thunder and lightning! Lightning and thunder!" said that
miserable little beast. "Has the thing that pulls the covered
carts over the bridge tumbled at last?"

"It is no more than a gun," said the Adjutant, though his
very tail-feathers quivered. "Nothing more than a gun. He is
certainly dead. Here come the white-faces."

The two Englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across
to the sand-bar, where they stood admiring the length of the
Mugger. Then a native with an axe cut off the big head, and four
men dragged it across the spit.

"The last time that I had my hand in a Mugger's mouth," said one
of the Englishmen, stooping down (he was the man who had built
the bridge), "it was when I was about five years old--coming
down the river by boat to Monghyr. I was a Mutiny baby, as they
call it. Poor mother was in the boat, too, and she often told me
how she fired dad's old pistol at the beast's head."

"Well, you've certainly had your revenge on the chief of the
clan--even if the gun has made your nose bleed. Hi, you boatmen!
Haul that head up the bank, and we'll boil it for the skull.
The skin's too knocked about to keep. Come along to bed now.
This was worth sitting up all night for, wasn't it?"

.....

Curiously enough, the Jackal and the Adjutant made the very same
remark not three minutes after the men had left.


A RIPPLE SONG

Once a ripple came to land
In the golden sunset burning--
Lapped against a maiden's hand,
By the ford returning.

Dainty foot and gentle breast--
Here, across, be glad and rest.
"Maiden, wait," the ripple saith.
"Wait awhile, for I am Death!"

"Where my lover calls I go--
Shame it were to treat him coldly--
'Twas a fish that circled so,
Turning over boldly."

Dainty foot and tender heart,
Wait the loaded ferry-cart.
"Wait, ah, wait!" the ripple saith;
"Maiden, wait, for I am Death!"

"When my lover calls I haste-
Dame Disdain was never wedded!"
Ripple-ripple round her waist,
Clear the current eddied.

Foolish heart and faithful hand,
Little feet that touched no land.
Far away the ripple sped,
Ripple--ripple--running red!



THE KING'S ANKUS

These are the Four that are never content, that have never
been filled since the Dews began--
Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the Kite, and the hands of the
Ape, and the Eyes of Man.
Jungle Saying.

Kaa, the big Rock Python, had changed his skin for perhaps the
two-hundredth time since his birth; and Mowgli, who never forgot
that he owed his life to Kaa for a night's work at Cold Lairs,
which you may perhaps remember, went to congratulate him.
Skin-changing always makes a snake moody and depressed till the
new skin begins to shine and look beautiful. Kaa never made fun
of Mowgli any more, but accepted him, as the other Jungle People
did, for the Master of the Jungle, and brought him all the news
that a python of his size would naturally hear. What Kaa did not
know about the Middle Jungle, as they call it,--the life that
runs close to the earth or under it, the boulder, burrow, and
the tree-bole life,--might have been written upon the smallest
of his scales.

That afternoon Mowgli was sitting in the circle of Kaa!s great
coils, fingering the flaked and broken old skin that lay all
looped and twisted among the rocks just as Kaa had left it.
Kaa had very courteously packed himself under Mowgli's broad,
bare shoulders, so that the boy was really resting in a
living arm-chair.

"Even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect," said Mowgli,
under his breath, playing with the old skin. "Strange to see the
covering of one's own head at one's own feet!"

"Ay, but I lack feet," said Kaa; "and since this is the custom


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