He turned, straight as an arrow, for the main stream of the
Waingunga, plunging in a little above the pool that hid the
Peace Rock, Mowgli at his side.

"Nay, do not swim. I go swiftly. My back, Little Brother."

Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa's neck, dropped his right
close to his body, and straightened his feet. Then Kaa breasted
the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked
water stood up in a frill round Mowgli's neck, and his feet were
waved to and fro in the eddy under the python's lashing sides.
A mile or two above the Peace Rock the Waingunga narrows between
a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred feet high, and
the current runs like a mill-race between and over all manner of
ugly stones. But Mowgli did not trouble his head about the
water; little water in the world could have given him a moment's
fear. He was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing
uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air,
very like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day.
Instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his
head to breathe from time to time, and Kaa came to anchor with a
double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in
the hollow of a coil, while the water raced on.

"This is the Place of Death," said the boy. "Why do we
come here?"

"They sleep," said Kaa. "Hathi will not turn aside for the
Striped One. Yet Hathi and the Striped One together turn aside
for the dhole, and the dhole they say turn aside for nothing.
And yet for whom do the Little People of the Rocks turn aside?
Tell me, Master of the Jungle, who is the Master of the Jungle?"

"These," Mowgli whispered. "It is the Place of Death.
Let us go."

"Nay, look well, for they are asleep. It is as it was when I was
not the length of thy arm."

The split and weatherworn rocks of the gorge of the Waingunga
had been used since the beginning of the Jungle by the Little
People of the Rocks--the busy, furious, black wild bees of
India; and, as Mowgli knew well, all trails turned off half a
mile before they reached the gorge. For centuries the Little
People had hived and swarmed from cleft to cleft, and swarmed
again, staining the white marble with stale honey, and made
their combs tall and deep in the dark of the inner caves, where
neither man nor beast nor fire nor water had ever touched them.
The length of the gorge on both siaes was hung as it were with
black shimmery velvet curtains, and Mowgli sank as he looked,
for those were the clotted millions of the sleeping bees.
There were other lumps and festoons and things like decayed
tree-trunks studded on the face of the rock, the old combs of
past years, or new cities built in the shadow of the windless
gorge, and huge masses of spongy, rotten trash had rolled down
and stuck among the trees and creepers that clung to the rock-
face. As he listened he heard more than once the rustle and
slide of a honey-loaded comb turning over or failing away
somewhere in the dark galleries; then a booming of angry wings,
and the sullen drip, drip, drip, of the wasted honey, guttering
along till it lipped over some ledge in the open air and
sluggishly trickled down on the twigs. There was a tiny little
beach, not five feet broad, on one side of the river, and that
was piled high with the rubbish of uncounted years. There were
dead bees, drones, sweepings, and stale combs, and wings of
marauding moths that had strayed in after honey, all tumbled in
smooth piles of the finest black dust. The mere sharp smell of
it was enough to frighten anything that had no wings, and knew
what the Little People were.

Kaa moved up-stream again till he came to a sandy bar at the
head of the gorge.

"Here is this season's kill," said he. "Look!" On the bank lay
the skeletons of a couple of young deer and a buffalo.
Mowgli could see that neither wolf nor jackal had touched the
hones, which were laid out naturally.

"They came beyond the line;, they did not know the Law,"
murmured Mowgli, "and the Little People killed them. Let us
go ere they wake."

"They do not wake till the dawn," said Kaa. "Now I will tell
thee. A hunted buck from the south, many, many Rains ago,
came hither from the south, not knowing the Jungle, a Pack on
his trail. Being made blind by fear, he leaped from above,
the Pack running by sight, for they were hot and blind on the
trail. The sun was high, and the Little People were many and
very angry. Many, too, were those of the Pack who leaped into
the Waingunga, but they were dead ere they took water. Those who
did not leap died also in the rocks above. But the buck lived."

"How?"

"Because he came first, running for his life, leaping ere the
Little People were aware, and was in the river when they
gathered to kill. The Pack, following, was altogether lost
under the weight of the Little People."

"The buck lived?" Mowgli repeated slowly.


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