"I did not need such faithful watchers," he said politely,
standing up on a branch, "but I will remember this. Ye be true
dholes, but to my thinking over much of one kind. For that
reason I do not give the big lizard-eater his tail again.
Art thou not pleased, Red Dog?"

"I myself will tear out thy stomach!" yelled the leader,
scratching at the foot of the tree.

"Nay, but consider, wise rat of the Dekkan. There will now be
many litters of little tailless red dogs, yea, with raw red
stumps that sting when the sand is hot. Go home, Red Dog,
and cry that an ape has done this. Ye will not go? Come, then,
with me, and I will make you very wise!"

He moved, Bandar-log fashion, into the next tree, and so on into
the next and the next, the Pack following with lifted hungry
heads. Now and then he would pretend to fall, and the Pack would
tumble one over the other in their haste to be at the death.
It was a curious sight--the boy with the knife that shone in the
low sunlight as it sifted through the upper branches, and the
silent Pack with their red coats all aflame, huddling and
following below. When he came to the last tree he took the
garlic and rubbed himself all over carefully, and the dholes
yelled with scorn. "Ape with a wolf's tongue, dost thou think to
cover thy scent?" they said. "We follow to the death."

"Take thy tail," said Mowgli, flinging it back along the course
he had taken. The Pack instinctively rushed after it.
"And follow now--to the death."

He had slipped down the tree-trunk, and headed like the wind
in bare feet for the Bee Rocks, before the dholes saw what
he would do.

They gave one deep howl, and settled down to the long, lobbing
canter that can at the last run down anything that runs.
Mowgli knew their pack-pace to be much slower than that of the
wolves, or he would never have risked a two-mile run in full
sight. They were sure that the boy was theirs at last, and he
was sure that he held them to play with as he pleased. All his
trouble was to keep them sufficiently hot behind him to prevent
their turning off too soon. He ran cleanly, evenly, and
springily; the tailless leader not five yards behind him;
and the Pack tailing out over perhaps a quarter of a mile of
ground, crazy and blind with the rage of slaughter. So he kept
his distance by ear, reserving his last effort for the rush
across the Bee Rocks.

The Little People had gone to sleep in the early twilight,
for it was not the season of late blossoming flowers; but as
Mowgli's first foot- falls rang hollow on the hollow ground he
heard a sound as though all the earth were humming. Then he ran
as he had never run in his life before, spurned aside one--two--
three of the piles of stones into the dark, sweet-smelling
gullies; heard a roar like the roar of the sea in a cave;
saw with the tail of his eye the air grow dark behind him;
saw the current of the Waingunga far below, and a flat, diamond-
shaped head in the water; leaped outward with all his strength,
the tailless dhole snapping at his shoulder in mid-air, and
dropped feet first to the safety of the river, breathless and
triumphant. There was not a sting upon him, for the smell of the
garlic had checked the Little People for just the few seconds
that he was among them. When he rose Kaa's coils were steadying
him and things were bounding over the edge of the cliff--great
lumps, it seemed, of clustered bees falling like plummets;
but before any lump touched water the bees flew upward and the
body of a dhole whirled down-stream. Overhead they could hear
furious short yells that were drowned in a roar like breakers--
the roar of the wings of the Little People of the Rocks. Some of
the dholes, too, had fallen into the gullies that communicated
with the underground caves, and there choked and fought and
snapped among the tumbled honeycombs, and at last, borne up,
even when they were dead, on the heaving waves of bees beneath
them, shot out of some hole in the river-face, to roll over on
the black rubbish-heaps. There were dholes who had leaped short
into the trees on the cliffs, and the bees blotted out their
shapes; but the greater number of them, maddened by the stings,
had flung themselves into the river; and, as Kaa said, the
Waingunga was hungry water.

Kaa held Mowgli fast till the boy had recovered his breath.

"We may not stay here," he said. "The Little People are roused
indeed. Come!"

Swimming low and diving as often as he could, Mowgli went down
the river, knife in hand.

"Slowly, slowly," said Kaa. "One tooth does not kill a hundred
unless it be a cobra's, and many of the dholes took water
swiftly when they saw the Little People rise."

"The more work for my knife, then. Phai! How the, Little People
follow!" Mowgli sank again. The face of the water was blanketed
with wild bees, buzzing sullenly and stinging all they found.

"Nothing was ever yet lost by silence," said Kaa--no sting could
penetrate his scales--"and thou hast all the long night for the


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