full on the steady blade bore him down. For the rest, it was one
tangled confusion--a locked and swaying mob that moved from
right to left and from left to right along the bank; and also
ground round and round slowly on its own centre. Here would be a
heaving mound, like a water-blister in a whirlpool, which would
break like a water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled
dogs, each striving to get back to the centre; here would be a
single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, laboriously
dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling
cub would he held up by the pressure round him, though he had
been killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage,
rolled over and over, snapping, and passing on; and in the
middle of the thickest press, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole,
forgetting everything else, would be manoeuvring for first hold
till they were whirled away by a rush of furious fighters.
Once Mowgli passed Akela, a dhole on either flank, and his all
but toothless jaws closed over the loins of a third; and once he
saw Phao, his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging the
unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could finish him.
But the bulk of the fight was blind flurry and smother in the
dark; hit, trip, and tumble, yelp, groan, and worry-worry-worry,
round him and behind him and above him. As the night wore on,
the quick, giddy-go-round motion increased. The dholes were
cowed and afraid to attack the stronger wolves, but did not yet
dare to run away. Mowgli felt that the end was coming soon, and
contented himself with striking merely to cripple. The yearlings
were growing bolder; there was time now and again to breathe,
and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker of the knife
would sometimes turn a dog aside.

"The meat is very near the bone," Gray Brother yelled. He was
bleeding from a score of flesh-wounds.

"But the bone is yet to he cracked," said Mowgli. "Eowawa!
THUS do we do in the Jungle!" The red blade ran like a flame
along the side of a dhole whose hind-quarters were hidden by
the weight of a clinging wolf.

"My kill!" snorted the wolf through his wrinkled nostrils.
"Leave him to me."

"Is thy stomach still empty, Outlier?" said Mowgli. Won-tolla
was fearfully punished, but his grip had paralysed the dhole,
who could not turn round and reach him.

"By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli, with a bitter laugh,
"it is the tailless one!" And indeed it was the big bay-
coloured leader.

"It is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis," Mowgli went on
philosophically, wiping the blood out of his eyes, "unless one
has also killed the Outlier; and it is in my stomach that this
Won-tolla kills thee."

A dhole leaped to his leader's aid; but before his teeth had
found Won-tolla's flank, Mowgli's knife was in his throat,
and Gray Brother took what was left.

"And thus do we do in the Jungle," said Mowgli.

Won-tolla said not a word, only his jaws were closing and
closing on the backbone as his life ebbed. The dhole shuddered,
his head dropped, and he lay still, and Won-tolla dropped
above him.

"Huh! The Blood Debt is paid," said Mowgli. "Sing the song,
Won-tolla."

"He hunts no more," said Gray Brother; "and Akela, too, is
silent this long time."

"The bone is cracked!" thundered Phao, son of Phaona. "They go!
Kill, kill out, O hunters of the Free People!"

Dhole after dhole was slinking away from those dark and bloody
sands to the river, to the thick Jungle, up-stream or down-
stream as he saw the road clear.

"The debt! The debt!" shouted Mowgli. "Pay the debt! They have
slain the Lone Wolf! Let not a dog go!"

He was flying to the river, knife in hand, to check any dhole
who dared to take water, when, from under a mound of nine dead,
rose Akela's head and fore-quarters, and Mowgli dropped on his
knees beside the Lone Wolf.

"Said I not it would be my last fight?" Akela gasped. "It is
good hunting. And thou, Little Brother?"

"I live, having killed many."

"Even so. I die, and I would--I would die by thee,
Little Brother."

Mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his knees, and put his
arms round the torn neck.

"It is long since the old days of Shere Khan, and a Man-cub that
rolled naked in the dust."



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