"The First of the Tigers, standing stiffly to his kill, said.
'He is as the buck was. There is no Fear. Now I will judge the
Jungle Peoples once more.'

"And Tha said: 'Never again shall the Jungle Peoples come to
thee. They shall never cross thy trail, nor sleep near thee,
nor follow after thee, nor browse by thy lair. Only Fear shall
follow thee, and with a blow that thou canst not see he shall
bid thee wait his pleasure. He shall make the ground to open
under thy feet, and the creeper to twist about thy neck,
and the tree-trunks to grow together about thee higher than
thou canst leap, and at the last he shall take thy hide to wrap
his cubs when they are cold. Thou hast shown him no mercy,
and none will he show thee.'

"The First of the Tigers was very bold, for his Night was still
on him, and he said: 'The Promise of Tha is the Promise of Tha.
He will not take away my Night?' And Tha said: 'The one Night is
thine, as I have said, but there is a price to pay.
Thou hast taught Man to kill, and he is no slow learner.'

"The First of the Tigers said: 'He is here under my foot, and
his back is broken. Let the Jungle know I have killed Fear.'

"Then Tha laughed, and said: 'Thou hast killed one of many, but
thou thyself shalt tell the Jungle--for thy Night is ended.'

"So the day came; and from the mouth of the cave went out
another Hairless One, and he saw the kill in the path, and the
First of the Tigers above it, and he took a pointed stick----"

"They throw a thing that cuts now," said Ikki, rustling down
the bank; for Ikki was considered uncommonly good eating by
the Gonds--they called him Ho-Igoo--and he knew something of
the wicked little Gondee axe that whirls across a clearing
like a dragon-fly.

"It was a pointed stick, such as they put in the foot of a
pit-trap," said Hathi, "and throwing it, he struck the First
of the Tigers deep in the flank. Thus it happened as Tha said,
for the First of the Tigers ran howling up and down the Jungle
till he tore out the stick, and all the Jungle knew that the
Hairless One could strike from far off, and they feared more
than before. So it came about that the First of the Tigers
taught the Hairless One to kill--and ye know what harm that has
since done to all our peoples--through the noose, and the
pitfall, and the hidden trap, and the flying stick and the
stinging fly that comes out of white smoke [Hathi meant the
rifle], and the Red Flower that drives us into the open.
Yet for one night in the year the Hairless One fears the Tiger,
as Tha promised, and never has the Tiger given him cause to be
less afraid. Where he finds him, there he kills him,
remembering how the First of the Tigers was made ashamed.
For the rest, Fear walks up and down the Jungle by day
and by night."

"Ahi! Aoo!" said the deer, thinking of what it all meant
to them.

"And only when there is one great Fear over all, as there is
now, can we of the Jungle lay aside our little fears, and meet
together in one place as we do now."

"For one night only does Man fear the Tiger?" said Mowgli.

"For one night only," said Hathi.

"But I--but we--but all the Jungle knows that Shere Khan kills
Man twice and thrice in a moon."

"Even so. THEN he springs from behind and turns his head aside
as he strikes, for he is full of fear. If Man looked at him he
would run. But on his one Night he goes openly down to the
village. He walks between the houses and thrusts his head into
the doorway, and the men fall on their faces, and there he does
his kill. One kill in that Night."

"Oh!" said Mowgli to himself, rolling over in the water. "NOW I
see why it was Shere Khan bade me look at him! He got no good
of it, for he could not hold his eyes steady, and--and I
certainly did not fall down at his feet. But then I am not a
man, being of the Free People."

"Umm!" said Bagheera deep in his furry throat. "Does the Tiger
know his Night?"

"Never till the Jackal of the Moon stands clear of the evening
mist. Sometimes it falls in the dry summer and sometimes in the
wet rains--this one Night of the Tiger. But for the First of
the Tigers, this would never have been, nor would any of us
have known fear."

The deer grunted sorrowfully and Bagheera's lips curled in a
wicked smile. "Do men know this--tale?" said he.

"None know it except the tigers, and we, the elephants--the
children of Tha. Now ye by the pools have heard it, and I
have spoken."

Hathi dipped his trunk into the water as a sign that he did not


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