The Jungle Books Read Free Page A

numerous, and the Editor would be wanting in all title to the generous treatment he has received were he not willing to make the fullest possible acknowledgment of his indebtedness.
    His thanks are due in the first place to the scholarly and accomplished Bahadur Shah, baggage elephant 174 on the Indian Register, who, with his amiable sister Pudmini, most courteously supplied the history of “Toomai of the Elephants” and much of the information contained in “Servants of the Queen.” The adventures of Mowgli were collected at various times and in various places from a multitude of informants, most of whom desire to preserve the strictest anonymity. Yet, at this distance, the Editor feels at liberty to thank a Hindu gentleman of the old rock, an esteemed resident of the upper slopes of Jakko, for his convincing if somewhat caustic estimate of the national characteristics of his caste—the Presbytes. Sahi, a savant of infinite research and industry, a member of the recently disbanded Seeonee Pack, and an artist well known at most of the local fairs of Southern India, where his muzzled dance with his master attracts the youth, beauty, and culture of many villages, has contributed most valuable data on people, manners, and customs. These have been freely drawn upon, in the stories of “ ‘Tiger-Tiger!’ ” “Kaa’s Hunting,” and “Mowgli’s Brothers.” For the outlines of “‘Rikki-tikki-tavi’ ” the Editor stands indebted to one of the leading herpetologists of Upper India, a fearlessand independent investigator who, resolving “not to live but know,” lately sacrificed his life through over-application to the study of our Eastern Thanatophidia. A happy accident of travel enabled the Editor, when a passenger on the
Empress of India
, to be of some slight assistance to a fellow-voyager. How richly his poor services were repaid, readers of “The White Seal” may judge for themselves.

MOWGLI’S BROTHERS
    Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
      That Mang the Bat sets free—
     The herds are shut in byre and but
      For loosed till dawn are we.
     This is the hour of pride and power,
      Talon and tush and claw.
     Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
      That keep the Jungle Law!
    Night-Song in the Jungle
    I T was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big grey nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. “
Augrh!
” said Father Wolf, “it is time to hunt again.” And he was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: “Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world.”
    It, was the jackal—Tabaqui the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more thanany one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it
dewanee
—the madness—and run.
    “Enter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf, stiffly, “but there is no food here.”
    “For a wolf, no,” said Tabaqui, “but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the
Gidur-log
[the Jackal-People], to pick and choose?” He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with