“Come down ere we starve thee out, hairless ape,” yelled the pack, and this was exactly what Mowgli wanted. He laid himself down along the branch, his cheek to the bark, his right arm free, and for some five minutes he told the pack what he thought and knew about them, their manners, their customs, their mates, and their puppies. There is no speech in the world so rancorous and so stinging as the language the Jungle-People use to show scorn and contempt. When you come to think of it you will see how this must be so. As Mowgli told Kaa, he had many little thorns under his tongue, and slowly and deliberately he drove the dholes from silence to growls, from growls to yells, and from yells to hoarse slavery ravings. They tried to answer his taunts, but a cub might as well have tried to answer Kaa in a rage, and all the while Mowgli’s right hand lay crooked at his side, ready for action, his feet locked round the branch. The big bay leader had leaped many times into the air, but Mowgli dared not risk a false blow. At last, made furious beyond his natural strength, he bounded up seven or eight feet clear of the ground. Then Mowgli’s hand shot out like the head of a tree-snake, and gripped him by the scruff of his neck, and the branch shook with the jar as his weight fell back, and Mowgli was almost wrenched on to the ground. But he never loosed his grip, and inch by inch he hauled the beast, hanging like a drowned jackal, up on the branch. With his left hand he reached for his knife and cut off the red, bushy tail, flinging the dhole back to earth again. That was all he needed. The dholes would not go forward on Won-tolla’s trail now till they had killed Mowgli, or Mowgli had killed them. He saw them settle down in circles with a quiver of the haunches that meant revenge to the death, and so he climbed to a higher crotch, settled his back comfortably and went to sleep.
After three or four hours he waked and counted the pack. There were all there, silent, husky, and dry, with eyes of steel. The sun was beginning to sink. In half an hour the Little People of the Rocks would be ending their labours, and, as you know, the dhole does not fight well in the twilight.
“I did not need such faithful watchers,” he said, standing up on a branch, “but I will remember this. Ye be true dholes, but to my thinking too 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, biting the foot of the tree.
“Nay, but consider, wise rat of 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 ye very wise.”
He moved monkey-fashion into the next tree, and so on and 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 in 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 will follow to the death.”
“Take thy tail,” said Mowgli, flinging it back along the course he had taken. The pack naturally rushed back a little when they smelt the blood. “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 lives. 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 had them to play with as he pleased. All his trouble was to keep them sufficiently hot behind him to prevent them turning off too soon. He ran cleanly, evenly, and springily, the tailless leader not five yards behind him, and the pack stringing 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 footfalls 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 below, 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 Wainganga 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 on his body, for the smell of the garlic had checked the Little People for just the few seconds that carried him across the rocks. 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, and as each 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 thunder—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 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 Wainganga 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 with the knife in his 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. They are unhurt.”
“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 hunting. Hear them howl!”
Nearly half the pack had seen the trap their fellows rushed into, and, turning sharp aside, had flung themselves into the water where the gorge broke down in steep banks. Their cries of rage and their threats against the “tree-ape” who had brought them to their shame mixed with the yells and growls of those who had been punished by the Little People. To remain ashore was death, and every dhole knew it. The pack was swept along the current, down and down to the rocks of the Peace Pool, but even there the angry Little People followed and forced them to the water again. Mowgli could hear the voice of the tailless leader bidding his people hold on and kill out every wolf in Seeonee. But he did not waste his time in listening.
“One kills in the dark behind us!” snapped a dhole. “Here is tainted water!”
Mowgli had dived forward like an otter, twitched a struggling dhole under water before he could open his mouth, and dark, oily rings rose in the Peace Pool as the body plopped up, turning on its side. The dholes tried to turn, but the current forced them by, and the Little People darted at their heads and ears, and they could hear the challenge of the Seeonee Pack growing louder and deeper in the gathering darkness ahead. Again Mowgli dived, and again a dhole went under and rose dead, and again the clamour broke out at the re
ar of the pack, some howling that it was best to go ashore, others calling on their leader to lead them back to the Dekkan, and others bidding Mowgli show himself and be killed.
“They come to the fight with two stomachs and many voices,” said Kaa. “The rest is with thy brethren below yonder. The Little People go back to sleep, and I will turn also. I do not help wolves.”
A wolf came running along the bank on three legs, leaping up and down, laying his head sideways close to the ground, hunching his back, and breaking a couple of feet into the air, as though he were playing with his cubs. It was Won-tolla the Outlier and he said never a word, but continued his horrible sport beside the dholes. They had been long in the water now, and were swimming laboriously, their coats drenched and heavy, and their bushy tails dragging like sponges, so tired and shaken that they, too, were silent, watching the pair of blazing eyes that moved abreast of them.
“This is no good hunting,” said one at last.
“Good hunting!” said Mowgli as he rose boldly at the brute’s side and sent the long knife home behind the shoulder, pushing hard to avoid the dying snap.
“Art thou there, man-cub?” said Won-tolla, from the bank.
“Ask of the dead, Outlier,” Mowgli replied. “Have none come down-stream? I have filled these dogs’ mouths with dirt. I have tricked them in the broad daylight, and their leader lacks his tail, but here be some few for thee still. Whither shall I drive them?”
“I will wait,” said Won-tolla. “The long night is before me, and I shall see well.”
Nearer and nearer came the bay of the Seeonee wolves. “For the pack, for the full pack it is met!” And a bend in the river drove the dholes forward among the sands and shoals opposite the Seeonee lairs.
Then they saw their mistake. They should have landed half a mile higher up and rushed the wolves on dry ground. Now it was too late. The bank was lined with burning eyes, and except for the horrible Pheeal cry that had never stopped since sundown there was no sound in the jungle. It seemed as though Won-tolla was fawning on them to come ashore; and “Turn and take hold!” said the leader of the dholes. The entire pack flung themselves at the shore, threshing and squattering through the shoal water till the face of the Wainganga was all white and torn, and the great ripples went from side to side like bow-waves from a boat. Mowgli followed the rush, stabbing and slicing as the dholes, huddled together, rushed up the river-beach in a wave.
Then the long fight began, heaving and straining and splitting and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red wet sands, and over and between the tangled tree-roots, and through and among the bushes, and in and out of the grass clumps, for even now the dholes were two to one. But they met wolves fighting for all that made the pack, and not only the short, deep-chested white-tusked hunters of the pack, but the wild-eyed lahinis—the she-wolves of the lair, as the saying is—fighting for their litters, with here and there a yearling wolf, his first coat still half woolly, tugging and grappling by their sides. A wolf, you must know, flies at the throat or snaps at the flank, while a dhole by preference bites low, so when the dholes were struggling out of the water and had to raise their heads the odds were with the wolves; on dry land the wolves suffered, but in the water or on land Mowgli’s knife came and went the same. The Four had worked their way to his aid. Grey Brother, crouched between the boy’s knees, protected his stomach, while the others guarded his back and either side, or stood over him when the shock of a leaping, yelling dhole who had thrown himself 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 dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling cub would be held up by the pressure round him, though he had been killed early in the fight, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage, rolled over snapping and passing on; and in the middle of the thickest fight, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole, forgetting everything else, would be manoeuvring for first hold till they were swept away by a rush of yelling 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 Phaon, 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 wearied and afraid to attack the stronger wolves, though they did not yet dare to run away, but Mowgli felt that the end was coming soon, and contented himself with striking to cripple. The yearlings were growing bolder; there was time to breathe; and now the mere flicker of the knife would sometimes turn a dhole aside.
“The meat is very near the bone,” Grey Brother gasped. He was bleeding from a score of flesh-wounds.
“But the bone is yet to be cracked,” said Mowgli. “Aowawa! 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,” Mowgli cried, 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 also kills the lair-father, and it is in my stomach that this lair-father 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 chest, and Grey 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 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 Grey Brother, “and Akela too is silent, this long time.”
“The bone is cracked!” thundered Phao, son of Phaon. “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,” coughed Akela.
“Nay, nay, I am a wolf. I am of one skin with the Free People,” Mowgli cried. “It is no will of mine that I am a man.”
“Thou art a man, Little Brother, wolfling of my watching. Thou art all a man, or else the pack had fled before the dhole. My life I owe to thee, and to-day thou hast saved the pack even as once I saved thee. Hast thou forgotten?
All debts are paid now. Go to thine own people. I tell thee again, eye of my eye, this hunting is ended. Go to thine own people.”
“I will never go. I will hunt alone in the jungle. I have said it.”
“After the summer come the rains, and after the rains come the spring. Go back before thou art driven.”
“Who will drive me?”
“Mowgli will drive Mowgli. Go back to thy people. Go to Man.”
“When Mowgli drives Mowgli I will go,” Mowgli answered.
“There is no more for thee,” said Akela. “Now I would speak to my kind. Little Brother, canst thou raise me to my feet? I also am a leader of the Free People.”
Very carefully and gently Mowgli raised Akela to his feet, both arms round him, and the Lone Wolf drew a deep breath and began the Death-Song that a leader of the pack should sing when he dies. It gathered strength as he went on, lifting and lifting and ringing far across the river, till it came to the last “Good hunting!” and Akela shook himself clear of Mowgli for an instant, and leaping into the air, fell backwards dead upon his last and most terrible kill.
Mowgli sat with his head on his knees, careless of anything else, while the last of the dying dholes were being overtaken and run down by the merciless lahinis. Little by little the cries died away, and the wolves came back limping as their wounds stiffened to take stock of the dead. Fifteen of the pack, as well as half a dozen lahinis, were dead by the river, and of the others not one was unmarked. Mowgli sat through it all till the cold daybreak, when Phao’s wet red muzzle was dropped in his hand, and Mowgli drew back to show the gaunt body of Akela.
“Good hunting!” said Phao, as though Akela were still alive, and then over his bitten shoulder to the others: “Howl, dogs! A wolf has died to-night!”
The Jungle Books Page 32