The Jungle Book

, and it is un­sports­man­like to touch him. They say too—and it is true—that man-eaters be­come mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated “Aaarh!” of the tiger’s charge.
Then there was a howl—an untiger­ish howl—from Shere Khan. “He has missed,” said Mother Wolf. “What is it?”
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan mut­ter­ing and mum­bling sav­agely, as he tum­bled about in the scrub.
“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a wood­cut­ters’ camp­fi

Then more than half the Pack yelled: “A man—a man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.”

“And turn all the peo­ple of the vil­lages against us?” snarled Shere Khan. “No; give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him be­tween the eyes.”

There was a long hush, for no sin­gle wolf cared to fight Akela to the death. Then Shere Khan roared: “Bah! What have we to do with this tooth­less fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free Peo­ple, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has trou­bled the jun­gle for ten sea­sons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here al­ways, and not give you one bone! He is a man—a man’s child, and from the mar­row of my bones I hate him!”

Akela raised his old head wearily:

“Free Peo­ple, and ye too, jack­als of Shere Khan, for twelve sea­sons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an un­tried buck to make my weak­ness known. It was clev­erly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Coun­cil Rock now. There­fore I ask, ‘Who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf?’ For it is my right, by the Law of the Jun­gle, that ye come one by one.”

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule.

Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the fire-pot was be­tween Mowgli’s knees. When they were all gath­ered to­gether, Shere Khan be­gan to speak—a thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.

But no sooner had he walked to the city wall than the mon­keys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinch­ing him to make him grate­ful. He set his teeth and said noth­ing, but went with the shout­ing mon­keys to a ter­race above the red sand­stone reser­voirs that were half full of rain­wa­ter. There was a ru­ined sum­mer­house of white mar­ble in the cen­ter of the ter­race, built for queens dead a hun­dred years ago. The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the un­der­ground pas­sage from the palace by which the queens used to en­ter; but the walls were made of screens of mar­ble trac­ery—beau­ti­ful, milk-white fret­work, set with agates and cor­nelians and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up be­hind the hill it shone through the open­work, cast­ing shad­ows on the ground like black-vel­vet em­broi­dery.

It 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 the tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray 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 down­hill 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.”

I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be en­tered with the oth­ers. I my­self will teach him.”

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. They are afraid of him too, be­cause Tabaqui, more than any­one else in the jun­gle, is apt to go mad, and then he for­gets that he was ever afraid of any­one, and runs through the for­est bit­ing ev­ery­thing in his way. Even the tiger 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.