The Jungle Books
Mowgli crawled out through the hole into the passage again, and the last that he saw was the white cobra striking furiously with his harmless fangs at the stolid golden faces of the gods that lay on the door, and hissing, “It is Death!”
They were glad to get to the light of day once more. And when they were back in their own jungle and Mowgli made the ankus glitter in the morning light, he was almost as pleased as though he had found a bunch of new flowers to stick in his hair.
“This is brighter than Bagheera’s eyes,” he said delightedly, as he twirled the ruby. “I will show it to him. But what did the Thuu mean when he talked of death?”
“I cannot say. I am sorrowful to my tail’s tail that he felt not thy knife. There is always evil at the Cold Lairs—above ground and below. But now I am hungry. Dost thou hunt with me this dawn?” said Kaa.
“No, Bagheera must see this thing. Good hunting!” Mowgli danced off, flourishing the great ankus, and stopping from time to time to admire it, till he came to that part of the jungle Bagheera chiefly used, and found him drinking after a heavy kill. Mowgli told him all his adventures from beginning to end, and Bagheera sniffed at the ankus between whiles. When Mowgli came to the white cobra’s last words, Bagheera purred approvingly.
“Then the white hood spoke the thing which is?” Mowgli asked quickly.
“I was born in the king’s cages at Oodeypore, and it is in my stomach that I know some little of Man. Very many men would kill thrice in a night for the sake of that one red stone alone.”
“But the stone makes it heavy to the hand. My little bright knife is better, and— See! The red stone is not good to eat. Then why would they kill?”
“Mowgli, go thou and sleep. Thou hast lived among men, and—”
“I remember. Men kill because they are not hunting—for idleness and pleasure. Wake again, Bagheera. For what use was this thorn-pointed thing made?”
Bagheera half opened his eyes—he was very sleepy—with a malicious twinkle.
“It was made by men to thrust into the head of the sons of Hathi, so that the blood should pour out. I have seen the like in the streets of Oodeypore, before our cages. That thing has tasted the blood of many such as Hathi.”
“But why do they thrust into the heads of elephants?”
“To teach them Man’s Law. Having neither claws nor teeth, men make these things—and worse.”
“Always more blood when I come near, even to the things the man pack have made!” said Mowgli disgustedly. He was a little tired of the weight of the ankus. “If I had known this, I would not have taken it. First it was Messua’s blood on the thongs, and now it is Hathi’s. I will use it no more. Look!”
The ankus flew sparkling, and buried itself point down fifty yards away, between the trees. “So my hands are clean of Death,” said Mowgli, rubbing his hands on the fresh, moist earth. “The Thuu said Death would follow me. He is old and white and mad.”
“White or black, or death or life, I am going to sleep, Little Brother. I cannot hunt all night and howl all day, as do some folk.”
Bagheera went off to a hunting-lair that he knew, about two miles off. Mowgli made an easy way for himself up a convenient tree, knotted three or four creepers together, and in less time than it takes to tell was swinging in a hammock fifty feet above ground. Though he had no positive objection to strong daylight, Mowgli followed the custom of his friends, and used it as little as he could. When he waked among the very loud-voiced peoples that live in the trees, it was twilight once more, and he had been dreaming of the beautiful pebbles he had thrown away.
“At least I will look at the thing again,” he said, and slid down a creeper to the earth. But Bagheera was before him. Mowgli could hear him snuffing in the half light.
“Where is the thorn-pointed thing?” cried Mowgli.
“A man has taken it. Here is his trail.”
“Now we shall see whether the Thuu spoke truth. If the pointed thing is Death, that man will die. Let us follow.”
“Kill first,” said Bagheera. “An empty stomach makes a careless eye. Men go very slowly, and the jungle is wet enough to hold the lightest mark.”
They killed as soon as they could, but it was nearly three hours before they finished their meat and drink and buckled down to the trail. The Jungle-People know that nothing makes up for being hurried over your meals.
“Think you the pointed thing will turn in the man’s hand and kill him?” Mowgli asked. “The Thuu said it was Death.”
“We shall see when we find,” said Bagheera, trotting with his head low. “It is single-foot” [he meant that there was only one man], “and the weight of the thing has pressed his heel far into the ground.”
“Hai! This is as clear as summer lightning,” Mowgli answered, and they fell into the quick, choppy trail-trot in and out through the checkers of the moonlight, following the marks of those two bare feet.
“Now he runs swiftly,” said Mowgli. “The toes are spread apart.” They went on over some wet ground. “Now why does he turn aside here?”
“Wait!” said Bagheera, and flung himself forward with one superb bound as far as ever he could. The first thing to do when a trail ceases to explain itself is to cast forward without leaving your own confusing foot-marks on the ground. Bagheera turned as he landed, and faced Mowgli, crying: “Here comes another trail to meet him. It is a smaller foot, this second trail, and the toes turn inward.”
Then Mowgli ran up and looked. “It is the foot of a Gond hunter,” he said. “Look! Here he dragged his bow on the grass. That is why the first trail turned aside so quickly. Big Foot hid from Little Foot.”
“That is true,” said Bagheera. “Now, lest by crossing each other’s tracks we foul the signs, let each take one trail. I am Big Foot, Little Brother, and thou art Little Foot, the Gond.”
Bagheera leaped back to the original trail, leaving Mowgli stooping above the curious in-toed track of the wild little man of the woods.
“Now,” said Bagheera, moving step by step along the chain of footprints, “I, Big Foot, turn aside here. Now I hide me behind a rock and stand still, not daring to shift my feet. Cry thy trail, Little Brother.”
“Now I, Little Foot, come to the rock,” said Mowgli, running up his trail. “Now sit I down under the rock, leaning upon my right hand, and resting my bow between my toes. I wait long, for the mark of my feet is deep here.”
“I also,” said Bagheera, hidden behind the rock. “I wait, resting the end of the thorn-pointed thing upon a stone. It slips, for here is a scratch upon the stone. Cry thy trail, Little Brother.”
“One, two twigs and a big branch are broken here,” said Mowgli, in an undertone. “Now, how shall I cry that? Ah! It is plain now. I, Little Foot, go away making noises and tramplings so that Big Foot may hear me.” He moved away from the rock pace by pace among the trees, his voice rising in the distance as he approached a little cascade. “I—go—far—away—to—where—the—noise—of—falling—water—covers—my—noise. And—here—I—wait. Cry thy trail, Bagheera, Big Foot!”
The panther had been casting in every direction to see how Big Foot’s trail led away from behind the rock. Then he gave tongue.
“I come from behind the rock upon my knees, dragging the thorn-pointed thing. Seeing no one, I run. I, Big Foot, run swiftly. The trail is clear. Let each follow his own. I run!”
Bagheera swept on along the clearly marked trail, and Mowgli followed the steps of the Gond. For a time there was silence in the jungle.
“Where art thou, Little Foot?” cried Bagheera. Mowgli’s voice answered him not fifty yards to the right.
“Um!” said the panther, with a deep cough. “The two run side by side, drawing nearer!”
They raced on another half mile, always keeping about the same distance, till Mowgli, whose head was not so close to the ground as Bagheera’s, cried: “They have met. Good hunting—look! Here stood Little Foot, with his knee on a rock—and yonder is Big Foot.”
> Not ten yards in front of them, stretched across a pile of broken rocks, lay the body of a villager of the district, a lean, small-feathered Gond arrow through his back and breast.
“Was the Thuu so old and so mad, Little Brother?” said Bagheera, gently. “Here is one death, at least.”
“Follow on. But where is the drinker of elephant’s blood—the red-eyed thorn?”
“Little Foot has it—perhaps. It is single-foot again now.”
The single trail of a light man who had been running quickly and bearing a burden on his left shoulder held on round a long, low spur of dried grass, where each footfall seemed to the sharp eyes of the trackers marked in hot iron.
Neither spoke till the trail ran up to the ashes of a camp-fire hidden in a ravine.
“Again!” said Bagheera, checking as though he had been turned into stone.
The body of a little wizened Gond lay with its feet in the ashes, and Bagheera looked enquiringly at Mowgli.
“That was done with a bamboo,” said the boy, after one glance. “I have used such a thing among the buffaloes when I served the man pack. The Father of Cobras—I am sorrowful that I made a jest of him—knew the breed well, as I might have known. Said I not that men kill for idleness?”
“Indeed, they killed for the sake of red and blue stones,” Bagheera answered. “Remember, I was in the king’s cages at Oodeypore.”
“One, two, three, four tracks,” said Mowgli, stooping over the ashes. “Four tracks of men with shod feet. They do not go so quickly as Gonds. Now, what evil had the little woodman done to them? See, they talked together, all five, standing up, before they killed him. Bagheera, let us go back. My stomach is heavy in me, and yet it dances up and down like an oriole’s nest at the end of a branch.”
“It is no good hunting to leave game afoot. Follow!” said the panther. “Those eight shod feet have not gone far.”
No more was said for fully an hour, as they took up the broad trail of the four men with shod feet.
It was clear, hot daylight now, and Bagheera said: “I smell smoke.”
“Men are always more ready to eat than to run,” Mowgli answered, trotting in and out between the low scrub bushes of the new jungle they were exploring. Bagheera, a little to his left, made an indescribable noise in his throat.
“Here is one that is done with feeding,” said he. A tumbled bundle of gay-coloured clothes lay under a bush, and round it was some spilt flour.
“That was done by the bamboo again,” said Mowgli. “See! That white dust is what men eat. They have taken the kill from this one—he carried their food—and given him for a kill to Chil the Kite.”
“It is the third,” said Bagheera.
“I will go with new, big frogs to the Father of Cobras, and feed him fat,” said Mowgli to himself. “This drinker of elephant’s blood is Death himself—but still I do not understand!”
“Follow!” said Bagheera.
They had not gone half a mile farther when they heard Ko the Crow singing a death-song in the top of a tamarisk under whose shade three men were lying. A half-dead fire smoked in the centre of the circle, beneath an iron plate which held a blackened and burned cake of unleavened bread. Close to the fire, and blazing in the sunshine, lay the ruby-and-turquoise ankus.
THE SONG OF THE LITTLE HUNTER
Ere Mor the Peacock flutters, ere the Monkey-People cry,
Ere Chil the Kite swoops down a furlong sheer,
Through the jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh—
He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!
Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade,
And the whisper spreads and widens far and near,
And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now—
He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!
Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light,
When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear,
Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the night—
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go;
In the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear;
But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy cheek—
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
When the heat-cloud sucks the tempest, when the slivered pine trees fall,
When the blinding, blaring rain-squalls lash and veer;
Through the trumpets of the thunder rings a voice more loud than all—
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
Now the spates are banked and deep; now the footless boulders leap;
Now the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear,
But thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against thy side
Hammers: Fear, O Little Hunter—this is Fear!
QUIQUERN
The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow—
They beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go.
The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight—
They sell their furs to the trading-post; they sell their soul to the white.
The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler’s crew;
Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few.
But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man’s ken—
Their spears are made of the narwhal horn, and they are the last of the Men.
Translation
“HE has opened his eyes. Look!”
“Put him in the skin again. He will be a strong dog. On the fourth month we will name him.”
“For whom?” said Amoraq.
Kadlu’s eye rolled round the skin-lined snow-house till it came to fourteen-year-old Kotuko sitting on the sleeping-bench, making a button out of walrus ivory. “Name him for me,” said Kotuko, with a grin. “I shall need him some one day.”
Kadlu grinned back till his eyes were almost buried in the fat of his flat cheeks, and nodded to Amoraq, while the puppy’s fierce mother whined to see her baby wriggling far from reach in the little sealskin pouch hung above the warmth of the blubber-lamp. Kotuko went on with his carving, and Kadlu threw a rolled bundle of leather dog-harnesses into a tiny little room that opened from one side of the house, slipped off his heavy deerskin hunting-suit, put it into a whalebone net that hung above another lamp, and dropped down on the sleeping-bench to whittle at a piece of frozen seal-meat till Amoraq, his wife, should bring the regular dinner of boiled meat and blood-soup. He had been out since early dawn at the seal-holes eight miles away, and had come home with three big seal. Half-way down the long low snow passage or tunnel that led to the inner door of the house you could hear snappings and yelpings, as the dogs of his sleigh-team, released from the day’s work, scuffled for warm places.
When the yelpings grew too loud Kotuko lazily rolled off the sleeping-bench and picked up a whip with an eighteen-inch handle of springy whalebone, and twenty-five feet of heavy plaited thong. He dived into the passage, where it sounded as though all the dogs were eating him alive, but that was no more than their regular grace before meals. When he crawled out at the far end, half a dozen furry heads followed him with their eyes as he went to a sort of gallows of whale jawbones, from which the dog’s meat was hung, split off the frozen stuff in big lumps with a broad-headed spear, and waited, his whip in one hand and the meat in the other. Each beast was called by name—the weakest first, and woe betide any dog that moved out of his turn, for the tapering lash would shoot out like thonged lightning and flick away an inch or so of hair and hide. Each beast simply growled, snapped once, choked over his portion, and hurried back to the passage, while the boy stood up on the snow under the blazing Northern Lights and dealt out justice. The last to be served was the big black leader of the team, who kept order when the dogs were harnessed, and to him Kotuko
gave a double allowance of meat as well as an extra crack of the whip.
“Ah!” said Kotuko, coiling up the lash, “I have a little one over the lamp that will make a great many howlings. Sarpok! Get in!”
He crawled back over the huddled dogs, dusted the dry snow from his furs with the whalebone beater that Amoraq kept by the door, tapped the skin-lined roof of the house to shake off any icicles that might have fallen from the dome of snow above, and curled up on the bench. The dogs in the passage snored and whined in their sleep, the boy-baby in Amoraq’s deep fur hood kicked and choked and gurgled, and the mother of the newly named puppy lay at Kotuko’s side, her eyes fixed on the bundle of sealskin, warm and safe above the broad yellow flame of the lamp.
And all this happened far away to the north, beyond Labrador, beyond Hudson Strait where the great tides throw the ice about—north of Melville Peninsula—north even of the narrow Fury and Hecla Strait—on the north shore of Baffin Land where Bylot Island stands above the ice of Lancaster Sound like a pudding-bowl wrong side up. North of Lancaster Sound there is little we know anything about, except North Devon and Ellesmere Land, but even there live a few scattered people, next door, as it were, to the very Pole.
Kadlu was an Innuit—what you call an Esquimau—and his tribe, some thirty persons, all told, belonged to the Tununirmiut—“the country lying at the back of something.” On the maps that desolate coast is written Navy Board Inlet, but the Innuit name is best because that country lies at the very back of everything in the world. For nine months of the year there is only ice and snow and gale after gale, with a cold no one can realise who has never seen the thermometer go down even to zero. For six months of those nine it is dark, and that is what makes it so horrible. In the three months of summer it only freezes every other day and every night, and then the snow begins to weep away from the southerly slopes, and a few ground-willows put out their woolly buds, a tiny stonecrop or so makes believe to blossom, beaches of fine gravel and rounded stones run down to the open sea, and polished boulders and streaked rocks lift up above the granulated snow. But all that goes in a few weeks, and the wild winter locks down again on the land, while at sea the ice tears up and down the offing, jamming and ramming, and splitting and hitting, and pounding and grounding till it all freezes together, ten feet thick, from the shore outward to deep water.