So he ran, sometimes shouting, sometimes singing to himself, the happiest thing in all the Jungle that night, till the smell of the flowers warned him that he was near the marshes, and those lay far beyond his farthest hunting-grounds. Here, again, a man-trained man would have sunk overhead in three strides, but Mowgli’s feet had eyes in them, and they passed him from tussock to tussock and clump to quaking clump without asking help from the eyes in his head. He ran out to the middle of the swamp, disturbing the duck as he ran, and sat down on a moss-coated tree-trunk lapped in the black water. The marsh was awake all round him, for in the spring the Bird People sleep very lightly, and companies of them were coming or going the night through. But no one took any notice of Mowgli sitting among the tall reeds humming songs without words, and looking at the soles of his hard brown feet in case of neglected thorns. All his unhappiness seemed to have been left behind in his own Jungle, and he was just beginning a full-throat song when it came back again--ten times worse than before. This time Mowgli was frightened. “It is here also!” he said half aloud. “It has followed me,” and he looked over his shoulder to see whether the It were not standing behind him. “There is no one here.” The night noises of the marsh went on, but never a bird or beast spoke to him, and the new feeling of misery grew. “I have surely eaten poison,” he said in an awe-stricken voice. “It must be that carelessly I have eaten poison, and my strength is going from me. I was afraid--and yet it was not _I_ that was afraid--Mowgli was afraid when the two wolves fought. Akela, or even Phao, would have silenced them; yet Mowgli was afraid. That is true sign I have eaten poison.... But what do they care in the Jungle? They sing and howl and fight, and run in companies under the moon, and I--Hai-mai!--I am dying in the marshes, of that poison which I have eaten.” He was so sorry for himself that he nearly wept. “And after,” he went on, “they will find me lying in the black water. Nay, I will go back to my own Jungle, and I will die upon the Council Rock, and Bagheera, whom I love, if he is not screaming in the valley--Bagheera, perhaps, may watch by what is left for a little, lest Chil use me as he used Akela.” A large, warm tear splashed down on his knee, and, miserable as he was, Mowgli felt happy that he was so miserable, if you can understand that upside-down sort of happiness. “As Chil the Kite used Akela,” he repeated, “on the night I saved the Pack from Red Dog.” He was quiet for a little, thinking of the last words of the Lone Wolf, which you, of course, remember. “Now Akela said to me many foolish things before he died, for when we die our stomachs change. He said... None the less, I AM of the Jungle!”