He moved, Bandar-log fashion, into the next tree, and so on into 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 at the death. It was a curious
sight--the boy with the knife that shone in the low sunlight as it
shifted 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 follow to the death."
"Take thy tail," said Mowgli, flinging it back along the course he had
taken. The Pack instinctively rushed after it. "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 runs. 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 held them to play with as
he pleased. All his trouble was to keep them sufficiently hot behind
him to prevent their turning off too soon. He ran cleanly, evenly,
and springily; the tailless leader not five yards behind him; and the
Pack tailing 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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