"What says he? What says he? What says he?" the wolves repeated every
few minutes; and Mowgli translated until he came to the witch part of
the story, which was a little beyond him, and then he said that the
man and woman who had been so kind to him were trapped.
"Does Man trap Man?" said Bagheera.
"So he says. I cannot understand the talk. They are all mad together.
What have Messua and her man to do with me that they should be put in
a trap; and what is all this talk about the Red Flower? I must look to
this. Whatever they would do to Messua they will not do till Buldeo
returns. And so--" Mowgli thought hard, with his fingers playing round
the haft of the skinning-knife, while Buldeo and the charcoal-burners
went off very valiantly in single file.
"I am going hot-foot back to the Man-Pack," Mowgli said at last.
"And those?" said Gray Brother, looking hungrily after the brown backs
of the charcoal-burners.
"Sing them home," said Mowgli with a grin; "I do not wish them to be
at the village gates till it is dark. Can ye hold them?"
Gray Brother bared his white teeth in contempt. "We can head them
round and round in circles like tethered goats--if I know Man."
"That I do not need. Sing to them a little, lest they be lonely on the
road, and, Gray Brother, the song need not be of the sweetest. Go with
them, Bagheera, and help make that song. When the night is shut down,
meet me by the village--Gray Brother knows the place."
"It is no light hunting to work for a Man-cub. When shall I sleep?"
said Bagheera, yawning, though his eyes showed that he was delighted
with the amusement. "Me to sing to naked men! But let us try."
He lowered his head so that the sound would travel, and cried a long,
long, "Good hunting"--a midnight call in the afternoon, which was
quite awful enough to begin with. Mowgli heard it rumble, and rise,
and fall, and die off in a creepy sort of whine behind him, and
laughed to himself as he ran through the Jungle. He could see the
charcoal-burners huddled in a knot; old Buldeo's gun-barrel waving,
like a banana-leaf, to every point of the compass at once. Then Gray
Brother gave the _Ya-la-hi! Yalaha!_ call for the buck-driving, when
the Pack drives the nilghai, the big blue cow, before them, and it
seemed to come from the very ends of the earth, nearer, and nearer,
and nearer, till it ended in a shriek snapped off short. The other
three answered, till even Mowgli could have vowed that the full Pack
was in full cry, and then they all broke into the magnificent
Morning-song in the Jungle, with every turn, and flourish, and
grace-note, that a deep-mouthed wolf of the Pack knows. This is a
rough rendering of the song, but you must imagine what it sounds like
when it breaks the afternoon hush of the Jungle:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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