"Sssh!" said Kaa, as though he had suddenly remembered something. "So the Jungle gives thee all that thou hast ever desired, Little Brother?" "Not all," said Mowgli, laughing; "else there would be a new and strong Shere Khan to kill once a moon. Now, I could kill with my own hands, asking no help of buffaloes. And also I have wished the sun to shine in the middle of the Rains, and the Rains to cover the sun in the deep of summer; and also I have never gone empty but I wished that I had killed a goat; and also I have never killed a goat but I wished it had been buck; nor buck but I wished it had been nilghai. But thus do we feel, all of us." "Thou hast no other desire?" the big snake demanded. "What more can I wish? I have the Jungle, and the favor of the Jungle! Is there more anywhere between sunrise and sunset?" "Now, the Cobra said--" Kaa began. "What cobra? He that went away just now said nothing. He was hunting." "It was another." "Hast thou many dealings with the Poison People? I give them their own path. They carry death in the fore-tooth, and that is not good--for they are so small. But what hood is this thou hast spoken with?" Kaa rolled slowly in the water like a steamer in a beam sea. "Three or four moons since," said he, "I hunted in Cold Lairs, which place thou hast not forgotten. And the thing I hunted fled shrieking past the tanks and to that house whose side I once broke for thy sake, and ran into the ground." "But the people of Cold Lairs do not live in burrows." Mowgli knew that Kaa was talking of the Monkey People. "This thing was not living, but seeking to live," Kaa replied, with a quiver of his tongue. "He ran into a burrow that led very far. I followed, and having killed, I slept. When I waked I went forward." "Under the earth?" "Even so, coming at last upon a White Hood [a white cobra], who spoke of things beyond my knowledge, and showed me many things I had never before seen." "New game? Was it good hunting?" Mowgli turned quickly on his side. "It was no game, and would have broken all my teeth; but the White Hood said that a man--he spoke as one that knew the breed--that a man would give the breath under his ribs for only the sight of those things." "We will look," said Mowgli. "I now remember that I was once a man." "Slowly--slowly. It was haste killed the Yellow Snake that ate the sun. We two spoke together under the earth, and I spoke of thee, naming thee as a man. Said the White Hood (and he is indeed as old as the Jungle): 'It is long since I have seen a man. Let him come, and he shall see all these things, for the least of which very many men would die.'" "That _must_ be new game. And yet the Poison People do not tell us when game is afoot. They are an unfriendly folk." "It is _not_ game. It is--it is--I cannot say what it is." "We will go there. I have never seen a White Hood, and I wish to see the other things. Did he kill them?"