Mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his courage, because no one cared to address Hathi directly, and then he cried: "What is Shere Khan's right, O Hathi?" Both banks echoed his words, for all the People of the Jungle are intensely curious, and they had just seen something that none, except Baloo, who looked very thoughtful, seemed to understand. "It is an old tale," said Hathi; "a tale older than the Jungle. Keep silence along the banks, and I will tell that tale." There was a minute or two of pushing and shouldering among the pigs and the buffalo, and then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after another, "We wait," and Hathi strode forward till he was nearly knee-deep in the pool by the Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and yellow-tusked though he was, he looked what the Jungle knew him to be--their master. "Ye know, children," he began, "that of all things ye most fear Man"; and there was a mutter of agreement. "This tale touches thee, Little Brother," said Bagheera to Mowgli. "I? I am of the Pack--a hunter of the Free People," Mowgli answered. "What have I to do with Man?" "And ye do not know why ye fear Man?" Hathi went on. "This is the reason. In the beginning of the Jungle, and none know when that was, we of the Jungle walked together, having no fear of one another. In those days there was no drought, and leaves and flowers and fruit grew on the same tree, and we ate nothing at all except leaves and flowers and grass and fruit and bark." "I am glad I was not born in those days," said Bagheera. "Bark is only good to sharpen claws." "And the Lord of the Jungle was Tha, the First of the Elephants. He drew the Jungle out of deep waters with his trunk; and where he made furrows in the ground with his tusks, there the rivers ran; and where he struck with his foot, there rose ponds of good water; and when he blew through his trunk,--thus,--the trees fell. That was the manner in which the Jungle was made by Tha; and so the tale was told to me." "It has not lost fat in the telling," Bagheera whispered, and Mowgli laughed behind his hand.