The Second Jungle Book Part 4

"It is our Bhagat," said the blacksmith's wife. "He stands among his beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call."

It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow way, surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently.

The people hurried into the street--they were no more than seventy souls all told--and in the glare of the torches they saw their Bhagat holding back the terrified _barasingh_, while the monkeys plucked piteously at his skirts, and Sona sat on his haunches and roared.

"Across the valley and up the next hill!" shouted Purun Bhagat. "Leave none behind! We follow!"

Then the people ran as only Hill folk can run, for they knew that in a landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. They fled, splas.h.i.+ng through the little river at the bottom, and panted up the terraced fields on the far side, while the Bhagat and his brethren followed. Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to each other by name--the roll-call of the village--and at their heels toiled the big _barasingh_, weighted by the failing strength of Purun Bhagat. At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pine-wood, five hundred feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him of the coming slide, told him he would be safe here.

Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain and that fierce climb were killing him; but first he called to the scattered torches ahead, "Stay and count your numbers"; then, whispering to the deer as he saw the lights gather in a cl.u.s.ter: "Stay with me, Brother. Stay--till--I--go!"

There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a roar that pa.s.sed all sense of hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was. .h.i.t in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of the rain falling on miles of hard ground and gra.s.s changed to the m.u.f.fled drum of water on soft earth. That told its own tale.

Never a villager--not even the priest--was bold enough to speak to the Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the pines and waited till the day. When it came they looked across the valley and saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of their refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-colored lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was not trace. For one mile in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.

And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before their Bhagat. They saw the _barasingh_ standing over him, who fled when they came near, and they heard the _langurs_ wailing in the branches, and Sona moaning up the hill; but their Bhagat was dead, sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the northeast.

The priest said: "Behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this very att.i.tude must all Sunnyasis be buried! Therefore where he now is we will build the temple to our holy man."

They built the temple before a year was ended--a little stone-and-earth shrine--and they called the hill the Bhagat's Hill, and they wors.h.i.+p there with lights and flowers and offerings to this day. But they do not know that the saint of their wors.h.i.+p is the late Sir Purun Da.s.s, K.C.I.E., D.C.L., Ph.D., etc., once Prime Minister of the progressive and enlightened State of Mohiniwala, and honorary or corresponding member of more learned and scientific societies than will ever do any good in this world or the next.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A SONG OF KABIR

Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!

Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!

He has gone from the _guddee_ and put on the shroud, And departed in guise of _bairagi_ avowed!

Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet, The _sal_ and the _kikar_ must guard him from heat; His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd-- He is seeking the Way as _bairagi_ avowed!

He has looked upon Man, and his eyeb.a.l.l.s are clear (There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir); The Red Mist of Doing has thinned to a cloud-- He has taken the Path for _bairagi_ avowed!

To learn and discern of his brother the clod, Of his brother the brute, and his brother the G.o.d.

He has gone from the council and put on the shroud ("Can ye hear?" saith Kabir), a _bairagi_ avowed!

LETTING IN THE JUNGLE

Veil them, cover them, wall them round-- Blossom, and creeper, and weed-- Let us forget the sight and the sound, The smell and the touch of the breed!

Fat black ash by the altar-stone, Here is the white-foot rain, And the does bring forth in the fields unsown, And none shall affright them again; And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown And none shall inhabit again!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

LETTING IN THE JUNGLE

You will remember, if you have read the tales in the first Jungle Book, that, after Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan's hide to the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee Pack that henceforward he would hunt in the Jungle alone; and the four children of Mother and Father Wolf said that they would hunt with him. But it is not easy to change one's life all in a minute--particularly in the Jungle. The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night.

Then he told Mother Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and down the blade of his skinning-knife,--the same he had skinned Shere Khan with,--they said he had learned something. Then Akela and Gray Brother had to explain their share of the great buffalo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli had managed his war.

It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and from time to time, during the talk, Mother Wolf would throw up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.

"But for Akela and Gray Brother here," Mowgli said, at the end, "I could have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst seen the black herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the Man-Pack flung stones at me!"

"I am glad I did not see that last," said Mother Wolf, stiffly. "It is not _my_ custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals. _I_ would have taken a price from the Man-Pack; but I would have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes, I would have spared her alone."

"Peace, peace, Raksha!" said Father Wolf, lazily. "Our Frog has come back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Men alone." Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: "Leave Men alone."

Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf's side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again.

"But what," said Akela, c.o.c.king one ear--"but what if men do not leave thee alone, Little Brother?"

"We be _five_," said Gray Brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word.

"We also might attend to that hunting," said Bagheera, with a little _switch-switch_ of his tail, looking at Baloo. "But why think of men now, Akela?"

"For this reason," the Lone Wolf answered: "when that yellow thief's hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me. Said Mang, 'The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest.'"

"It was a big stone that I threw," chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him.

"I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now _I_ know, for I have good cause,"--Akela looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,--"that men do not carry guns for pleasure.

Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail--if, indeed, he be not already on it."

"But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?"

said Mowgli, angrily.

"Thou art a man, Little Brother," Akela returned. "It is not for _us_, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why."

He had just time to s.n.a.t.c.h up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow, but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on.

"Another time," Mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its sheath, "speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in _two_ breaths--not one."

"Phff! That is a sharp tooth," said Akela, snuffing at the blade's cut in the earth, "but living with the Man-Pack has spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking."

Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Gray Brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up wind, and, half crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously. He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose; and his three months in the smoky village had set him back sadly. However, he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect to catch the upper scent, which, though it is the faintest, is the truest.