Now Chil the Kite brings home
the night
That Mang the Bat sets free—
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh hear the call!—Good hunting
all
That keep the Jungle Law!
Night-Song
in the Jungle.
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening
in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from
his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and
spread out his paws one after the other to get rid
of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf
lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four
tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the
mouth of the cave where they all lived. ‘Augrh!’
said Father Wolf, ‘it is time to hunt again’;
and he was going to spring down hill when a little
shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and
whined: ’Good luck go with you, O Chief
of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth
go with the noble children, that they may never forget
the hungry in this world.’
It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and
the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs
about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating
rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps.
But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more
than any one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad,
and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any
one, and runs through the forest biting everything
in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when
little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful
thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call
it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee—the
madness—and run.
‘Enter, then, and look,’ said Father Wolf,
stiffly; ’but there is no food here.’
‘For a wolf, no,’ said Tabaqui; ’but
for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good
feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal
people], to pick and choose?’ He scuttled to
the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a
buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end
merrily.
‘All thanks for this good meal,’ he said,
licking his lips. ’How beautiful are the
noble children! How large are their eyes!
And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have
remembered that the children of kings are men from
the beginning.’
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any one else that there
is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to
their faces; and it pleased him to see Mother and
Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that
he had made, and then he said spitefully:
’Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting-grounds.
He will hunt among these hills for the next moon,
so he has told me.’
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga
River, twenty miles away.
