Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (389 page)

“Thy trail ends here, then, Manling?” said Kaa, as Mowgli threw himself down, his face in his hands. “Cry thy cry. We be of one blood, thou and I — man and snake together.”

“Why did I not die under Red Dog?” the boy moaned. “My strength is gone from me, and it is not any poison. By night and by day I hear a double step upon my trail. When I turn my head it is as though one had hidden himself from me that instant. I go to look behind the trees and he is not there. I call and none cry again; but it is as though one listened and kept back the answer. I lie down, but I do not rest. I run the spring running, but I am not made still. I bathe, but I am not made cool. The kill sickens me, but I have no heart to fight except I kill. The Red Flower is in my body, my bones are water — and — I know not what I know.”

“What need of talk?” said Baloo slowly, turning his head to where Mowgli lay. “Akela by the river said it, that Mowgli should drive Mowgli back to the Man-Pack. I said it. But who listens now to Baloo? Bagheera — where is Bagheera this night? — he knows also. It is the Law.”

“When we met at Cold Lairs, Manling, I knew it,” said Kaa, turning a little in his mighty coils. “Man goes to Man at the last, though the Jungle does not cast him out.”

The Four looked at one another and at Mowgli, puzzled but obedient.

“The Jungle does not cast me out, then?” Mowgli stammered.

Gray Brother and the Three growled furiously, beginning, “So long as we live none shall dare —  — ” But Baloo checked them.

“I taught thee the Law. It is for me to speak,” he said; “and, though I cannot now see the rocks before me, I see far. Little Frog, take thine own trail; make thy lair with thine own blood and pack and people; but when there is need of foot or tooth or eye, or a word carried swiftly by night, remember, Master of the Jungle, the Jungle is thine at call.”

“The Middle Jungle is thine also,” said Kaa. “I speak for no small people.”

“Hai-mai, my brothers,” cried Mowgli, throwing up his arms with a sob. “I know not what I know! I would not go; but I am drawn by both feet. How shall I leave these nights?”

“Nay, look up, Little Brother,” Baloo repeated. “There is no shame in this hunting. When the honey is eaten we leave the empty hive.”

“Having cast the skin,” said Kaa, “we may not creep into it afresh. It is the Law.”

“Listen, dearest of all to me,” said Baloo. There is neither word nor will here to hold thee back. Look up! Who may question the Master of the Jungle? I saw thee playing among the white pebbles yonder when thou wast a little frog; and Bagheera, that bought thee for the price of a young bull newly killed, saw thee also. Of that Looking Over we two only remain; for Raksha, thy lair-mother, is dead with thy lair-father; the old Wolf-Pack is long since dead; thou knowest whither Shere Khan went, and Akela died among the dholes, where, but for thy wisdom and strength, the second Seeonee Pack would also have died. There remains nothing but old bones. It is no longer the Man-cub that asks leave of his Pack, but the Master of the Jungle that changes his trail. Who shall question Man in his ways?”

“But Bagheera and the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli. “I would not —  — ”

His words were cut short by a roar and a crash in the thicket below, and Bagheera, light, strong, and terrible as always, stood before him.

“Therefore,” he said, stretching out a dripping right paw, “I did not come. It was a long hunt, but he lies dead in the bushes now — a bull in his second year — the Bull that frees thee, Little Brother. All debts are paid now. For the rest, my word is Baloo’s word.” He licked Mowgli’s foot. “Remember, Bagheera loved thee,” he cried, and bounded away. At the foot of the hill he cried again long and loud, “Good hunting on a new trail, Master of the Jungle! Remember, Bagheera loved thee.”

“Thou hast heard,” said Baloo. “There is no more. Go now; but first come to me. O wise Little Frog, come to me!”

“It is hard to cast the skin,” said Kaa as Mowgli sobbed and sobbed, with his head on the blind bear’s side and his arms round his neck, while Baloo tried feebly to lick his feet.

“The stars are thin,” said Gray Brother, snuffing at the dawn wind. “Where shall we lair to-day? for from now, we follow new trails.”

And this is the last of the Mowgli stories.

THE OUTSONG

[This is the song that Mowgli heard behind him in the Jungle till he came to Messua’s door again.]

     Baloo

     For the sake of him who showed

     One wise Frog the Jungle-Road,

     Keep the Law the Man-Pack make —

     For thy blind old Baloo’s sake!

     Clean or tainted, hot or stale,

     Hold it as it were the Trail,

     Through the day and through the night,

     Questing neither left nor right.

     For the sake of him who loves

     Thee beyond all else that moves,

     When thy Pack would make thee pain,

     Say: “Tabaqui sings again.”

     When thy Pack would work thee ill,

     Say: “Shere Khan is yet to kill.”

     When the knife is drawn to slay,

     Keep the Law and go thy way.

     (Root and honey, palm and spathe,

     Guard a cub from harm and scathe!)

     Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,

     Jungle-Favour go with thee!

     Kaa

     Anger is the egg of Fear —

     Only lidless eyes are clear.

     Cobra-poison none may leech.

     Even so with Cobra-speech.

     Open talk shall call to thee

     Strength, whose mate is Courtesy.

     Send no lunge beyond thy length;

     Lend no rotten bough thy strength.

     Gauge thy gape with buck or goat,

     Lest thine eye should choke thy throat,

     After gorging, wouldst thou sleep?

     Look thy den is hid and deep,

     Lest a wrong, by thee forgot,

     Draw thy killer to the spot.

     East and West and North and South,

     Wash thy hide and close thy mouth.

     (Pit and rift and blue pool-brim,

     Middle-Jungle follow him!)

     Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,

     Jungle-Favour go with thee!

     Bagheera

     In the cage my life began;

     Well I know the worth of Man.

     By the Broken Lock that freed —

     Man-cub, ‘ware the Man-cub’s breed!

     Scenting-dew or starlight pale,

     Choose no tangled tree-cat trail.

     Pack or council, hunt or den,

     Cry no truce with Jackal-Men.

     Feed them silence when they say:

     “Come with us an easy way.”

     Feed them silence when they seek

     Help of thine to hurt the weak.

     Make no banaar’s boast of skill;

     Hold thy peace above the kill.

     Let nor call nor song nor sign

     Turn thee from thy hunting-line.

     (Morning mist or twilight clear,

     Serve him, Wardens of the Deer!)

     Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,

     Jungle-Favour go with thee!

     The Three

     On the trail that thou must tread

     To the thresholds of our dread,

     Where the Flower blossoms red;

     Through the nights when thou shalt lie

     Prisoned from our Mother-sky,

     Hearing us, thy loves, go by;

     In the dawns when thou shalt wake

     To the toil thou canst not break,

     Heartsick for the Jungle’s sake:

     Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,

     Wisdom, Strength, and Courtesy,

     Jungle-Favour go with thee!

THE DAY’S WORK

This collection of short stories was first published in 1898.

The first edition

CONTENTS

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

A WALKING DELEGATE

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR: PART I

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR: PART II

THE MALTESE CAT

“BREAD UPON THE WATERS”

AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION

MY SUNDAY AT HOME

THE BRUSHWOOD BOY

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was a C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him that he deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his charge. Now, in less than three months, if all went well, his Excellency the Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it, and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and there would be speeches.

Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran along one of the main revetments — the huge stone-faced banks that flared away north and south for three miles on either side of the river — and permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters fin length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick pies. Each one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges’ bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At either end rose towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers’ sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale yellow in the sun’s glare. East and west and north and south the construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand tons more material were flung out to hold the river in place.