The Jungle Book Vol.1 (English)

The Jungle Book Vol.1

Le Livre de la Jungle Vol.1

(English)

Author: Rudyard Kipling 1894

Translator: Louis Fabulet 1924

Translator: Robert d’Humières 1924

Translator/Editor: Nik Marcel 2016

English translated from French.

Copyright © 2018 Nik Marcel

All rights reserved.

A Bilingual (Dual-Language) Project

2Language Books

The Jungle Book Vol.1

Mowgli’s Brothers

It was seven o’clock on a very warm evening in the hills of Seeonee.

Father Wolf woke up from his daily nap, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the feeling of lethargy.

Mother Wolf was stretched out and her little ones were rolling around and squealing.

The moon was shining through the mouth of the cave where they all lived.

“Augrh,” said Father Wolf, “it is time to get back to the hunt.”

And he was going to set forth towards the bottom of the valley when a little shadow with a bushy tail blocked the opening and yapped:

“Good luck, O Chief of the Wolves! And good luck and strong white teeth to the noble children. May they never forget those who are hungry!”

It was the jackal — Tabaqui, the Dish-licker —, and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he roams everywhere making mischief, circulating stories, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the rubbish heaps at the villages’ gates.

They are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, has a tendency to go mad.

Then, he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest, biting everything he finds on his way.

Even the tiger runs away and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild animal.

We call it rabies, but they call it ‘dewanee’ — the madness — and they run.

“Enter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf, stiffly; “but there is nothing to eat here.”

“For a wolf, no, certainly,” said Tabaqui; “but for me, being a thin fellow, a dry bone is a feast.

Who are we, those of the ‘Gidur-log’ — the Jackal People —, to pick and choose?”

He scuttled towards the back of the cave, found a dear bone with a little meat on it, sat down and cracked the end of it with delight.

“Thanks for this fine meal,” he said, licking his lips.

“How beautiful they are, the noble children! What large eyes! And yet so young!

Indeed, I should have remembered that the children of kings are masters from the cradle”

Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone that there is nothing more annoying than to praise children to their faces.

He took a perverse pleasure in seeing that Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.

Tabaqui sat for a moment, delighted with the trouble that he had just made, and then he said spitefully:

“Shere Khan, the Big One, has changed hunting grounds.

During the next moon, he is going to hunt among these hills. He told me himself.”

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga river, some twenty miles away.

“He does not have the right!” Father Wolf began angrily.

“According to the Law of the Jungle, he does not have the right to change his territory without fair warning.

He will frighten all the game for ten miles around; and I… I have to kill for two, these days.”

“His mother did not call him Lungri — the Lame One — for nothing,” said Mother Wolf calmly.

“He has been lame in one foot since birth. That is why he has only been able to kill cattle.

At present, the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, and he is coming to annoy ours.

They will scour the jungle in search of him. He will be far away, but we and our children… we will have to run when the grass is set alight.

Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!”

“Shall I tell him of your gratitude?” said Tabaqui.

“Be off with you!” yapped Father Wolf abruptly. “Get out of here! Go and hunt with your master. You have done enough harm for one night.”

“I am going,” said Tabaqui, quietly. “You can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message.”

Father Wolf listened.

Below, in the valley that ran down to a little river, he heard the harsh, vicious, sing-song whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and to whom it matters little that the whole jungle knows it.

“The imbecile!” said Father Wolf. “To begin a night’s work with a racket like that! Does he think that our deer are like his fat cattle of the Waingunga?”

“Shh! It is neither bullock nor deer that he hunts tonight,” said Mother Wolf; “it is Man.”

The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from everywhere.

It is the noise that bewilders the woodcutters and the gipsies sleeping under the stars, and makes them sometimes run into the very mouth of the tiger.

“Man!” said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth.

“Bah! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our ground too?!”

“The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without reason, forbids every beast to eat Man, except when he kills to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his clan or tribe.

The real reason is that the murder of a man means, sooner or later, the invasion of men armed with guns and mounted on elephants, and of other men, in their hundreds, equipped with gongs and rockets and torches.

Then, everybody in the jungle suffers.”

“The other reason is that, Man being the weakest and most defenceless of the living, it is unsportsmanlike to harm him.

They say too — and it is true — that man-eaters become mangy, and that they lose their teeth.”

The purr grew louder, and transformed into the full-throated roar of a charging tiger.

Then, a howl was heard — a bizarre howl, unworthy of a tiger — coming forth from Shere Khan.

“He has missed his target,” said Mother Wolf “What is it?”

Father Wolf went out a few paces from the entrance. He heard Shere Khan muttering savagely as he thrashed about in the scrub.

“The fool has had the good sense to jump on a woodcutters’ fire. He has burned his feet!” said Father Wolf, with a grunt. “Tabaqui is with him.”

“Something is coming up the hill,” said Mother Wolf, pricking up one ear. “Get ready.”

There was a little rustling of bushes in the thicket.

Father Wolf, with his haunches under him, crouched, ready to jump.

Then, if you had been there, you would have seen the most astonishing thing in the world: the wolf stopped mid-spring.

He took his run-up before he knew what he was taking aim at, and then tried to stop himself.

The result was a jump of four or five feet straight up in the air, from where he fell almost to the same spot on the ground that he had left.

“A human!” he snapped. “A man’s cub. Look!”

Indeed, right in front of him, hanging onto a low branch, stood a naked baby who could only just walk — the sweetest little thing that ever came to a wolf’s cave at night.

He raised his eyes to look Father Wolf in the eye and began to laugh.

“Is that a man’s cub?” said Mother Wolf. “I have never seen one. Bring it here.”

A wolf who is accustomed to moving his own cubs can very well, if it is necessary, take an egg in its mouth without breaking it.

Although Father Wolf’s jaws closed right over the child’s back, not a tooth scratched the skin when he set it down in the middle of his cubs.

“How cute it is! How naked it is! And how brave it is!” said Mother Wolf, softly.

The baby was threading its way between the cubs, seeking to draw closer to the warm hide.

“Aha! He is taking his meal with the others. So this is a man’s cub. Was there ever a wolf who could boast of a man’s cub among her children?”

“I have heard of such a thing, but not in our clan nor in my time,” said Father Wolf.

“He does not have a hair, and I could kill him so easily. But see, he looks at me and is not afraid.”

The moonlight was extinguished at the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan’s great square head and strong shoulders were blocking the opening and trying to enter.

Tabaqui, behind him, was whimpering: “My Lord, my Lord, it went in here!”

“Shere Khan does us great honor,” said Father Wolf, but his eyes were full of anger. “What does Shere Khan want?”

“My prey. A man’s cub has taken this path,” said Shere Khan. “Its parents have run off. Give it to me.”

Shere Khan had jumped on a wood-cutter’s fire, as Father Wolf had said, and his burned paws were making him furious.

But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger.

Even where he was standing, Shere Khan’s shoulders and paws were restricted by the lack of space, like the limbs of a man who tries to fight in a barrel.

“The Wolves are a free people,” said Father Wolf.

“They only take orders from the Supreme Council of the Clan, and not from a more or less striped cattle-killer.

The man’s cub is ours… to kill if we choose.”

“If it suits you! What kind of talk is that?!

By the Bull that I have killed, must I wait, my nose in your dog’s den, when it is a matter of my dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speaks!”

The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder.

Mother Wolf shook the cubs from her side and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, fixed on the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.

“And it is I, Raksha — the Demon —, who is going to answer you.

The man’s cub is mine, Lungri — mine to me! He will not be killed.

He will live to run with the Pack, and to hunt with the Pack; and, watch your back, you hunter of naked cubs, frog-eater, fish-killer! He shall hunt you!

Now get out of here, or, by the Sambhur that I have killed — for I do not eat starved cattle —, you will go back to your mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever you came into the world! Get out of here!”

Father Wolf looked on, amazed.

He had almost forgotten the days when he won over Mother Wolf in a fair fight between five other wolves, when, in the Pack’s expeditions, it was not out of politeness that she was called the Demon.

Shere Khan might have held his own against Father Wolf, but he could not take on Mother Wolf, for he knew that, in the position in which he found himself, she had all the advantage, ant that she would fight to the death.

So he backed out of the opening, growling, and when he was in the open he shouted:

“Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say: how it will take this rearing of man-cubs.

The cub is mine, O bushy-tailed thieves!”

Mother Wolf lay back down, panting among the cubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely:

“Shere Khan is right. The cub must be shown to the Pack. Do you still want to keep him, Mother?”

“If I want to keep him!” she panted. “He came completely naked, at night, alone and starving; and he was not even afraid!

Look, he has already pushed one of our babies to one side.

And that lame butcher would have killed him, and would have then fled towards the Waingunga, while the villagers from here would have formed a hunting party to exact retribution!

If I keep him? Assuredly, I am keeping him.

Lie there quietly, little frog. O you, Mowgli — for Mowgli, the Frog, I want to call you —, the time will come when you will hunt Shere Khan, as he has hunted you!”

“But what will our Pack say?” said Father Wolf.

The Law of the Jungle sets out very clearly that every wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack to which he belongs; but, as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet, he must bring them to the Pack Council, which generally meets once a month on the full moon, so that the other wolves may know their identity.

After that inspection, the cubs are free to run where they please, and, until they have killed their first deer, there is no valid excuse for a grown wolf of the Pack who kills one of them.

For this type of crime, the punishment is the death penalty — whenever he or she is found —, and, if you reflect for a minute, you will see that it must be so.

Father Wolf waited until his cubs could run a little, and then, on the night of the gathering, he took them, along with Mowgli and Mother Wolf, to the Council Rock — a hilltop covered with stones and pebbles, where a hundred wolves could hide.

Akela, the great grey lone wolf, lay stretched out at full length on his rock.

His strength and sharpness had put him at the head of the Pack.

A little below him sat more than forty wolves of every size and colour, from the badger-coloured veterans who could handle a deer alone, to young black three-year-old wolves who thought they could.

The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now.

In his youth, he had fallen twice into a wolf-trap, and another time he had been beaten and left for dead.

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