The Jungle Book Story

It was seven o'clock on a warm summer evening in the Indian Jungle when Father Wolf awoke, stretched out his four paws to get the sleepy feeling out of them, and prepared to go hunting. The moon shone into the cave where Mother Wolf lay with her four young Cubs.

Father Wolf was just setting off when a little shadow crossed the threshold of the cave and a whining voice said, 'Good hunting go with you, O Chief of the Wolves, and good luck to your noble children and may they never forget the hungry of this world.' It was Tabaqui, sneaking little jackal who is too lazy and too cowardly to hunt for himself, so he picks up the scraps left by the other animals.

'There is no food here,' said Father Wolf, 'but come in if you will'.

'Not for you perhaps,' said Tabaqui, 'but for a poor creature like myself a dry bone is a feast.' And in next to no time he was cracking away at a bone he found at the back of the cave.

'Shere Kahn has changed his hunting ground, he tells me. He hunts among the hills for the next moon.' Tabaqui was always ready to make trouble.

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

'He has no right,' said Father Wolf, 'to change his hunting grounds without due warning. He'll scare the game away for mile around and I have to hunt for two these days.'

'Ah! Well,' said Tabaqui, 'I might have saved myself the trouble of telling you. You can hear him now in the Jungle below.'

As they listened they could hear the dry snarling sing-song whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and doesn't care if the whole jungle knows it. 'The fool,' said Father Wolf, 'to start a night's hunting with that noise.' Then as they listened, the sound changed to a humming purr that seemed to come from every part of the jungle at once. It is the noise a tiger makes when he is hunting man. 'Man! Faugh!' said Father Wolf. 'Are there not enough beetles and frogs that he must hunt man?'

Now there is a Law of the jungle which forbids the animals to hunt man because if they do, sooner or later, men come with guns and gongs and fire and then all the animals in the jungle suffer.

The sound grew louder and ended in the full throated roar of a tiger's charge. Then there was a howl, a most un-tigerish howl, from Shere Khan. 'He has missed,' said Mother Wolf. 'What has happened?'

Father Wolf ran a few paces and looked down the slope to where, in the clearing below, there was a group of wood-cutters' huts. 'The fool has had no more sense than to leap at the wood-cutters' fire and has burned his feet,' said Father Wolf.

'Something is coming up the hill,' said Mother Wolf. 'Get ready.'

Father Wolf crouched and sprang but, as he sprang, he checked himself in mid-air because what he had seen was a little naked, brown baby.

'What is it?' asked Mother Wolf.

'A man cub,' replied Father Wolf.

'Is that a man cub? I have never seen one. Bring it here, said Mother Wolf. Father Wolf trotted over and picked up the boy so gently in his jaws that he never even broke the skin on his back. He brought him back to the cave and put him down beside Mother Wolf.

'How little he is; how naked, and how bold,' said Mother Wolf.

Suddenly the moonlight was blocked out of the cave by the great head and shoulders of Shere Khan.

'Shere Khan does us great honour,' said Father Wolf. 'What does Shere Khan want?'

'My prey,' said Shere Khan. 'A man cub came this way, give him to me.'

'The Wolves are a free people,' said Father Wolf, 'and take orders from none but the head of the pack. The man cub is ours to kill if we choose.'

'What is this talk of choosing or not choosing? The man cub is mine, give him to me.' The tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder.

Then the Mother Wolf sprang up, her eyes blazing like two green moons in the darkness. 'The man cub is ours. He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and hunt with the Pack, and beware, Shere Khan, lest the day comes when he shall hunt you!'

Shere Khan knew that he could not fight the two wolves, cramped up in the entrance to the cave, so growling and snarling he backed away saying as he went, 'We'll see what the Pack has to say to this fostering of man cubs. He will come to my teeth in the end, you bush-tailed thieves.'

When the tiger had gone Father Wolf said, 'Shere Khan speaks the truth. What will the Pack say to a man cub?' But Mother Wolf had made up her mind to keep, and they called him Mowgli, the frog, because his skin was smooth and without hair, like a frog's.

So Mowgli stayed with the young cubs and when they were old enough to run a little, Father and Mother Wolf set off with them one night when the moon was full and took them through the Jungle to the Council Circle - a hilltop covered with boulders, where a hundred wolves could hide. There the wolves gathered to look over the young cubs of the Pack, so that they should know them and protect them if they met them in the Jungle. As each cub was pushed into the circle of wolves Akela, sitting on the Council Rock, lifted up his head and called, 'Look well, O Wolves! Look well'.

At last it was Mowgli's turn and Mother Wolf made up her mind that she was going to fight for her man cub if necessary. Mowgli was pushed into the circle where he sat playing with some stones in the moonlight. Akela never so much as twitched an ear, he just called, 'Look well, O Wolves!'

But from outside the circle came a snarl. 'The man cub is mine, give him to me. What have the free people to do with the man cub?' It was Shere Khan. Some of the wolves took up the cry, 'What have the free people to do with a man cub in the Pack?'

Now there is a Law in the Pack that says that if there is an argument as to the right of a cub to join the Pack, two people musty speak for him, so Akela asked, 'Who speaks for this cub?'

At first there was no answer but the Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the cubs the Law, stepped into the circle and said, 'I will speak for the man cub. There is no harm in the man cub. Let him enter the Pack and I myself will teach him.'

'We need yet another,' said Akela. 'Who speaks beside Baloo?'

An inky black shadow dropped silently into the circle. It was Bagheera, the black panther, the mighty hunter of the jungle. In his soft, silky voice he said, 'I believe that is there is a dispute as to the right of the cub to join the Pack his life may be brought at a price. Is that not the Law?'

'It is the Law,' said the Pack.

'Then to Baloo's good word, I will add a bull, newly killed in the valley below if you will accept the man cub into the Pack.'

The wolves, who were always hungry, cried, 'Let him join. He will die in the winter rains, he will scorch in the summer sun. What harm can a naked frog do? Let him join.'

The wolves raced down the hill for the kill and left Mowgli with Father and Mother Wolf and the cubs, and Baloo and Bagheera at the Council Rock with Akela.

Akela said, 'Now take him away and train him as befits one of the free people.'

And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Pack, at the price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.

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