All that is told here happened some time before John confronted Shere Khan the tiger, which is a story for another time. It was in the days when Balustrade was teaching him the Law of the Jungle, which had begun when John was very small. The big, affable brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil, for the young wolves will learn only as much of the Law of the Jungle as applies to their own pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they can repeat the Hunting Verse that binds so many of the jungle creatures in brotherhood – "Feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds; and sharp white teeth, all these things are the marks of our brothers, except Tabaqui the Jackal and the hyaena whom we hate." But John, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this, for Bagheera the Black Panther (whom the Wolves called Sherlock) insisted upon it, and Balustrade was happy to oblige. Sometimes Sherlock would come lounging through the jungle to see how his friend was getting on, and would lie with his head against a tree while John recited the day's lesson to Balustrade.
John could climb almost as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well as he could run. So Baloo, the Teacher of the Law, taught him the Wood and Water Laws: how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty feet above ground; what to say to Mang the Bat when he disturbed him in the branches at midday; and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools before he splashed down among them. Then, too, John was taught the Strangers' Hunting Call, which must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle-People hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, "Give me leave to hunt here because I am hungry." And the answer is, "Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure."
All this will show you how much John had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired of saying the same thing over a hundred times. John far preferred the lessons he had with Sherlock. They were not lessons exactly; but when the panther sensed that John was growing dull of mind from repeating the Laws and verses that Baloo had drummed into him that day, he would spring up and say:
"The movement of the wind through the trees, and the way it causes the game to stir, is far better learned through observation. Come along, John."
And then John would jump up, laughing and calling out praises to Sherlock, and boy and panther would gallop off into the jungle together, leaving Baloo alone to mutter to the empty clearing– "It is not my division of the labor, all this running about. But still, he must learn the Law." And so he remonstrated with Sherlock one day, saying:
"You cannot always pull the man-cub away from his lessons, Bagheera."
"It is not I who pulls him away," Sherlock retorted. "He pulls himself away, when you drive him off with your long talk."
"Better he should suffer through dullness now – surely you agree! – than that he should come to harm through ignorance," Baloo answered very earnestly. "I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle."
"Well, that is something," Sherlock allowed. "For a man-cub, anyhow. But what are those Master Words? I myself am more likely to give help than to ask it" – Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it – "but still I should like to know."
"I will call John and he shall say them – if he will. Come, Little honey badger!"
"My head is filled with dull, heavy stones," said a sullen little voice over their heads, and John slid down a tree trunk very angry and indignant, adding as he reached the ground: "I come for Sherlock and not for thee, fat old Baloo!"
"That is all one to me," said Baloo, though he was hurt and grieved. "Tell your friend Sherlock, then, the Master Words of the Jungle that I have taught thee this day."
"Master Words for which people?" said John, delighted to show off. "The jungle has many tongues. I know them all."
"A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People, then – great scholar."
"We be of one blood, ye and I," said John, giving the words the Bear accent which all the Hunting People use – for in the jungle, all things are measured in their proximity to bears.
"Good. Now for the birds."
John repeated, with the Kite's whistle at the end of the sentence.
"Now for the Snake-People," said Sherlock.
The answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and John kicked up his feet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped on to Sherlock's back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on the glossy flanks and making the worst faces he could think of at Baloo.
"There – there! That was worth a little boredom," said the brown bear tenderly. "Some day thou wilt remember me." Then he turned aside to Sherlock. "Was it not well done?"
"I am glad some small good has come of John's many hours with you," replied Sherlock, who did not like to say that John's time was well-spent with anyone but him.
"So now, neither beast, nor bird, nor snake will hurt him, and no one then is to be feared," Baloo declared, patting his big furry stomach with pride.
"Except his own tribe," said Sherlock, under his breath; and then aloud to John, "Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all this dancing up and down?"
John had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at Sherlock's shoulder fur and kicking hard. "Let us go, Sherlock, let us go!" he shouted. "I am tired of Baloo's teaching. I want to have more adventures with you. will have no more of the Law. It is worthless."
"What is this new folly?" said Sherlock, and his voice was very cold.
"The Law of the Jungle is only a silly pastime. I will not waste my time on it any longer."
"Whoof!" Baloo's big paw scooped John off Sherlock's back, and as the boy lay between the big fore-paws he could see the Bear was angry.
"John," said Baloo, "thou hast been talking with the Bandar-log – the Monkey People."
John looked at Sherlock to see if the Panther was angry too, and Sherlock's eyes were as hard as jade stones.
"Thou hast been with the Monkey People – the gray apes – the people without a law – the eaters of everything. That is great shame."
"They came to visit me one day when I was by myself," said John, "because Sherlock had gone off by himself. They talked to me, and I wasn't lonely any more."
"The attention of the Monkey People!" Sherlock snorted. "It is a worthless prize."
"Then why do you go among them?" said John.
"Yes, it is a good question," said Baloo, who knew of Sherlock's explorations and did not approve.
"Oh," said the panther carelessly. "It is not like that. Sometimes I observe them to make a study of their ways. I do not think we can chase them out of the Jungle entirely, but perhaps if we learn the patterns of how they behave, we can drive them to another district so that they will leave us alone."
"It does not do to pay them any attention," said Baloo gravely. "They do not deserve our notice, and it is a bad thing for them to notice you, as well. And see, you teach the man-cub that he may talk to them."
John struggled in his place between Baloo's paws. "But why may I not talk to them? Why have I never been taken among the Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I do. They have hands like mine. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I will play with them again. Sherlock, will you take me?"
"Listen, man-cub," said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle – except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees. They have no law. They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard me speak of the Bandar-log till today?"
"No," said John in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo had finished.
"The Jungle-People put them out of their mouths and out of their minds. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads."
He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.
"The Monkey-People are forbidden," said Baloo, "forbidden to the Jungle-People. Remember."
"Forbidden," repeated Sherlock, "and I will forbear to go among them myself hereafter. It is, perhaps, not good for you to think of them. Put them out of your minds."
John agreed, and was very ashamed, and his friends saw that he understood and spoke no more of his mischief, for no great harm had come of it. John tried to forget the nonsense that the Bandar-log had said to him, their empty comforts and silly talk of their own greatness. But he did not forget what he had seen them do to his friends, how the monkey people picked up objects with their clever hands – nuts and branches and stones – and flung them like weapons. There is no law in the jungle that talks of throwing, for the Bandar-log live outside the Law, and no other jungle creature is capable of picking up an object to throw. But John practiced, in secret, until he could hurl a stone or a pebble very fast and very hard, and always hit his mark.
Now what Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other's path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People could see them. None of the beasts would pay them any mind, and that was why they were so pleased that John had played with them, and when they heard how angry Baloo and Bagheera had been.
Most of them never meant to do any more – Baloo was, for the most part, quite right when he said that the Bandar-log never mean anything at all. But there was among the monkeys one that was exceptionally clever, though he was also quite wild. He was called Jayim, and he had come over the hills from the south, from the table-lands that lay closer to the mountains. None of the monkeys knew why Jayim had come from the Inner Tablelands, and if one of them had known he would promptly have forgotten it, for the monkey people do not remember any thing from one day to the next. But Jayim was cleverer than the other Bandar-log, and soon had set himself up as a sort of a king, telling the monkeys that if they listened to him they would soon have the respect of all the Jungle-People, and would build themselves great cities such as men lived in. The monkeys liked this idea very much, and though they could never work at it for long enough to build anything, they told one another that their city would be finished any day, and that their leader made them the wisest people in the jungle – so wise that soon everyone else would notice and envy them.
Jayim had watched John, and he told all the others that John would be a useful person to keep in the tribe, because he had hands as they did, and so belonged with them. The Monkey-People, watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful, and so they agreed that they must take him to live among them.
Jayim had watched Sherlock, as well, and had noticed the panther observing the Bandar-log and their ways – and he watched too as Sherlock and John went together through the jungle, leaping through tree-tops or stalking game. He saw that Sherlock was very clever – cleverest of all the Jungle-People – and he thought (for he was very cunning) that if he could make the Bandar-log take John away from Sherlock, the panther would notice him, and understand that Jayim was the best of all the monkeys. For it did not matter so much, to be the king of a people who could not set themselves to any task, or remember a rule from one day to the next; Jayim wished for the other people of the Jungle to know that he was great and clever, and master among the Monkey People. But he did not tell this to them, only told them that their king required them to steal the man-cub, and that if they did this, the monkeys would become the best people in the Jungle.
The day that this took place, John and Sherlock had stayed with Baloo in his shady clearing, for Sherlock had stumbled into a hornets' nest and was napping while his nose returned to its usual condition. The bear had lain down nearby, and John curled up on the ground between them. The next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and arms – hard, strong, little hands – and then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and Sherlock bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. The Bandar-log howled with triumph and scuffled away to the upper branches where Sherlock dared not follow, shouting: "He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. All the Jungle-People admire us for our skill and our cunning."
Then they began their flight; and the flight of the Monkey-People through tree-land is one of the things nobody can describe. They have their regular roads and crossroads, up hills and down hills, all laid out from fifty to seventy or a hundred feet above ground, and by these they can travel even at night if necessary. Two of the strongest monkeys caught John under the arms and swung off with him through the treetops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy's weight held them back.
Sick and giddy as John was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth. His escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the thinnest topmost branches crackle and bend under them, and then with a cough and a whoop would fling themselves into the air outward and downward, and bring up, hanging by their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree. Sometimes he could see for miles and miles across the still green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost down to earth again. So, bounding and crashing and whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log swept along the tree-roads with John their prisoner.
For a time he was afraid of being dropped. Then he grew angry but knew better than to struggle, and then he began to think. The first thing was to send back word to Baloo and Sherlock, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look down, for he could only see the topsides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Wiggi the Kite balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the jungle waiting for things to die. Wiggi saw that the monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a few hundred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He whistled with surprise when he saw John being dragged up to a treetop and heard him give the Kite call for – "We be of one blood, thou and I." The waves of the branches closed over the boy, but Wiggi balanced away to the next tree in time to see the little brown face come up again. "Mark my trail!" John shouted. "Tell Baloo of the Seeonee Pack and Bagheera the Black Panther, who is Sherlock of the Council Rock."
"In whose name, Brother?" Wiggi had never seen John before, though of course he had heard of him.
"John, the man-cub! Mark my tra-il!"
The last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air, but Wiggi nodded and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of dust, and there he hung, watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the treetops as John's escort whirled along.
"They never go far," he said with a chuckle. "They never do what they set out to do. Always pecking at new things are the Bandar-log. This time, if I have any eye-sight, they have pecked down trouble for themselves, for Baloo is no fledgling and Bagheera can, as I know, kill more than goats."
So he rocked on his wings, his feet gathered up under him, and waited.
Meantime, Baloo and Sherlock were furious with rage and grief. Sherlock climbed as he had never climbed before, but the thin branches broke beneath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark.
"Why didst thou not protect the man-cub?" he roared to poor Baloo, who had set off at a clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the monkeys. "What was the use of thy claws, and of all thy teaching, if it did not keep him safe?"
"Haste! O haste! We – we may catch them yet!" Baloo panted.
"At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher of the Law – droner – a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee open. Sit still and think! Make a plan. This is no time for chasing. They may drop him if we follow too close."
"Arrula! Whoo! They may have dropped him already, being tired of carrying him. Who can trust the Bandar-log? Put dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat! Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyaena, for I am most miserable of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O John, John! Why did I not warn thee against the Monkey-Folk instead of filling thy head with stories? Now perhaps I may have driven the old lessons out of his mind, and he will be alone in the jungle without the Master Words."
Baloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro, moaning.
"Balustrade, calm yourself and think," Sherlock impatiently. "He gave me all the Words correctly, only a little time ago. We can still find him if we try. Meantime, this carrying-on helps nobody. What would the jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki the Porcupine, and howled?"
"What do I care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead by now."
"Unless and until they drop him from the branches in sport, or kill him out of idleness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and well taught, and above all he has the eyes that make the Jungle-People afraid. But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the Bandar-log, and they, because they live in trees, have no fear of any of our people." Sherlock licked one forepaw thoughtfully.
"Fool that I am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that I am," said Baloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk, "it is true what Hathi the Wild Elephant says: `To each his own fear'; and they, the Bandar-log, fear Shanti the Rock Snake. She can climb as well as they can. She steals the young monkeys in the night. The whisper of her name makes their wicked tails cold. Let us go to Shanti."
"The Snake!" exclaimed Sherlock. There are many snakes in the jungle, of course, but it was only Shanti who was called this, for everyone in the jungle knew her, and most all of them feared her at least a little. "What will she do for us? She is not of our tribe, being footless – and with most bewitching eyes," said Sherlock.
"She is very curious and very cunning. Above all, she is always hungry," said Baloo hopefully. "Promise her many goats."
"Shanti hunts on her own, and sleeps for a full month after she has once eaten. She may be asleep now, and even were she awake, what if she will not help us? She may want a favor in return." Sherlock, who did not know much about Shanti, was naturally suspicious.
"Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make her see reason."
Sherlock curled his lips back from his great white teeth. "I do not like this, Balustrade. It will be a scandal in all the district if it is known that we have gone to Shanti for help. Surely we can manage on our own."
"Tell me, Bagheera," returned the old bear, "is there anything you would not do for John?"
Sherlock was silent, for his answer was clear. Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther, and they went off to look for Shanti the Rock Python.