Stories

Part 2

Tabaqui - (Quietly) I go. You can hear Shere Khan below in the forest. 

                                                                   ~Scene 2~

Narrator - Father wolf listened and below in the valley that ran down a little never he heard the dry, angry, whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows it!

Father wolf - The Fool! To begin a night's work with that noise! Does he think that our bucks are like his fast Waingunga bullocks?

Mother wolf - Hush! It is neither bullock nor he hunts tonight. It is Man.

Narrator - The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.

Father wolf - Man! (Showing all his white teeth) Hah! Are there not enough beetles and man, and on our ground too.

                                                                      ~Scene 3~

Narrator - The law of the jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for that is this man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of men on elephants with guns and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living, and it its true the man eaters become mangy and lose their teeth. The purr grew longer. And ended in full throated howl!

Shere Khan - Aarrh!

Narrator - Then there was a bowl an untigerish howl from Shere Khan.

Mother wolf - He has missed.

The story does not end here. It continues with many more episodes such as the acceptance of mowgli by the pack of wolves, the friendship between Bagheera and Mowgli, Mowgli's adventurous trips in the jungle with Baloo (the bear), the fight between Mowgli and the Monkey's gang etc. Eventually Mowgli is forced to leave the jungle and he goes to live in the village. Later he decides to return to the jungle and live there.