“Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann,” cried Bagheera.“Iwill remember you in my next kill, and put aside the head for you alone,O best of kites！”
“It is nothing.It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word.I couldhave done no less,” and Rann circled up again to his roost.
“He has not forgotten to use his tongue,” said Baloo with achuckle of pride. “To think of one so young remembering the MasterWord for the birds too while he was being pulled across trees！”
“It was most firmly driven into him,” said Bagheera.“But I amproud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.”
They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle Peopleever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an olddeserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a placethat men have once used.The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes donot. Besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to liveanywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it except in times of drought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs helda little water.
“It is half a night"s journey——at full speed,” said Bagheera, andBaloo looked very serious. “I will go as fast as I can,” he said anxiously.
“We dare not wait for you. Follow, Baloo. We must go on thequick-foot——Kaa and I.”
“Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all your four,” said Kaashortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, andso they left him to come on later, while Bagheera hurried forward, at thequick panther-canter. Kaa said nothing,but, strive as Bagheera might, thehuge Rock-python held level with him. When they came to a hill stream,Bagheera gained,because he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head andtwo feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground Kaa made upthe distance.
“By the Broken Lock that freed me,” said Bagheera, whentwilight had fallen, “you are no slow goer！”
“I am hungry,” said Kaa. “Besides, they called me speckledfrog.”
“Worm——earth-worm, and yellow to boot.”
“All one. Let us go on,” and Kaa seemed to pour himself alongthe ground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and keeping toit.
In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking ofMowgli"s friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, andwere very much pleased with themselves for the time. Mowgli had neverseen an Indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins itseemed very wonderful and splendid.Some king had built it long ago ona little hill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led up to theruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps.
A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and green, and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king"s elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met;the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king"s council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds,and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king"s garden, where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout:
“There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log.” Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops,hoping the Jungle-People would notice them.
Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not like or understand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the Cold Lairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli would have done after a long journey, they joined hands and danced about and sang their foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a speech and told his companions that Mowgli"s capture marked a new thing in the history of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show them how to weave sticks and canes together as a protection against rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some creepers and began to work them in and out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost interest and began to pull their friends" tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.
“I wish to eat,” said Mowgli. “I am a stranger in this part of the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here.”
Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts and wild pawpaws. But they fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much trouble to go back with what was left of the fruit.
