Ch. 1: How Fear Came - Page 2

Man-cub.
We must wait and see how the mohwa blooms."

That spring the mohwa tree, that Baloo was so fond of, never
flowered. The greeny, cream-coloured, waxy blossoms were
heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling
petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook
the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into
the heart of the Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at
last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines
burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff;
the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last
least footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron;
the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung
to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when
the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in
the Jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering
blue boulders in the bed of the stream.

The birds and the monkey-people went north early in the year,
for they knew what was coming; and the deer and the wild pig
broke far away to the perished fields of the villages, dying
sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to kill them. Chil,
the Kite, stayed and grew fat, for there was a great deal of
carrion, and evening after evening he brought the news to the
beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunting-grounds,
that the sun was killing the Jungle for three days" flight in
every direction.

Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back
on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted
rock-hives--honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar.
He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the
trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. All the game
in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and Bagheera
could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. But
the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle People
drink seldom they must drink deep.

And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture,
till at last the main channel of the Waingunga was the only
stream that carried a trickle of water between its dead banks;
and when Hathi, the wild elephant, who lives for a hundred
years and more, saw a long, lean blue ridge of rock show dry
in the very centre of the stream, he knew that he was looking
at the Peace Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk
and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father before him had
proclaimed it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and buffalo
took up the cry hoarsely; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great
circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning.

By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill