The Jungle Book / Книга джунглей. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“They are very like me,” said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as he had seen the woman do. “This thing will die if I do not give it things to eat”; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stu?. Halfway up the hill he met Bagheera with the morning dew shining like moonstones on his coat.

“Akela has missed,” said the Panther. “They would have killed him last night, but they needed thee also. They were looking for thee on the hill.”

“I was among the plowed lands. I am ready.

See!” Mowgli held up the ?re-pot.

“Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stu?, and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou not afraid?”

“No. Why should I fear? I remember now – if it is not a dream – how, before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm and pleasant.”

All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending his ?re pot and dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that satis?ed him, and in the evening when Tabaqui came to the cave and told him rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran away.

Then Mowgli went to the Council, still laughing.

Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly being ?attered. Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the ?re pot was between Mowgli’s knees.

When they were all gathered together, Shere Khan began to speak – a thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.

“He has no right,” whispered Bagheera. “Say so. He is a dog’s son. He will be frightened.”

Mowgli sprang to his feet. “Free People,” he cried, “does Shere Khan lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?”

“Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak – ” Shere Khan began.

“By whom?” said Mowgli. “Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack alone.”

There were yells of “Silence, thou man’s cub!” “Let him speak. He has kept our Law”; and at last the seniors of the Pack thundered: “Let the Dead Wolf speak.”

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule.