Мауглі = Mowgli

He saw the husbandman’s wife get up and feed it in the night with black lumps; and when the morning came and the mists were all white and cold, he saw the man’s child pick up a wicker pot plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre.

‘Is that all?’ said Mowgli. ‘If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.’ so he strode round the corner and met the boy, took the pot from his hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy howled with fear.

‘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 stuff. Half-way 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 ploughed lands.

‘Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, 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 fire-pot and dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that satisfied 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.

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 flattered. Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the fire-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.