The Jungle Book

Book Excerpt:

"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack.

Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?"

"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry;

yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already.

And that lame butcher would have killed him, and would have run off to the

Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep

him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli,—for

Mowgli, the Frog, I will call thee,—the time will come when thou wilt hunt

Shere Khan as he has hunted thee!"

"But what will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.

The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he

marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to; but as soon as his cubs are old

enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which is

generally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may

identify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where they please,

and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf

of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where the murderer can

be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on the night of the

Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—a

hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide.

Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning,

lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of

every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck

alone, to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf

had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf-trap in his youth,

and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and

customs of men.