作者：（英）吉卜林(Kipling.R.)
出版社：清华大学出版社
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
丛林故事(插图·中文导读英文版)试读：
前言
罗德亚德·吉卜林(Rudyard Kipling，1865—1936)，英国著名作家，诺贝尔文学奖获得者。
1865年12月31日，吉卜林出生在印度孟买。他的父亲当时在孟买艺术学校担任建筑雕塑学教授。吉卜林在印度度过了美好的幼年时光，1871年他和妹妹一起被送回英国寄养。吉卜林中学毕业以后，离开英国，回到印度，并开始文学创作。
吉卜林一生创作十分丰富，有长篇小说、短篇小说、诗歌、游记、儿童文学、随笔、回忆录等等。其中，儿童文学作品的成就最为突出，例如，《丛林之书》、《丛林之书二集》、《正是如此故事集》、《勇敢的船长》、《普克山的帕克》、《奖赏和仙人》等，都是享誉世界的儿童文学经典之作。1907年，他以“观察的能力，想象的新颖，思维的雄浑和叙事的杰出才能”而获得该年度的诺贝文学奖。
在吉卜林众多的童话小说中，《丛林之书》、《丛林之书二集》(合集为《丛林故事》)是最著名、艺术成就最高的作品，是世界儿童文学的瑰宝，受到世界各地读者的喜爱。《丛林故事》讲述有关印度原始森林中野兽的故事，其中叙述一只勇敢的母狼从虎口救出婴儿莫哥里并抚养了他。从此，小莫哥里在莽林与野兽一起生活，长大后杀死了凶暴的老虎，作者写的是动物的故事，但充满了人类生活的寓意。这组以在狼群中长大的印度少年莫哥里为主人公的丛林动物故事，已被译成数十种语言，传遍全世界，它不仅博得无数青少年的喜爱，同时也使成年读者得到无穷的乐趣，把他们带回了童年时代金色的美妙幻想世界。正像美国著名作家马克·吐温说的那样：“我了解吉卜林的书……它们对于我从来不会变得苍白，它们保持着缤纷的色彩，它们永远是新鲜的。”在中国，《丛林故事》同样是最受广大青少年读者欢迎的经典童话作品之一。作为世界文学宝库中的传世经典之作，它影响了一代又一代中国人的美丽童年、少年直至成年。目前，在国内数量众多的《丛林故事》书籍中，主要的出版形式有两种：一种是中文翻译版，另一种是中英文对照版。而其中的中英文对照读本比较受读者的欢迎，这主要是得益于中国人热衷于学习英文的大环境。而从英文学习的角度上来看，直接使用纯英文的学习资料更有利于英语学习。考虑到对英文内容背景的了解有助于英文阅读，使用中文导读应该是一种比较好的方式，也可以说是该类型书的第三种版本形式。采用中文导读而非中英文对照的方式进行编排，这样有利于国内读者摆脱对英文阅读依赖中文注释的习惯。基于以上原因，我们决定编译《丛林故事》，并采用中文导读英文版的形式出版。在中文导读中，我们尽力使其贴近原作的精髓，也尽可能保留原作风格。我们希望能够编出为当代中国读者所喜爱的经典读本。读者在阅读英文故事之前，可以先阅读中文导读内容，这样有利于了解故事背景，从而加快阅读速度。同时，为了读者更好地理解故事内容，书中加入了大量的插图。我们相信，该经典著作的引进对加强当代中国读者，特别是青少年读者的人文修养是非常有帮助的。
本书主要内容由王勋、纪飞编译。参加本书故事素材搜集整理及编译工作的还有郑佳、刘乃亚、赵雪、熊金玉、李丽秀、熊红华、王婷婷、孟宪行、胡国平、李晓红、贡东兴、陈楠、邵舒丽、冯洁、王业伟、徐鑫、王晓旭、周丽萍、熊建国、徐平国、肖洁、王小红等。限于我们的科学、人文素养和英语水平，书中难免会有不当之处，衷心希望读者朋友批评指正。
第一章 莫哥里的兄弟们
导读
在印度西奥尼山上，生活着一群狼。狼群中有一个家庭：狼爸爸、狼妈妈和他们的四个小狼崽子。
一个暖融融的傍晚，休息了一天的狼爸爸正准备出外打猎，一只专吃残羹冷炙、总爱到处挑拨离间、搬弄是非的瘦豺塔巴奇跑来告诉他：瘸了一条腿的老虎萨克汗将要不顾丛林法则，擅自来到这几座山上狩猎了。这是一头只能猎杀耕牛的、一向被狼爸爸、狼妈妈瞧不起的老虎。
不一会儿，就听到萨克汗在附近的嚎叫声，原来萨克汗不但猎杀耕牛，而且违犯不准任何一头野兽捕杀人的丛林法则开始捕杀人类，现在反而被人类点燃的篝火烧伤了脚。那家人的父母逃掉了，萨克汗紧随着一个孩子追到了这里。
一个刚刚学会走路、脸上带着一个小酒窝、全身赤祼的小娃娃，手里握着一根短小的树枝来到了狼爸爸的洞穴里，抬着头，微笑着，看着狼爸爸。狼爸爸将人孩衔到狼妈妈跟前，小男孩就拼命挤到四个小狼崽中间，希望得到些温暖。
萨克汗追到洞前，方方的大脑袋拼命地往洞里挤，挤不进来，就在洞外让狼爸爸交出小男孩。狼爸爸不向他屈服。萨克汗羞恼成怒，吼声如雷。狼妈妈也斩钉截铁地告诉萨克汗小男孩是她的，她不允许任何人伤害他。一个全身赤裸的小娃娃来到狼爸爸的洞穴
萨克汗无奈只得离开狼穴。他知道只有得到狼群的认可才能收养小男孩，于是就等待那个时机。
这倒真是一个难题：按照丛林法则，每个狼家一旦生了幼崽，都必须在幼崽能站立后带他们去参加狼群大会，以便让群内其他狼认识，以后不再伤害他们。
尽管狼爸爸对收养人孩能否得到族群的认可心怀疑虑，可狼妈妈
却毫不迟疑，决定收养这个可爱的人孩，并给他起了爱称——小青蛙莫哥里。
几个月后，狼爸爸、狼妈妈带着四个狼崽和莫哥里来到了狼群的会议岩上，首领阿克拉——一个沉着稳重的独身大灰狼躺在岩石上，舒展着身躯，四十多头颜色不同的成年狼躺在下面，幼崽们在自己爸妈围起的圈里翻滚嬉闹。最后的时刻到了，狼爸爸把一直在地上笑着玩鹅卵石的莫哥里推到会场中央。正在这时，岩石后面传来萨克汗的声音，要狼群把男孩还给他。阿克拉问大伙是否有成员出来替小男孩说话。会场上没有回答。狼妈妈做好了为保卫人孩而拼命的打算。
这时，唯一被允许参加会议的异类动物——棕熊巴洛知道人类的幼崽不会伤害别的狼，就提议由自己来教他。——原来，巴洛是西奥尼狼群特地为歹狼崽们聘请的教授丛林法则的专职教师。
但是阿克拉告诉他们还少一个支持者。因为对于有争议的幼崽必须有至少两个父母之外的其他成员支持。这时一个黑影跳到圈子中央，为这个人崽讨命，并用一头公牛作为代价。原来是林中大侠——黑豹巴格西拉，他虽不是狼群成员，但向来受到狼群的尊重。那些饿着肚子的年轻狼们附和着，认为可以用这个价钱来买幼崽。最后阿克拉宣布族群接纳莫哥里为其成员。从此莫哥里成了大家认可的一头“人狼”。莫哥里震摄了反叛的群狼
十一年过去了，莫哥里熟悉了林中的一切，学会了狼的全部本领，也懂得了动物们必须遵循的丛林法则。他不但因能拔去同伴脚上扎到的刺而倍受尊敬，还因炯炯有神的眼光令别的狼畏惧。
巴洛成了他尊敬的老师，巴格西拉是他最亲密的朋友，阿克拉经常听从莫哥里对族群管理的意见，但他已日渐衰老，萨克汗鼓动部分年轻的狼，反对了阿克拉的领导，质疑莫哥里的“公民”资格，而单纯、善良的莫哥里却全无防备。巴格西拉多次提醒他要提防萨克汗的阴谋，并告诉他，只有拿人类特有的武器“红花”——火，才能震慑对付那些背弃诺言的狼和贪婪阴险的萨克汗。
莫哥里听从了巴格西拉的劝告，从人类那里取来了火，在决定阿克拉首领地位和自己命运的会议上震慑了反叛的群狼，烧伤并赶走了萨克汗。但这样使他自己在狼中彻底孤立了，没有办法，只好听从巴格西拉的建议，离开这里。
莫哥里忍痛告别了狼爸爸、狼妈妈和四个狼兄弟，独自走下山坡，去见那些对他来说神秘陌生的人类了。
Now Rann the Kite brings home the night,
That Mang the Bat sets free—
The herds are shut in byre and hut,
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call! —Good hunting all,
That keep the Jungle Law!—Night-Song in the Jungle
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned,and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. “Augrh! ” said Father Wolf. “It is time to hunt again.”He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: “Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world.”
It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee—the madness—and run.
“Enter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf stiffly, “but there is no food here.”
“For a wolf, no,” said Tabaqui, “but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?” He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.
“All thanks for this good meal,” he said, licking his lips. “How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so young too! Indeed,indeed, I might have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning.”
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces. It pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then he said spitefully:
“Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.”
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty miles away.
“He has no right!” Father Wolf began angrily, “By the Law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He will frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I—I have to kill for two, these days.”
“His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing,” said Mother Wolf quietly. “He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, and he has come here to make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan! ”
“Shall I tell him of your gratitude?” said Tabaqui.
“Out! ” snapped Father Wolf. “Out and hunt with your master. Thou have done harm enough for one night.”
“I go,” said Tabaqui quietly. “Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message.”
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little river, he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows it.
“The fool! ” said Father Wolf. “To begin a night’s work with that noise!Does he think that our buck are like his fat Waingunga bullocks?”
“H’sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts tonight,” said Mother Wolf.“It is Man.”
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
“Man!” said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. “Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our ground too! ”
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason,forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too—and it is true—that man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated “Aaarh! ” of the tiger’s charge.
Then there was a howl—an untigerish howl—from Shere Khan. “He has missed,” said Mother Wolf. “What is it?”
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in the scrub.
“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire,and has burned his feet,” said Father Wolf with a grunt. “Tabaqui is with him.”
“Something is coming up hill,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear.“Get ready.”
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching,you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world—the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground.
“Man! ” he snapped. “A man’s cub. Look! ”
Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face, and laughed.
“Is that a man’s cub?” said Mother Wolf. “I have never seen one. Bring it here.”
A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf’s jaws closed right on the child’s back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs.
“How little! How naked, and—how bold! ” said Mother Wolf softly. The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm hide.“Ahai! He is taking his meal with the others. And so this is a man’s cub. Now,was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man’s cub among her children?”
“I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our pack or in my time,” said Father Wolf. “He is altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not afraid.”
The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan’s great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui,behind him, was squeaking: “My lord, my lord, it went in here! ”
“Shere Khan does us great honor,” said Father Wolf, but his eyes were very angry. “What does Shere Khan need?”
“My quarry. A man’s cub went this way,” said Shere Khan. “Its parents have run off. Give it to me.”
Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter’s campfire, as Father Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan’s shoulders and forepaws were cramped for want of room, as a man’s would be if he tried to fight in a barrel.
“The wolves are a free people,” said Father Wolf. “They take orders from the head of the pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The man’s cub is ours—to kill if we choose.”
“You choose and you do not choose! What talk is this of choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog’s den for my fair dues?It is I, Shere Khan, who speak! ”
The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.
“And it is I, Raksha, who answers. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the pack and to hunt with the pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frogeater—fish-killer —he shall hunt you! Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back you goest to your mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever you came into the world! Go! ”
Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the pack and was not called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf,for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was clear he shouted:
“Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves! ”
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely:
“Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the pack.Will you 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 Wolves you Mowgli—for mowgli the Frog I will call you—the time will come when you will hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted you.”
“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. There was very little talking at the Rock.The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet.Sometimes a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that he had not been overlooked.
Akela from his rock would cry: “You know the Law—you know the Law.Look well, O Wolves! ” And the anxious mothers would take up the call:“Look—look well, O Wolves! ”
At last—and Mother Wolf’s neck bristles lifted as the time came—Father Wolf pushed “Mowgli the Frog,” as they called him, into the center,where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.
Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the monotonous cry: “Look well!” A muffled roar came up from behind the rocks—the voice of Shere Khan crying: “The cub is mine. Give him to me.What have the free people to do with a man’s cub?” Akela never even twitched his ears. All he said was: “Look well, O Wolves! What have the free people to do with the orders of any save the free people? Look well! ”
There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth year flung back Shere Khan’s question to Akela: “What have the free people to do with a man’s cub?” Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the pack who are not his father and mother.
“Who speaks for this cub?” said Akela. “Among the free people who speaks?” There was no answer and Mother Wolf got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting.
Then the only other creature who is allowed at the pack Council—Baloo,the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.
“The man’s cub—the man’s cub?” he said. “I speak for the man’s cub.There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth.Let him run with the pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.”
“We need yet another,” said Akela. “Baloo has spoken, and he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?”
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
“O Akela, and you the free people,” he purred, “I have no right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price. Am I right?”
“Good! Good! ” said the young wolves, who are always hungry. “Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law.”
“Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave. ”
“Speak then,” cried twenty voices.
“To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if you will accept the man’s cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?”
There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: “What matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted.” And then came Akela’s deep bay, crying: “Look well—look well,O Wolves! ”
Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was very angry that Mowgli had not been handed over to him.
“Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his whiskers, “for the time will come when this naked thing will make you roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man. ”
“It was well done,” said Akela. “Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be a help in time.”
“Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the pack forever,” said Bagheera.
Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up—to be killed in his turn.
“Take him away,” he said to Father Wolf, “and train him as befits one of the free people.”
And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo’s good words.
Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs,though they, of course, were grown wolves almost before he was a child. And Father Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle,till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man. When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleep again. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do.Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, “Come along, Little Brother,”and at first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took his place at the Council Rock, too, when the pack met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes,and so he used to stare for fun. At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats. He would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night,and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him that it was a trap. He loved better than anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did Mowgli—with one exception. As soon as he was old enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the pack at the price of a bull’s life.“All the jungle is your,” said Bagheera, “and you can kill everything that you are strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought you you must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.”Mowgli obeyed faithfully.
And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.
Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature to be trusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan. But though a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot it because he was only a boy—though he would have called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue.
Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolves of the pack, who followed him for scraps, a thing Akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his authority to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man’s cub. “They tell me,” Shere Khan would say, “that at Council you dare not look him between the eyes.”And the young wolves would growl and bristle.
Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this,and once or twice he told Mowgli in so many words that Shere Khan would kill him some day. Mowgli would laugh and answer: “I have the pack and I have you; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?”
It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera—born of something that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki the Porcupine had told him; but he said to Mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head on Bagheera’s beautiful black skin, “Little Brother, how often have I told you that Shere Khan is your enemy?”
“As many times as there are nuts on that palm,” said Mowgli, who,naturally, could not count. “What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk—like Mao, the Peacock.”
“But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui has told you too.”
“Ho! ho! ” said Mowgli. “Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some rude talk that I was a naked man’s cub and not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him better manners.”
“That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he would have told you of something that concerned you closely. Open those eyes,Little Brother. Shere Khan dare not kill you in the jungle. But remember,Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. Many of the wolves that looked you over when you was brought to the Council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the pack. In a little time you will be a man.”
“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?” said Mowgli. “I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers! ”
Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes. “Little Brother,” said he, “feel under my jaw.”
Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under Bagheera’s silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald spot.
“There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark—the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born among men,and it was among men that my mother died—in the cages of the king’s palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I paid the price for you at the Council when you was a little naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera—the Panther —and no man’s plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away. And because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it not so?”
“Yes,” said Mowgli, “all the jungle fear Bagheera—all except Mowgli.”
“Oh, you are a man’s cub,” said the Black Panther very tenderly. “And even as I returned to my jungle, so you must go back to men at last—to the men who are your brothers—if you are not killed in the Council.”
“But why—but why should they wish to kill me?” said Mowgli.
“Look at me,” said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him steadily between the eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half a minute.
“That is why,” he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. “Not even I can look you between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love you, Little Brother. The others they hate you because their eyes cannot meet your;because you are wise; because you have pulled out thorns from their feet—because you are a man.”
“I did not know these things,” said Mowgli sullenly, and he frowned under his heavy black eyebrows.
“What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By your very carelessness they know that you are a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck—the pack will turn against him and against you. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then—and then—I have it! ” said Bagheera, leaping up. “Go you down quickly to the men’s huts in the valley,and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes you mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the pack that love you. Get the Red Flower.”
By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.
“The Red Flower?” said Mowgli. “That grows outside their huts in the twilight. I will get some.”
“There speaks the man’s cub,” said Bagheera proudly. “Remember that it grows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by you for time of need.”
“Good! ” said Mowgli. “I go. But art you sure, O my Bagheera”—he slipped his arm around the splendid neck and looked deep into the big eyes—“Art you sure that all this is Shere Khan’s doing?”
“By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little Brother.”
“Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full tale for this, and it may be a little over,” said Mowgli, and he bounded away.
“That is a man. That is all a man,” said Bagheera to himself, lying down again. “Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunting than that frog-hunt of your ten years ago! ”
Mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew breath,and looked down the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that something was troubling her frog.
“What is it, Son?” she said.
“Some bat’s chatter of Shere Khan,” he called back. “I hunt among the plowed fields tonight,” and he plunged downward through the bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley. There he checked, for he heard the yell of the pack hunting, heard the bellow of a hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there were wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves: “Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show his strength. Room for the leader of the pack! Spring, Akela! ”
The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him over with his forefoot.
He did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells grew fainter behind him as he ran into the croplands where the villagers lived.
“Bagheera spoke truth,” he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle fodder by the window of a hut. “Tomorrow is one day both for Akela and for me.”
Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on the hearth. 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. 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 you also. They were looking for you on the hill.”
“I was among the plowed lands. I am ready. See! ” Mowgli held up the fire-pot.
“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 you 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. 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 scrapfed 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. “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, you 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.
Akela raised his old head wearily:—
“Free People, and you too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons I have led you to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how you brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Council Rock,now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the Jungle, that you come one by one.”
There was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela to the death. Then Shere Khan roared: “Bah! What have we to do with this toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle for ten seasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not give you one bone. He is a man,a man’s child, and from the marrow of my bones I hate him! ”
Then more than half the pack yelled: “A man! A man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.”
“And turn all the people of the villages against us?” clamored Shere Khan. “No, give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him between the eyes.”
Akela lifted his head again and said, “He has eaten our food. He has slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of the Law of the Jungle.”
“Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The worth of a bull is little, but Bagheera’s honor is something that he will perhaps fight for,”said Bagheera in his gentlest voice.
“A bull paid ten years ago! ” the pack snarled. “What do we care for bones ten years old?”
“Or for a pledge?” said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his lip.“Well are you called the Free People! ”
“No man’s cub can run with the people of the jungle,” howled Shere Khan. “Give him to me! ”
“He is our brother in all but blood,” Akela went on, “and you would kill him here! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of you are eaters of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere Khan’s teaching, you go by dark night and snatch children from the villager’s doorstep. Therefore I know you to be cowards, and it is to cowards I speak. It is certain that I must die, and my life is of no worth, or I would offer that in the man-cub’s place. But for the sake of the Honor of the pack, —a little matter that by being without a leader you have forgotten,—I promise that if you let the man-cub go to his own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against you. I will die without fighting. That will at least save the pack three lives. More I cannot do;but if you will, I can save you the shame that comes of killing a brother against whom there is no fault—a brother spoken for and bought into the pack according to the Law of the Jungle.”
“He is a man—a man—a man! ” snarled the pack. And most of the wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to switch.
“Now the business is in your hands,” said Bagheera to Mowgli. “We can do no more except fight.”
Mowgli stood upright—the fire pot in his hands. Then he stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolflike, the wolves had never told him how they hated him.“Listen you! ” he cried. “There is no need for this dog’s jabber. Ye have told me so often tonight that I am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life’s end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call you my brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What you will do, and what you will not do, is not yours to say. That matter is with me; and that we may see the matter more plainly, I, the man, have brought here a little of the Red Flower which you, dogs, fear.”
He flung the fire pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in terror before the leaping flames.
Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit and crackled,and whirled it above his head among the cowering wolves.
“Thou art the master,” said Bagheera in an undertone. “Save Akela from the death. He was ever your friend.”
Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and quiver.
“Good! ” said Mowgli, staring round slowly. “I see that you are dogs. I go from you to my own people—if they be my own people. The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship. But I will be more merciful than you are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray you to men as you have betrayed me.” He kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. “There shall be no war between any of us in the pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go.” He strode forward to where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin. Bagheera followed in case of accidents. “Up, dog! ” Mowgli cried. “Up, when a man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze! ”
Shere Khan’s ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes, for the blazing branch was very near.
“This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down your gullet! ” He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear.
“Pah! Singed jungle cat—go now! But remember when next I come to the Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan’s hide on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will not kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I think that you will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though you were somebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out—thus! Go! ” The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and Mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling with the sparks burning their fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli’s part. Then something began to hurt Mowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.
“What is it? What is it?” he said. “I do not wish to leave the jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?”“No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use,” said Bagheera.“Now I know you are a man, and a man’s cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to you henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears.” So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.
“Now,” he said, “I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to my mother.” And he went to the cave where she lived with Father Wolf, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably.
“Ye will not forget me?” said Mowgli.
“Never while we can follow a trail,” said the cubs. “Come to the foot of the hill when you are a man, and we will talk to you; and we will come into the croplands to play with you by night.”
“Come soon! ” said Father Wolf. “Oh, wise little frog, come again soon;for we be old, your mother and I.”
“Come soon,” said Mother Wolf, “little naked son of mine. For, listen,child of man, I loved you more than ever I loved my cubs.”
“I will surely come,” said Mowgli. “And when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan’s hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them in the jungle never to forget me! ”
The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside alone, to meet those mysterious things that are called men.
第二章 蟒蛇卡阿捕猎
导读
本章又回到了莫哥里被迫离开西奥尼狼群之前，当时老棕熊巴洛很喜欢聪明的莫哥里，黑豹巴格西拉把莫哥里当成宝贝。
巴洛教他丛林法则，使他练得脚下无声，眼透黑夜，牙齿锋利，耳听穴中风，上树像游泳，游泳又像跑步。教他区别好坏树枝；教他离地面五十英尺时怎样礼貌地和野蜜蜂招呼；打扰了蝙蝠怎样道歉；在陌生者的领域里打猎如何喊叫等等。有时候，莫哥里为上百遍相同的练习感到厌倦，因此，挨巴洛的打是避免不了的，虽然巴洛不舍得，把莫哥里视为宝贝的巴格西拉也非常心疼。两人为此事常常争执。
人娃莫哥里也表示极为不满，甚至有时骂巴洛是肥棕熊，老师不顾莫哥里对自己的伤害，继续教育他。有次，莫哥里挨打后，和猴子玩时，拿猴子的话向巴洛示威。巴格西拉觉得很丢脸，责怪他，告诉他，那是些什么都吃、没有法律的种族。莫哥里说巴洛打他时，只有猴子同情他，给他吃的，和他做朋友，并说他会成为他们的首领。棕熊非常气愤，认为那些猴群没自己的语言，用在树上偷听的话交流，没有头领，也没有记忆，只是在不停地吹牛，假装很了不起。他们是被丛林驱逐出去的。动物从来不跟他们来往，根本不去他们生活的地方，没人注意他们。巴洛告诉莫哥里丛林兽民不允许和猴子来往。巴格西拉也表示同意。莫哥里建议巴格西拉到水池里
可是，猴子们已经发现莫哥里会用小树枝编起来挡风，就决定要捉住他，并让他教他们，使其他动物嫉妒。这样猴群就可以成为丛林最聪明、有首领的群体。因此，即使人娃经两位老师的教育提醒、警告而感到内疚，暗下决心不和猴子们来往了，可居心叵测的猴子为抓住莫哥里，已悄悄地跟在巴洛、巴格西拉和莫哥里后面等待时机。
当一天中午午睡时，莫哥里感觉有树枝和粗壮的手在脸上拍打，巴洛在地上无可奈何地吼叫，猴子们揪住莫哥里从这个树枝到另一树枝跳跃狂奔。对于巴格西拉表现的愤怒猴群们很高兴。莫哥里还是被抓住了。
莫哥里知道要立刻捎话给巴洛和巴格西拉，按猴子前进的速度，朋友已被远抛在后面。他抬头看到鸢鹰兰恩正在林子上方回旋，寻找着猎物。兰恩飞下树梢发现猴子们正抬着长着棕色小脸的莫哥里。莫哥里用兰恩的啸声让他去告诉西奥尼狼群的巴洛和会议岩的巴格西拉，并要兰恩记住自己的路线。兰恩点点头，快速飞向远方，并不时回头盯着莫哥里护送者前进时晃动的树枝。
与此同时，巴洛和巴格西拉因为人娃被抓，一个暴跳如雷，一个平时没爬过树竟然爬了上去，但树枝因载不了身体的重量而被折断。他俩一边一个喘着气追赶，一边一个后悔对莫哥里关于猴群的教育提醒得晚了。当想象着莫哥里也许这会儿被扔下树，已经死掉，就狠狠地抓自己的耳朵，呜咽着。但这样又有什么用呢？巴洛想起了蟒蛇卡阿。卡阿会上树，猴子们都惧怕他。他们商量决定给卡阿许多山羊让他去救莫哥里。这样商量后就动身去找卡阿。
找到卡阿的时候，卡阿正躺在暖暖的岩石上欣赏自己美丽的蛇皮。巴洛和巴格西拉上前打了招呼，开始议论猴子们怎么骂卡阿是“没脚的黄土虫，还害怕公山羊”。卡阿火气很大，然后巴洛两位就把人娃被猴子们抓走的事情告诉了卡阿，并且说在所有丛林的兽民们中，那些猴子只惧怕卡阿。这时兰恩俯冲下来告诉他们莫哥里被猴子们抓到寒穴了，他已让蝙蝠在天黑时盯着。巴格西拉为了表示自己的谢意就许诺下次打猎会给兰恩留下猎物的头。
卡阿决定和他们一起去救人娃。他们三个喘着气，尽管饿着，还是拼着命全速前进，走了大半夜才到达寒穴。
在寒穴——一个古老的曾经有国王住过的废城里，猴子们正在为抓住莫哥里而扬扬得意，根本没想到莫哥里的朋友们会找到这里来救他。
莫哥里与猴子们的生活截然不同。当他要睡觉的时候，猴子们却要跳舞；当他要吃饭的时候，猴子们却在拿果子的路上打得不可开交；他捡了些藤条教猴子编挡风雨的东西(这正是猴此抓他的原因)，但几分钟后猴子们就失去了兴趣。莫哥里真正体验到了自己与猴子们的不同，感到很愧疚，他只想回家。
在城墙的废水沟里，两位好友正盯着天上的一片云，思索着作战方法。卡阿选了西面一堵墙，等待时机，那里的斜坡对他很有利。当云遮住月亮时，黑豹几乎无声息地向猴子们扑击，正围坐在莫哥里周围五六十圈的猴群朝黑豹咬、抓、拉、扯。另几只猴子把莫哥里从破屋顶的窟窿推下去。
陷在下面的人娃透过浮雕镂空听到激烈的打斗声和巴格西拉从敌人堆里往后退又突然开始猛攻的嘶哑叫声，于是，人娃建议巴格西拉到水池里。这让黑豹安下心来，莫哥里还安然无恙，黑豹增添了勇气，拼命朝着水池前进。这时，巴洛已大喘着气赶来了，摊开前爪拍打起猴子。一会儿，在水池里的巴格西拉看到巴洛已被猴群压得快窒息了，以为卡阿到最后关头退缩了，而自己上去也会和巴洛一样，只有卡阿才能救他们，于是绝望地发出了蛇的密语求救。
卡阿没有像豹子认为的那样，他只是不想失去优势的位置。蛇的全身力量和体重都在头部表现出来，犹如锤子、长矛一样狠。战争的吼声传遍整个树林时，卡阿通过头部一击打向猴群的要害，敌人溃散了。一代代的猴子都听长辈讲到过卡阿的厉害。莫哥里被猴子推了下去
猴子们跑到城墙的屋顶上，伤得不轻的巴洛才松了口气，巴格西拉从水池里跳上来，建议要立刻救出人娃，猴子会反攻过来的。卡阿不以为然，没有他的命令猴子们都不敢动弹。废城安静了。
他们三个一起来到莫哥里落入的地方，卡阿用头部六次撞击裂缝里的屏风，在一阵灰尘和垃圾中人娃跳了出来。
巴洛抢着问莫哥里是否受了伤，巴格西拉很冷淡地建议莫哥里感谢卡阿。卡阿救了他们三个的性命。
莫哥里诚恳地告诉卡阿自己的猎物就是卡阿的，如果有危险，他就是拼了性命也会去救他、巴洛和巴格西拉的。
卡阿很欣赏莫哥里的勇敢和有礼貌，让他和他的朋友们快点离开
这里。
月落了，城墙及城墙垛上挤着颤抖的猴子，巴洛喝着水，巴格西拉梳理着自己的皮毛，卡阿展开长长的身躯，一会儿摆成三角形、一会儿变成四边形、五边形、八边形。然后卡阿张着可怕的大嘴，发出蜕皮的沙沙声。
莫哥里提醒巴洛和巴格西拉该走了，他们议论着蟒蛇的可怕。人娃只觉得卡阿傻傻地转着圈，鼻子都破了，没什么厉害的。
巴格西拉听他这么说很生气，告诉莫哥里他们的伤都是因为莫哥里，他们为了救他，浪费了原本打猎时光，受了伤，掉了毛，还失去了自尊，他们不得不向蟒蛇寻求保护。而这一切都是因莫哥里不听劝告和可恶的猴子们玩耍引发的。
虽然莫哥里很愧疚，可是依据丛林法则规定，他必须受到惩罚。虽然巴洛非常不情愿那样做。
丛林法则不能违背，于是，巴格西拉爱惜地拍了人娃几下，这几下对豹子来虽说是轻的不能再轻，但对七岁的人娃确是一顿痛打。
然后巴格西拉背起莫哥里回家了。法则的一个好处是：惩罚会解决所有纠缠不清的恩怨。懂事的莫哥里睡在巴格西拉的背上，直到回到他的狼穴家中还没有醒。
His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo’s pride.
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.
If you find that the Bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten seasons before.
Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother,For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.
“There is none like to me! ” says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small.
Let him think and be still.Maxims of Baloo
All that is told here happened some time before Mowgli was turned out of the Seeonee Wolf Pack, or revenged himself on Shere Khan the tiger. It was in the days when Baloo was teaching him the Law of the Jungle.The big, serious, old brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil, for the young wolves will only learn as much of the Law of the Jungle as applies to their own pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they can repeat the Hunting Verse—“Feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white teeth, all these things are the marks of our brothers except Tabaqui the Jackal and the Hyaena whom we hate.” But Mowgli, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this.Sometimes Bagheera the Black Panther would come lounging through the jungle to see how his pet was getting on, and would purr with his head against a tree while Mowgli recited the day’s lesson to Baloo. The boy could climb almost as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well as he could run. So Baloo, the Teacher of the Law, taught him the Wood and Water Laws: how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty feet above ground; what to say to Mang the Bat when he disturbed him in the branches at midday; and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools before he splashed down among them.None of the Jungle People like being disturbed, and all are very ready to fly at an intruder. Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers’ Hunting Call, which must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle-people hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, “Give me leave to hunt here because I am hungry.” And the answer is, “Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure.”
All this will show you how much Mowgli had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired of saying the same thing over a hundred times. But, as Baloo said to Bagheera, one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and run off in a temper, “A man’s cub is a man’s cub, and he must learn all the Law of the Jungle.”
“But think how small he is,” said the Black Panther, who would have spoiled Mowgli if he had had his own way. “How can his little head carry all your long talk?”
“Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No. That is why I teach him these things, and that is why I hit him, very softly, when he forgets.”
“Softly! What dost you know of softness, old Iron-feet?” Bagheera grunted. “His face is all bruised today by your —softness. Ugh.”
“Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance,” Baloo answered very earnestly. “I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet,except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle. Is not that worth a little beating?”
“Well, look to it then that you dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree trunk to sharpen your blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it” —Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—“still I should like to know.”
“I will call Mowgli and he shall say them—if he will. Come, Little Brother! ”
“My head is ringing like a bee tree,” said a sullen little voice over their heads, and Mowgli slid down a tree trunk very angry and indignant, adding as he reached the ground: “I come for Bagheera and not for you, fat old Baloo! ”
“That is all one to me,” said Baloo, though he was hurt and grieved.“Tell Bagheera, then, the Master Words of the Jungle that I have taught you this day.”
“Master Words for which people?” said Mowgli, delighted to show off.“The jungle has many tongues. I know them all.”
“A little you knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People, then—great scholar.”
“We be of one blood, you and I,” said Mowgli, giving the words the Bear accent which all the Hunting People use.
“Good. Now for the birds.”
Mowgli repeated, with the Kite’s whistle at the end of the sentence.
“Now for the Snake-People,” said Bagheera.
The answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and Mowgli kicked up his feet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped on to Bagheera’s back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on the glossy skin and making the worst faces he could think of at Baloo.
“There—there! That was worth a little bruise,” said the brown bear tenderly. “Some day you will remember me.” Then he turned aside to tell Bagheera how he had begged the Master Words from Hathi the Wild Elephant,who knows all about these things, and how Hathi had taken Mowgli down to a pool to get the Snake Word from a water-snake, because Baloo could not pronounce it, and how Mowgli was now reasonably safe against all accidents in the jungle, because neither snake, bird, nor beast would hurt him.
“No one then is to be feared,” Baloo wound up, patting his big furry stomach with pride.
“Except his own tribe,” said Bagheera, under his breath; and then aloud to Mowgli, “Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all this dancing up and down?”
Mowgli had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at Bagheera’s shoulder fur and kicking hard. When the two listened to him he was shouting at the top of his voice, “And so I shall have a tribe of my own, and lead them through the branches all day long.”
“What is this new folly, little dreamer of dreams?” said Bagheera.
“Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old Baloo,” Mowgli went on. “They have promised me this. Ah! ”
“Whoof! ” Baloo’s big paw scooped Mowgli off Bagheera’s back, and as the boy lay between the big fore-paws he could see the Bear was angry.
“Mowgli,” said Baloo, “you have been talking with the Bandar-log—the Monkey People.”
Mowgli looked at Bagheera to see if the Panther was angry too, and Bagheera’s eyes were as hard as jade stones.
“You have been with the Monkey People—the gray apes—the people without a law—the eaters of everything. That is great shame.”
“When Baloo hurt my head,” said Mowgli (he was still on his back), “I went away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and had pity on me.No one else cared.” He snuffled a little.
“The pity of the Monkey People! ” Baloo snorted. “The stillness of the mountain stream! The cool of the summer sun! And then, man-cub?”
“And then, and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to eat, and they—they carried me in their arms up to the top of the trees and said I was their blood brother except that I had no tail, and should be their leader some day.”
“They have no leader,” said Bagheera. “They lie. They have always lied.”
“They were very kind and bade me come again. Why have I never been taken among the Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I do. They do not hit me with their hard paws. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo,let me up! I will play with them again.”
“Listen, man-cub,” said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. “I have taught you all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle—except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees. They have no law.They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them.We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast you ever heard me speak of the Bandar-log till today?”
“No,” said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo had finished.
“The Jungle-people put them out of their mouths and out of their minds.They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads.”
He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.
“The Monkey-People are forbidden,” said Baloo, “forbidden to the Jungle-people. Remember.”
“Forbidden,” said Bagheera, “but I still think Baloo should have warned you against them.”
“I—I? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. The Monkey People! Faugh! ”
A fresh shower came down on their heads and the two trotted away,taking Mowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-people to cross each other’s path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger,or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-people to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves,and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-people could see them. They were always just going to have a leader, and laws and customs of their own,but they never did, because their memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they compromised things by making up a saying, “What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will think later,” and that comforted them a great deal. None of the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none of the beasts would notice them, and that was why they were so pleased when Mowgli came to play with them, and they heard how angry Baloo was.
They never meant to do any more—the Bandar-log never mean anything at all; but one of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and he told all the others that Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in the tribe,because he could weave sticks together for protection from the wind; so, if they caught him, they could make him teach them. Of course Mowgli, as a woodcutter’s child, inherited all sorts of instincts, and used to make little huts of fallen branches without thinking how he came to do it. The Monkey-People,watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful. This time, they said, they were really going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the jungle —so wise that everyone else would notice and envy them.Therefore they followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jungle very quietly till it was time for the midday nap, and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of himself, slept between the Panther and the Bear, resolving to have no more to do with the Monkey People.
The next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and arms—hard, strong, little hands—and then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as
试读结束[说明：试读内容隐藏了图片]