rown 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
colour, from badger-coloured 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 centre 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: 'Ye know the Law--ye 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 Wolfs neck-bristles lifted as the time
came--Father Wolf pushed 'Mowgli the Frog,' as they called him, into
the centre, 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 f