lghai look to it. Ye need never show
a hand's-breadth of hide till the fields are naked. Let in the Jungle,
Hathi!"

"There will be no killing? My tusks were red at the Sack of the Fields
of Bhurtpore, and I would not wake that smell again."

"Nor I. I do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean earth. Let
them go and find a fresh lair. They cannot stay here. I have seen and
smelled the blood of the woman that gave me food--the woman whom they
would have killed but for me. Only the smell of the new grass on their
door-steps can take away that smell. It burns in my mouth. Let in the
Jungle, Hathi!"

"Ah!" said Hathi. "So did the scar of the stake burn on my hide till we
watched the villages die under in the spring growth. Now I see. Thy war
shall be our war. We will let in the jungle!"

Mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath--he was shaking all over with
rage and hate before the place where the elephants had stood was empty,
and Bagheera was looking at him with terror.

"By the Broken Lock that freed me!" said the Black Panther at last. "Art
THOU the naked thing I spoke for in the Pack when all was young?
Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes, speak for me--speak for
Baloo--speak for us all! We are cubs before thee! Snapped twigs under
foot! Fawns that have lost their doe!"

The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset Mowgli altogether, and he
laughed and caught his breath, and sobbed and laughed again, till he had
to jump into a pool to make himself stop. Then he swam round and round,
ducking in and out of the bars of the moonlight like the frog, his
namesake.

By this time Hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one point of
the compass, and were striding silently down the valleys a mile away.
They went on and on for two days' march--that is to say, a long sixty
miles--through the Jungle; and every step they took, and every wave of
their trunks, was known and noted and talked over by Mang and Chil and
the Monkey People and all the birds. Then they began to feed, and fed
quietly for a week or so. Hathi and his sons are like Kaa, the Rock
Python. They never hurry till they have to.

At the end of that time--and none knew who had started it--a rumour went
through the Jungle that there was better food and water to be found in
such and such a valley. The pig--who, of course, will go to the ends of
the earth for a full meal--moved first by companies, scuffling over the
rocks, and the deer foll