Khan!"

The last words rang out like silver trumpets, and Hathi's three sons
rolled forward half a pace, though there was no need. Shere Khan slunk
away, not daring to growl, for he knew--what every one else knows--that
when the last comes to the last, Hathi is the Master of the Jungle.

"What is this right Shere Khan speaks of?" Mowgli whispered in
Bagheera's ear. "To kill Man is always, shameful. The Law says so. And
yet Hathi says----"

"Ask him. I do not know, Little Brother. Right or no right, if Hathi had
not spoken I would have taught that lame butcher his lesson. To come
to the Peace Rock fresh from a kill of Man--and to boast of it--is a
jackal's trick. Besides, he tainted the good water."

Mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his courage, because no one cared
to address Hathi directly, and then he cried: "What is Shere Khan's
right, O Hathi?" Both banks echoed his words, for all the People of the
Jungle are intensely curious, and they had just seen something that none
except Baloo, who looked very thoughtful, seemed to understand.

"It is an old tale," said Hathi; "a tale older than the Jungle. Keep
silence along the banks and I will tell that tale."

There was a minute or two of pushing a shouldering among the pigs
and the buffalo, and then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after
another, "We wait," and Hathi strode forward, till he was nearly
knee-deep in the pool by the Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and
yellow-tusked though he was, he looked what the Jungle knew him to
be--their master.

"Ye know, children," he began, "that of all things ye most fear Man;"
and there was a mutter of agreement.

"This tale touches thee, Little Brother," said Bagheera to Mowgli.

"I? I am of the Pack--a hunter of the Free People," Mowgli answered.
"What have I to do with Man?"

"And ye do not know why ye fear Man?" Hathi went on. "This is the
reason. In the beginning of the Jungle, and none know when that was, we
of the Jungle walked together, having no fear of one another. In those
days there was no drought, and leaves and flowers and fruit grew on the
same tree, and we ate nothing at all except leaves and flowers and grass
and fruit and bark."

"I am glad I was not born in those days," said Bagheera. "Bark is only
good to sharpen claws."

"And the Lord of the Jungle was Tha, the First of the Elephants. He drew
the Jungle out of deep waters with his trunk; and where he made furrows
in the ground with his t