usks, there the rivers ran; and where he struck
with his foot, there rose ponds of good water; and when he blew through
his trunk,--thus,--the trees fell. That was the manner in which the
Jungle was made by Tha; and so the tale was told to me."

"It has not lost fat in the telling," Bagheera whispered, and Mowgli
laughed behind his hand.

"In those days there was no corn or melons or pepper or sugar-cane,
nor were there any little huts such as ye have all seen; and the Jungle
People knew nothing of Man, but lived in the Jungle together, making
one people. But presently they began to dispute over their food, though
there was grazing enough for all. They were lazy. Each wished to eat
where he lay, as sometimes we can do now when the spring rains are good.
Tha, the First of the Elephants, was busy making new jungles and leading
the rivers in their beds. He could not walk in all places; therefore he
made the First of the Tigers the master and the judge of the Jungle, to
whom the Jungle People should bring their disputes. In those days the
First of the Tigers ate fruit and grass with the others. He was as large
as I am, and he was very beautiful, in colour all over like the blossom
of the yellow creeper. There was never stripe nor bar upon his hide in
those good days when this the Jungle was new. All the Jungle People came
before him without fear, and his word was the Law of all the Jungle. We
were then, remember ye, one people.

"Yet upon a night there was a dispute between two bucks--a
grazing-quarrel such as ye now settle with the horns and the
fore-feet--and it is said that as the two spoke together before the
First of the First of the Tigers lying among the flowers, a buck pushed
him with his horns, and the First of the Tigers forgot that he was the
master and judge of the Jungle, and, leaping upon that buck, broke his
neck.

"Till that night never one of us had died, and the First of the Tigers,
seeing what he had done, and being made foolish by the scent of the
blood, ran away into the marshes of the North, and we of the Jungle,
left without a judge, fell to fighting among ourselves; and Tha heard
the noise of it and came back. Then some of us said this and some of us
said that, but he saw the dead buck among the flowers, and asked who
had killed, and we of the Jungle would not tell because the smell of the
blood made us foolish. We ran to and fro in circles, capering and crying
out and shaking our heads. Then Tha