who spends
his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till it
actually stares him in the face. But, one year, Baloo's words came true,
and Mowgli saw all the Jungle working under the Law.

It began when the winter Rains failed almost entirely, and Ikki, the
Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild
yams were drying up. Now everybody knows that Ikki is ridiculously
fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very best
and ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said, "What is that to me?"

"Not much NOW," said Ikki, rattling his quills in a stiff, uncomfortable
way, "but later we shall see. Is there any more diving into the deep
rock-pool below the Bee-Rocks, Little Brother?"

"No. The foolish water is going all away, and I do not wish to break my
head," said Mowgli, who, in those days, was quite sure that he knew as
much as any five of the Jungle People put together.

"That is thy loss. A small crack might let in some wisdom." Ikki ducked
quickly to prevent Mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and Mowgli
told Baloo what Ikki had said. Baloo looked very grave, and mumbled
half to himself: "If I were alone I would change my hunting-grounds now,
before the others began to think. And yet--hunting among strangers ends
in fighting; and they might hurt the Man-cub. We must wait and see how
the mohwa blooms."

That spring the mohwa tree, that Baloo was so fond of, never flowered.
The greeny, cream-coloured, waxy blossoms were heat-killed before they
were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood
on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered
heat crept into the heart of the Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and
at last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up
to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank
down and caked over, keeping the last least footmark on their edges as
if it had been cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from
the trees they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered,
clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep
in the Jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering blue
boulders in the bed of the stream.

The birds and the monkey-people went north early in the year, for they
knew what was coming; and the deer and the wild pig broke far away to
the perished fields of the villages, dying someti