ock above Phao. Those were days of good
hunting and good sleeping. No stranger cared to break into the jungles
that belonged to Mowgli's people, as they called the Pack, and the young
wolves grew fat and strong, and there were many cubs to bring to the
Looking-over. Mowgli always attended a Looking-over, remembering the
night when a black panther bought a naked brown baby into the pack,
and the long call, "Look, look well, O Wolves," made his heart flutter.
Otherwise, he would be far away in the Jungle with his four brothers,
tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things.

One twilight when he was trotting leisurely across the ranges to give
Akela the half of a buck that he had killed, while the Four jogged
behind him, sparring a little, and tumbling one another over for joy of
being alive, he heard a cry that had never been heard since the bad days
of Shere Khan. It was what they call in the Jungle the pheeal, a hideous
kind of shriek that the jackal gives when he is hunting behind a tiger,
or when there is a big killing afoot. If you can imagine a mixture of
hate, triumph, fear, and despair, with a kind of leer running through
it, you will get some notion of the pheeal that rose and sank and
wavered and quavered far away across the Waingunga. The Four stopped at
once, bristling and growling. Mowgli's hand went to his knife, and he
checked, the blood in his face, his eyebrows knotted.

"There is no Striped One dare kill here," he said.

"That is not the cry of the Forerunner," answered Gray Brother. "It is
some great killing. Listen!"

It broke out again, half sobbing and half chuckling, just as though the
jackal had soft human lips. Then Mowgli drew deep breath, and ran to the
Council Rock, overtaking on his way hurrying wolves of the Pack.
Phao and Akela were on the Rock together, and below them, every nerve
strained, sat the others. The mothers and the cubs were cantering off to
their lairs; for when the pheeal cries it is no time for weak things to
be abroad.

They could hear nothing except the Waingunga rushing and gurgling in
the dark, and the light evening winds among the tree-tops, till suddenly
across the river a wolf called. It was no wolf of the Pack, for they
were all at the Rock. The note changed to a long, despairing bay; and
"Dhole!" it said, "Dhole! dhole! dhole!" They heard tired feet on the
rocks, and a gaunt wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right
fore-paw useless, and his jaws whit