mise of Tha. He will not take
away my Night?' And Tha said: 'The one Night is thine, as I have said,
but there is a price to pay. Thou hast taught Man to kill, and he is no
slow learner.'

"The First of the Tigers said: 'He is here under my foot, and his back
is broken. Let the Jungle know I have killed Fear.'

"Then Tha laughed, and said: 'Thou hast killed one of many, but thou
thyself shalt tell the Jungle--for thy Night is ended.'

"So the day came; and from the mouth of the cave went out another
Hairless One, and he saw the kill in the path, and the First of the
Tigers above it, and he took a pointed stick----"

"They throw a thing that cuts now," said Ikki, rustling down the bank;
for Ikki was considered uncommonly good eating by the Gonds--they called
him Ho-Igoo--and he knew something of the wicked little Gondee axe that
whirls across a clearing like a dragon-fly.

"It was a pointed stick, such as they put in the foot of a pit-trap,"
said Hathi, "and throwing it, he struck the First of the Tigers deep in
the flank. Thus it happened as Tha said, for the First of the Tigers ran
howling up and down the Jungle till he tore out the stick, and all the
Jungle knew that the Hairless One could strike from far off, and they
feared more than before. So it came about that the First of the Tigers
taught the Hairless One to kill--and ye know what harm that has since
done to all our peoples--through the noose, and the pitfall, and the
hidden trap, and the flying stick and the stinging fly that comes out of
white smoke [Hathi meant the rifle], and the Red Flower that drives us
into the open. Yet for one night in the year the Hairless One fears the
Tiger, as Tha promised, and never has the Tiger given him cause to be
less afraid. Where he finds him, there he kills him, remembering how the
First of the Tigers was made ashamed. For the rest, Fear walks up and
down the Jungle by day and by night."

"Ahi! Aoo!" said the deer, thinking of what it all meant to them.

"And only when there is one great Fear over all, as there is now, can we
of the Jungle lay aside our little fears, and meet together in one place
as we do now."

"For one night only does Man fear the Tiger?" said Mowgli.

"For one night only," said Hathi.

"But I--but we--but all the Jungle knows that Shere Khan kills Man twice
and thrice in a moon."

"Even so. THEN he springs from behind and turns his head aside as he
strikes, for he is full of fear. If Man l