er-blister in a whirlpool, which would break like a
water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled dogs, each striving to
get back to the centre; here would be a single wolf borne down by two or
three dholes, laboriously dragging them forward, and sinking the while;
here a yearling cub would be held up by the pressure round him, though
he had been killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage,
rolled over and over, snapping, and passing on; and in the middle of the
thickest press, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole, forgetting everything
else, would be manoeuvring for first hold till they were whirled away by
a rush of furious fighters. Once Mowgli passed Akela, a dhole on either
flank, and his all but toothless jaws closed over the loins of a third;
and once he saw Phao, his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging
the unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could finish him. But the
bulk of the fight was blind flurry and smother in the dark; hit, trip,
and tumble, yelp, groan, and worry-worry-worry, round him and behind him
and above him. As the night wore on, the quick, giddy-go-round motion
increased. The dholes were cowed and afraid to attack the stronger
wolves, but did not yet dare to run away. Mowgli felt that the end was
coming soon, and contented himself with striking merely to cripple. The
yearlings were growing bolder; there was time now and again to breathe,
and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker of the knife would
sometimes turn a dog aside.

"The meat is very near the bone," Gray Brother yelled. He was bleeding
from a score of flesh-wounds.

"But the bone is yet to be cracked," said Mowgli. "Eowawa! THUS do we do
in the Jungle!" The red blade ran like a flame along the side of a dhole
whose hind-quarters were hidden by the weight of a clinging wolf.

"My kill!" snorted the wolf through his wrinkled nostrils. "Leave him to
me."

"Is thy stomach still empty, Outlier?" said Mowgli. Won-tolla was
fearfully punished, but his grip had paralysed the dhole, who could not
turn round and reach him.

"By the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli, with a bitter laugh, "it is
the tailless one!" And indeed it was the big bay-coloured leader.

"It is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis," Mowgli went on
philosophically, wiping the blood out of his eyes, "unless one has also
killed the Outlier; and it is in my stomach that this Won-tolla kills
thee."

A dhole leaped to his leader's aid; but befor