mes before the eyes
of men too weak to kill them. Chil, the Kite, stayed and grew fat, for
there was a great deal of carrion, and evening after evening he
brought the news to the beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh
hunting-grounds, that the sun was killing the Jungle for three days'
flight in every direction.

Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale
honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives--honey black
as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for deep-boring
grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new
broods. All the game in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and
Bagheera could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. But
the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle People drink
seldom they must drink deep.

And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture, till at
last the main channel of the Waingunga was the only stream that carried
a trickle of water between its dead banks; and when Hathi, the wild
elephant, who lives for a hundred years and more, saw a long, lean blue
ridge of rock show dry in the very centre of the stream, he knew that he
was looking at the Peace Rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk
and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father before him had proclaimed
it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry
hoarsely; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great circles far and wide,
whistling and shrieking the warning.

By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places
when once the Water Truce has been declared. The reason of this is that
drinking comes before eating. Every one in the Jungle can scramble along
somehow when only game is scarce; but water is water, and when there is
but one source of supply, all hunting stops while the Jungle People go
there for their needs. In good seasons, when water was plentiful, those
who came down to drink at the Waingunga--or anywhere else, for that
matter--did so at the risk of their lives, and that risk made no small
part of the fascination of the night's doings. To move down so cunningly
that never a leaf stirred; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows
that drown all noise from behind; to drink, looking backward over one
shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen
terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well
plumped out, to the admiring