herd, was a thing that all tall-antlered
young bucks took a delight in, precisely because they knew that at any
moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap upon them and bear them down.
But now all that life-and-death fun was ended, and the Jungle People
came up, starved and weary, to the shrunken river,--tiger, bear, deer,
buffalo, and pig, all together,--drank the fouled waters, and hung above
them, too exhausted to move off.

The deer and the pig had tramped all day in search of something better
than dried bark and withered leaves. The buffaloes had found no wallows
to be cool in, and no green crops to steal. The snakes had left the
Jungle and come down to the river in the hope of finding a stray frog.
They curled round wet stones, and never offered to strike when the nose
of a rooting pig dislodged them. The river-turtles had long ago been
killed by Bagheera, cleverest of hunters, and the fish had buried
themselves deep in the dry mud. Only the Peace Rock lay across the
shallows like a long snake, and the little tired ripples hissed as they
dried on its hot side.

It was here that Mowgli came nightly for the cool and the companionship.
The most hungry of his enemies would hardly have cared for the boy then,
His naked hide made him seem more lean and wretched than any of his
fellows. His hair was bleached to tow colour by the sun; his ribs stood
out like the ribs of a basket, and the lumps on his knees and elbows,
where he was used to track on all fours, gave his shrunken limbs the
look of knotted grass-stems. But his eye, under his matted forelock, was
cool and quiet, for Bagheera was his adviser in this time of trouble,
and told him to go quietly, hunt slowly, and never, on any account, to
lose his temper.

"It is an evil time," said the Black Panther, one furnace-hot evening,
"but it will go if we can live till the end. Is thy stomach full,
Man-cub?"

"There is stuff in my stomach, but I get no good of it. Think you,
Bagheera, the Rains have forgotten us and will never come again?"

"Not I! We shall see the mohwa in blossom yet, and the little fawns all
fat with new grass. Come down to the Peace Rock and hear the news. On my
back, Little Brother."

"This is no time to carry weight. I can still stand alone, but--indeed
we be no fatted bullocks, we two."

Bagheera looked along his ragged, dusty flank and whispered. "Last night
I killed a bullock under the yoke. So low was I brought that I think I
should not ha