alls and the empty houses stopped
their cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the city Mowgli heard
Bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up from the tank. Then the
clamor broke out again. The monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They
clung around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they
skipped along the battlements, while Mowgli, dancing in the summerhouse,
put his eye to the screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front
teeth, to show his derision and contempt.

"Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more," Bagheera gasped.
"Let us take the man-cub and go. They may attack again."

"They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!" Kaa hissed, and
the city was silent once more. "I could not come before, Brother, but I
think I heard thee call"--this was to Bagheera.

"I--I may have cried out in the battle," Bagheera answered. "Baloo, art
thou hurt?

"I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little
bearlings," said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. "Wow! I
am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives--Bagheera and I."

"No matter. Where is the manling?"

"Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out," cried Mowgli. The curve of the
broken dome was above his head.

"Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will crush our
young," said the cobras inside.

"Hah!" said Kaa with a chuckle, "he has friends everywhere, this
manling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O Poison People. I break
down the wall."

Kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble
tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head
to get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear
of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows,
nose-first. The screen-work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and
rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself between
Baloo and Bagheera--an arm around each big neck.

"Art thou hurt?" said Baloo, hugging him softly.

"I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have handled
ye grievously, my Brothers! Ye bleed."

"Others also," said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the
monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.

"It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride of all
little frogs!" whimpered Baloo.

"Of that we shall judge later," said Bagheera, in a dry voice that
Mowgli did not at all like. "But here i