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But Mowgli, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this. Sometimes Bagheera the Black Panther would come lounging through the jungle to see how his pet was getting on, and would purr with his head against a tree while Mowgli recited the day's lesson to Baloo. The boy could climb almost as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well as he could run.
All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the monkeys yelled in the tank round Bagheera, and Mang the Bat, flying to and fro, carried the news of the great battle over the jungle, till even Hathi the Wild Elephant trumpeted, and, far away, scattered bands of the Monkey-Folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help their comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight roused all the day birds for miles round.
They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. That man-thing is not to be envied. They called me also `yellow fish' was it not?" "Worm worm earth-worm," said Bagheera, "as well as other things which I cannot now say for shame." "We must remind them to speak well of their master. Aaa-ssp! We must help their wandering memories.
As soon as he was old enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull's life. 'All the jungle is thine, said Bagheera, 'and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old.
"I said the Time of New Talk is near," growled the panther, switching his tail. "I hear," Mowgli answered. "Bagheera, why dost thou shake all over? The sun is warm." "That is Ferao, the scarlet woodpecker," said Bagheera. "HE has not forgotten. Now I, too, must remember my song," and he began purring and crooning to himself, harking back dissatisfied again and again.
His renown had not intoxicated him, and he would have been quite unconscious of it had he not sometimes felt that unresponsiveness on the part of others which is the price of glory: anything like jealousy hurt him as if it had been his first discovery of evil. "What is this, Bagheera?" he asks of his friend the panther. "Oh, nothing; only tears," answers Bagheera, who had lived among men.
Bagheera, who did not know much about Kaa, was naturally suspicious. "Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make him see reason." Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther, and they went off to look for Kaa the Rock Python.
"Or for a pledge?" said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his lip. "Well are ye called the Free People!" "No man's cub can run with the people of the jungle," howled Shere Khan. "Give him to me!" "He is our brother in all but blood," Akela went on, "and ye would kill him here! In truth, I have lived too long.
"Bagheera spoke truth," he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle fodder by the window of a hut. "To-morrow is one day both for Akela and for me." Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on the hearth. He saw the husbandman's wife get up and feed it in the night with black lumps.
Then all looked towards Hathi, the wild elephant, but he seemed not to hear. Hathi never does anything till the time comes, and that is one of the reasons why he lives so long. "At such a season as this to kill Man! Was no other game afoot?" said Bagheera scornfully, drawing himself out of the tainted water, and shaking each paw, cat-fashion, as he did so. "I killed for choice not for food."
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