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"Let Gooja Singh be your messenger!" said I. And at that they turned on Gooja Singh, and some of them went and dragged him forward, he resisting with arms and feet. They set him down before me. "Say the word," said they, "and he shall be beaten!" So I got on my feet again and asked whether they were soldiers or monkey-folk, to fall thus suddenly on one of their number, and he a superior.
It is ever well to think twice before speaking once, for thus mistakes die stillborn. Only the monkey-folk thrive on quick answers is it not so? Thou art a man of many inches of thew and sinew Hey, but thou art a man! If the heart within those great ribs of thine is true as thine arms are strong I shall be fortunate to have thee for a servant!" "Aye!" said the Afridi. "But what are words?
"Tell us, Langur Dass," they asked, mocking the ragged, dejected looking creature, "If thy name speaks truth, thou art brother to many monkey-folk, and who knows the jungle better than thou or they? None but the monkey-folk and thou canst talk with my lord the elephant. Hai! We have seen thee do it, Langur Dass. How is it that when we go hunting, thou art afraid to come?"
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.
"Hanuman should have been thy master!" jeered the Risaldar. "So run the bandar-log, the monkey-folk!" But the priest had no time to answer him. He was half frantic with the sickening fear of a father for his only son. He returned ten minutes later, panting, and more scared than ever. "Go, take thy white woman," he exclaimed, "and give me my son back!" "Nay, priest!
"I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees. They have no law. They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance.
Lord John made a sign to him that he should wait for an answer and then he turned to us. "Well, it's up to you to say what you will do," said he; "for my part I have a score to settle with these monkey-folk, and if it ends by wiping them off the face of the earth I don't see that the earth need fret about it. I'm goin' with our little red pals and I mean to see them through the scrap.
Skag wished he could chant like the priests, for the monkey-folk. He wished he had many baskets of chapattis to spread out upon the grasses for them. . . . As he sat, face-lifted, he heard that tiger-cough again. The monkeys huddled a second it was panic then they melted from sight. It was like the swift blowing away one by one, of the top papers of a deep pile on a desk.
Morning found them early astir and at work. Together they traversed the tropic-seeming woods, aflame with brilliant flowers, dank with ferns and laced with twining lianas. In the treetops strange trees, fruit laden parrakeets and flashing green and crimson birds of paradise disturbed the little monkey-folk that chattered at the intruders.
He reads only the newspapers and magazines that tell him what he wants to be told, listens only to the biologists who tell him that he is the finest product of the struggle for existence, and herds only with his own kind, where, like the monkey-folk, they teeter up and down and tell one another how great they are. In the course of his life godlike he ignores the flesh until he gets to table.
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