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The 'pod' of seals was surrounded by eight men, each armed with a club about five and a half feet long, the thickness of a baseball bat at one end and three inches in diameter at the other. Behind him, each of the natives had laid his stabbing-knife, skinning-knife, and whetstone. At the word the killing began.
Bagheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to work with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in his hands. "The man and the woman are come safe within eye-shot of Khanhiwara," Bagheera said. "Thy lair mother sent the word back by Chil, the Kite. They found a horse before midnight of the night they were freed, and went very quickly. Is not that well?"
He went away, leaving Mowgli stabbing furiously with his skinning-knife into the earth. Mowgli had never seen human blood in his life before till he had seen, and what meant much more to him smelled Messua's blood on the thongs that bound her. And Messua had been kind to him, and, so far as he knew anything about love, he loved Messua as completely as he hated the rest of mankind.
The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told Mother Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and down the blade of his skinning-knife, the same he had skinned Shere Khan with, they said he had learned something.
For a moment he was stunned, and in that moment Aldous was at his throat. He would have sold the best of his life for the skinning-knife. But he had lost it in gripping Quade. And now he choked with every ounce of strength in him he choked at the thick red neck of his enemy. Quade's hands reached for his own throat. They found it.
"We do not know the Jungle, my son, as as thou knowest," Messua began. "I do not think that I could walk far." "And the men and women would be upon our backs and drag us here again," said the husband. "H'm!" said Mowgli, and he tickled the palm of his hand with the tip of his skinning-knife; "I have no wish to do harm to any one of this village YET. But I do not think they will stay thee.
He tried to run again, and he found that over the level floor of the valley he could make faster time than among the rocks. He went to where he had dropped his rifle. It was gone. He searched for his automatic. That, too, was gone. There was one weapon left a long skinning-knife in one of the panniers near the tepee. As he went for this, he passed two of the men whom he had shot.
A straight blade would have gone from back to chest through muscle and sinew, but the knife which Aldous held scarcely pierced the other's clothes. Not until then did he fully realize the tremendous odds against him. The curved blade of his skinning-knife would not penetrate! His one hope was to cut with it.
Enoch stood up, the skinning-knife in his hand, and looked over the little glade. In a moment his brown eyes filled with tears, which rolled unchastened down his smooth cheeks. "Aye, Nuck, a sorry day for you an' yourn when Jonas Harding met his death here. And a sorry day was it for me, too, lad. I loved him like a brother.
A zebra tail was fashioned into a sheath for his skinning-knife, so that, little by little, he resolved himself back into a condition of savage splendor. He usually did most of my skinning, and that being dirty work, I was disposed to be tolerant with the disgraceful condition of his khaki suit.
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