Mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry, and he roamed through the empty city giving the Strangers" Hunting Call from time to time, but no one answered him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed. “All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true,” he thought to himself. “They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders——nothing but foolish words and little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jungle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is better than chasing silly rose leaves with the Bandar-log.”
No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinching him to make him grateful. He set his teeth and said nothing, but went with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half-full of rain water. There was a ruined summer-house of white marble in the center of the terrace, built for queens dead a hundred years ago.The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the underground passage from the palace by which the queens used to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble tracery——beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the ground like black velvet embroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mowgli could not help laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave them. “We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle！ We all say so, and so it must be true,” they shouted. “Now as you are a new listener and can carry our words back to the Jungle-People so that they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our most excellent selves.”Mowgli made no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speakers singing the praises of the Bandar-log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would all shout together: “This is true; we all say so.” Mowgli nodded and blinked, and said “Yes” when they asked him a question, and his head spun with the noise. “Tabaqui the Jackal must have bitten all these people,” he said to himself,“and now they have madness. Certainly this is dewanee, the madness. Do they never go to sleep？ Now there is a cloud coming to cover that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in the darkness. But I am tired.”
That same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined ditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well howdangerous the Monkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to runany risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, andfew in the jungle care for those odds.
“I will go to the west wall,” Kaa whispered, “and come downswiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. They will not throwthemselves upon my back in their hundreds, but——”
“I know it,” said Bagheera. “Would that Baloo were here, butwe must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go tothe terrace. They hold some sort of council there over the boy.”
“Good hunting,” said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the westwall. That happened to be the least ruined of any, and the big snake wasdelayed awhile before he could find a way up the stones.The cloud hidthe moon, and as Mowgli wondered what would come next he heardBagheera"s light feet on the terrace. The Black Panther had raced up theslope almost without a sound and was striking——he knew better thanto waste time in biting——right and left among the monkeys, who wereseated round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl offright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling kicking bodiesbeneath him, a monkey shouted: “There is only one here！ Kill him！
Kill.” A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing,and pulling,closed over Bagheera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged himup the wall of the summerhouse and pushed him through the hole of thebroken dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for thefall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall,and landed on his feet.
“Stay there,” shouted the monkeys, “till we have killed yourfriends, and later we will play with you——if the Poison-People leave youalive.
”
“We be of one blood, you and I,” said Mowgli, quickly giving theSnake"s Call. He could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish all roundhim and gave the Call a second time, to make sure.
“Even ssso！ Down hoods all！” said half a dozen low voices(every ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling place of snakes, andthe old summerhouse was alive with cobras). “Stand still, Little Brother,for your feet may do us harm.”
Mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through the open workand listening to the furious din of the fight round the Black Panther——the yells and chatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera"s deep, hoarse coughas he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of hisenemies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was fighting for hislife.
“Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come alone,”
Mowgli thought. And then he called aloud: “To the tank, Bagheera.Rollto the water tanks. Roll and plunge！ Get to the water！
”
Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe gave himnew courage. He worked his way desperately, inch by inch,straight for thereservoirs, halting in silence. Then from the ruined wall nearest the junglerose up the rumbling war-shout of Baloo. The old Bear had done his best,but he could not come before. “Bagheera,” he shouted, “I am here.