"Children's Books - Kipling, Rudyard - Jungle Book, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Children's Books)

villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him?
Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli
--for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee--the time will come when
thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee."

"But what will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.

The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf
may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But
as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must
bring them to the Pack Council, which is generally held once a
month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may identify
them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where they
please, and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is
accepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The
punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if you
think for a minute you will see that this must be so.

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then
on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother
Wolf to the Council Rock--a hilltop covered with stones and
boulders where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray
Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out
at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves
of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could
handle a buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought
they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had
fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he had been
beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs of
men. There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled
over each other in the center of the circle where their mothers
and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly
up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to his place on
noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push her cub far out
into the moonlight to be sure that he had not been overlooked.
Akela from his rock would cry: "Ye know the Law--ye know the
Law. Look well, O Wolves!" And the anxious mothers would take up
the call: "Look--look well, O Wolves!"

At last--and Mother Wolf's neck bristles lifted as the time
came--Father Wolf pushed "Mowgli the Frog," as they called him,
into the center, where he sat laughing and playing with some
pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.

Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with
the monotonous cry: "Look well!" A muffled roar came up from
behind the rocks--the voice of Shere Khan crying: "The cub is
mine. Give him to me. What have the Free People to do with a
man's cub?" Akela never even twitched his ears. All he said was:
"Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the