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

"To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better
sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf.
Now to Baloo's word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly
killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man's cub
according to the Law. Is it difficult?"

There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: "What matter?
He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What
harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is
the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted." And then came Akela's
deep bay, crying: "Look well--look well, O Wolves!"

Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did
not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At
last they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only
Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli's own wolves were left. Shere
Khan roared still in the night, for he was very angry that Mowgli
had not been handed over to him.

"Ay, roar well," said Bagheera, under his whiskers, "for the
time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to
another tune, or I know nothing of man."

"It was well done," said Akela. "Men and their cubs are very
wise. He may be a help in time."

"Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the
Pack forever," said Bagheera.

Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to
every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he
gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves
and a new leader comes up--to be killed in his turn.

"Take him away," he said to Father Wolf, "and train him as
befits one of the Free People."

And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack
for the price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.


Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and
only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the
wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so many
books. He grew up with the cubs, though they, of course, were
grown wolves almost before he was a child. And Father Wolf taught
him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till
every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air,
every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat's