I have filled these dogs ' mouths with dirt ; I have tricked them in the broad daylight , and their leader lacks his tail , but here be some few for thee still . Whither shall I drive them ? '' `` I will wait , '' said Won-tolla . `` The night is before me . '' Nearer and nearer came the bay of the Seeonee wolves . `` For the Pack , for the Full Pack it is met ! '' and a bend in the river drove the dholes forward among the sands and shoals opposite the Lairs . Then they saw their mistake . They should have landed half a mile higher up , and rushed the wolves on dry ground . Now it was too late . The bank was lined with burning eyes , and except for the horrible pheeal that had never stopped since sundown , there was no sound in the Jungle . It seemed as though Won-tolla were fawning on them to come ashore ; and `` Turn and take hold ! '' said the leader of the dholes . The entire Pack flung themselves at the shore , threshing and squattering through the shoal water , till the face of the Waingunga was all white and torn , and the great ripples went from side to side , like bow-waves from a boat . Mowgli followed the rush , stabbing and slicing as the dholes , huddled together , rushed up the river-beach in one wave . Then the long fight began , heaving and straining and splitting and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red , wet sands , and over and between the tangled tree-roots , and through and among the bushes , and in and out of the grass clumps ; for even now the dholes were two to one . But they met wolves fighting for all that made the Pack , and not only the short , high , deep-chested , white-tusked hunters of the Pack , but the anxious-eyed lahinis -- the she-wolves of the lair , as the saying is -- fighting for their litters , with here and there a yearling wolf , his first coat still half woolly , tugging and grappling by their sides . A wolf , you must know , flies at the throat or snaps at the flank , while a dhole , by preference , bites at the belly ; so when the dholes were struggling out of the water and had to raise their heads , the odds were with the wolves . On dry land the wolves suffered ; but in the water or ashore , Mowgli 's knife came and went without ceasing . The Four had worried their way to his side .
Gray Brother , crouched between the boy 's knees , was protecting his stomach , while the others guarded his back and either side , or stood over him when the shock of a leaping , yelling XXXXX who had thrown himself full on the steady blade bore him down .
Seeonee Waingunga Whither bow-waves daylight dhole first lahinis she-wolves tree-roots