Kaa said nothing , but , strive as Bagheera might , the huge Rock-python held level with him . When they came to a hill stream , Bagheera gained , because he bounded across while Kaa swam , his head and two feet of his neck clearing the water , but on level ground Kaa made up the distance . `` By the Broken Lock that freed me , '' said Bagheera , when twilight had fallen , `` thou art no slow goer ! '' `` I am hungry , '' said Kaa . `` Besides , they called me speckled frog . '' `` Worm -- earth-worm , and yellow to boot . '' `` All one . Let us go on , '' and Kaa seemed to pour himself along the ground , finding the shortest road with his steady eyes , and keeping to it . In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking of Mowgli 's friends at all . They had brought the boy to the Lost City , and were very much pleased with themselves for the time . Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before , and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid . Some king had built it long ago on a little hill . You could still trace the stone causeways that led up to the ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn , rusted hinges . Trees had grown into and out of the walls ; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed , and wild creepers hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps . A great roofless palace crowned the hill , and the marble of the courtyards and the fountains was split , and stained with red and green , and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king 's elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees . From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness ; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met ; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells once stood , and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides . The monkeys called the place their city , and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest . And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them . They would sit in circles on the hall of the king 's council chamber , and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men ; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner , and forget where they had hidden them , and fight and cry in scuffling crowds , and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king 's garden , where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall . They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms , but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not ; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did .
They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy , and then they fought over it , and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout : `` There is no one XXXXX the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log . ''
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