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 claws as it roosted for a while in a tree , and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man . When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept , and ate and went to sleep again . When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools ; and when he wanted honey -LRB- Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat -RRB- he climbed up for it , and that Bagheera showed him how to do . Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call , `` Come along , Little Brother , '' and at first Mowgli would cling like the sloth , but afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape . He took his place at the Council Rock , too , when the Pack met , and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf , the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes , and so he used to stare for fun . At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends , for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats . He would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night , and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts , but he had a mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it , and told him that it was a trap . He loved better than anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the forest , to sleep all through the drowsy day , and at night see how Bagheera did his killing . Bagheera killed right and left as he felt hungry , and so did Mowgli -- with one exception . As soon as he was old enough to understand things , Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull 's life . `` All the jungle is thine , '' said Bagheera , `` and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill ; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old . That is the Law of the Jungle . '' Mowgli obeyed faithfully . And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons , and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat . Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature to be trusted , and that some day he must kill Shere Khan . But though a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour , Mowgli forgot it because he was only a boy -- though he would have called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue . Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle , for as Akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolves of the Pack , who followed him for scraps , a thing Akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his authority to the proper bounds . Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man 's cub .
`` They tell me , '' Shere Khan would say , `` that XXXXX Council ye dare not look him between the eyes . ''
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