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   THE
   SECOND JUNGLE BOOK




   [Illustration: Rudyard Kipling]




   [Illustration]

   THE
   SECOND JUNGLE BOOK

   BY
     RUDYARD KIPLING

   [Illustration]

   DECORATED BY
   JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING, C.I.E.

   NEW YORK
   THE CENTURY CO.
   1906




   Copyright, 1895, by THE CENTURY CO.

   How Fear Came, The Law of the Jungle;
   The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, a Song of Kabir;
   The Undertakers, a Ripple-song.
   Copyright, 1894, by Bacheller, Johnson & Bacheller.

   Quiquern, "Angutivun tina."
   Copyright, 1895, by Irving Bacheller.

   The Spring Running, The Outsong.
   Copyright, 1895, by John Brisben Walker.

   Letting in the Jungle, Mowgli's Song Against People.
   Copyright, 1894, by Rudyard Kipling.

   Red Dog, Chil's Song.
   Copyright, 1895, by Rudyard Kipling.

   The King's Ankus, The Song of the Little Hunter.
   Copyright, 1895, by The Century Co.

   THE DE VINNE PRESS.




     "_Now these are the Laws of the Jungle,
       and many and mighty are they;
     But the head and the hoof of the Law
       and the haunch and the hump is--Obey!_"




CONTENTS


                                    PAGE

     HOW FEAR CAME                    1

     THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE           29

     THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT     33

     A SONG OF KABIR                 61

     LETTING IN THE JUNGLE           63

     MOWGLI'S SONG AGAINST PEOPLE   112

     THE UNDERTAKERS                115

     A RIPPLE-SONG                  155

     THE KING'S ANKUS               157

     THE SONG OF THE LITTLE HUNTER  191

     QUIQUERN                       193

     "ANGUTIVUN TINA"               234

     RED DOG                        237

     CHIL'S SONG                    281

     THE SPRING RUNNING             283

     THE OUTSONG                    321




   THE
   SECOND JUNGLE BOOK




     The stream is shrunk--the pool is dry,
     And we be comrades, thou and I;
     With fevered jowl and sunken flank
     Each jostling each along the bank;
     And, by one drouthy fear made still,
     Foregoing thought of quest or kill.
     Now 'neath his dam the fawn may see
     The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he,
     And the tall buck, unflinching, note
     The fangs that tore his father's throat.
     _The pools are shrunk--the streams are dry,
     And we be playmates, thou and I,
     Till yonder cloud--Good Hunting!--loose
     The rain that breaks the Water Truce._




[Illustration]

HOW FEAR CAME


The Law of the Jungle--which is by far the oldest law in the
world--has arranged for almost every kind of accident that may befall
the Jungle People, till now its code is as perfect as time and custom
can make it. If you have read the other book about Mowgli, you will
remember that he spent a great part of his life in the Seeonee
Wolf-Pack, learning the Law from Baloo, the Brown Bear; and it was
Baloo who told him, when the boy grew impatient at the constant
orders, that the Law was like the Giant Creeper, because it dropped
across every one's back and no one could escape. "When thou hast lived
as long as I have, Little Brother, thou wilt see how all the Jungle
obeys at least one Law. And that will be no pleasant sight," said
Baloo.

This talk went in at one ear and out at the other, for a boy who
spends his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till
it actually stares him in the face. But, one year, Baloo's words came
true, and Mowgli saw all the Jungle working under the Law.

It began when the winter Rains failed almost entirely, and Ikki, the
Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild
yams were drying up. Now everybody knows that Ikki is ridiculously
fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very
best and ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said, "What is that to me?"

"Not much _now_," said Ikki, rattling his quills in a stiff,
uncomfortable way, "but later we shall see. Is there any more diving
into the deep rock-pool below the Bee-Rocks, Little Brother?"

"No. The foolish water is going all away, and I do not wish to break
my head," said Mowgli, who, in those days, was quite sure that he
knew as much as any five of the Jungle People put together.

"That is thy loss. A small crack might let in some wisdom." Ikki
ducked quickly to prevent Mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and
Mowgli told Baloo what Ikki had said. Baloo looked very grave, and
mumbled half to himself: "If I were alone I would change my
hunting-grounds now, before the others began to think. And
yet--hunting among strangers ends in fighting; and they might hurt the
Man-cub. We must wait and see how the _mohwa_ blooms."

That spring the _mohwa_ tree, that Baloo was so fond of, never
flowered. The greeny, cream-, waxy blossoms were heat-killed
before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down
when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch,
the untempered heat crept into the heart of the Jungle, turning it
yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides of
the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff;
the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last least
footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron; the
juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to and died
at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when the hot winds
blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the Jungle, till they
were as bare and as hot as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of
the stream.

The birds and the monkey-people went north early in the year, for they
knew what was coming; and the deer and the wild pig broke far away to
the perished fields of the villages, dying sometimes before the eyes
of men too weak to kill them. Chil, the Kite, stayed and grew fat, for
there was a great deal of carrion, and evening after evening he
brought the news to the beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh
hunting-grounds, that the sun was killing the Jungle for three days'
flight in every direction.

Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale
honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives--honey
black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for
deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of
their new broods. All the game in the Jungle was no more than skin and
bone, and Bagheera could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full
meal. But the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle
People drink seldom they must drink deep.

And the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture, till at
last the main channel of the Waingunga was the only stream that
carried a trickle of water between its dead banks; and when Hathi, the
wild elephant, who lives for a hundred years and more, saw a long,
lean blue ridge of rock show dry in the very center of the stream, he
knew that he was looking at the Peace Rock, and then and there he
lifted up his trunk and proclaimed the Water Truce, as his father
before him had proclaimed it fifty years ago. The deer, wild pig, and
buffalo took up the cry hoarsely; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great
circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning.

By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places
when once the Water Truce has been declared. The reason of this is
that drinking comes before eating. Every one in the Jungle can
scramble along somehow when only game is scarce; but water is water,
and when there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops while
the Jungle People go there for their needs. In good seasons, when
water was plentiful, those who came down to drink at the Waingunga--or
anywhere else, for that matter--did so at the risk of their lives, and
that risk made no small part of the fascination of the night's doings.
To move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade
knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind; to
drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the
first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and
return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a
thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely
because they knew that at any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap
upon them and bear them down. But now all that life-and-death fun was
ended, and the Jungle People came up, starved and weary, to the
shrunken river,--tiger, bear, deer, buffalo, and pig, all
together,--drank the fouled waters, and hung above them, too exhausted
to move off.

The deer and the pig had tramped all day in search of something better
than dried bark and withered leaves. The buffaloes had found no
wallows to be cool in, and no green crops to steal. The snakes had
left the Jungle and come down to the river in the hope of finding a
stray frog. They curled round wet stones, and never offered to strike
when the nose of a rooting pig dislodged them. The river-turtles had
long ago been killed by Bagheera, cleverest of hunters