Page 46 - THE JUNGLE BOOK

The Jungle Book

torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast
for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they
would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the
Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or

would start furious battles over nothing among themselves,
and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People
could see them. They were always just going to have a
leader, and laws and customs of their own, but they never
did, because their memories would not hold over from
day to day, and so they compromised things by making up
a saying, ‘What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will
think later,’ and that comforted them a great deal. None of
the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none
of the beasts would notice them, and that was why they
were so pleased when Mowgli came to play with them,
and they heard how angry Baloo was.
They never meant to do any more—the Bandar-log
never mean anything at all; but one of them invented
what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and he told all the
others that Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in
the tribe, because he could weave sticks together for
protection from the wind; so, if they caught him, they
could make him teach them. Of course Mowgli, as a
woodcutter’s child, inherited all sorts of instincts, and used

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