Page 214 - THE JUNGLE BOOK

The Jungle Book

Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle
of harness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking his
wet ears. He belonged to a screw-gun battery, for I could
hear the rattle of the straps and rings and chains and things

on his saddle pad. The screw-guns are tiny little cannon
made in two pieces, that are screwed together when the
time comes to use them. They are taken up mountains,
anywhere that a mule can find a road, and they are very
useful for fighting in rocky country.
Behind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft
feet squelching and slipping in the mud, and his neck
bobbing to and fro like a strayed hen’s. Luckily, I knew
enough of beast language—not wild-beast language, but
camp-beast language, of course—from the natives to know
what he was saying.
He must have been the one that flopped into my tent,
for he called to the mule, ‘What shall I do? Where shall I
go? I have fought with a white thing that waved, and it
took a stick and hit me on the neck.’ (That was my
broken tent pole, and I was very glad to know it.) ‘Shall
we run on?’
‘Oh, it was you,’ said the mule, ‘you and your friends,
that have been disturbing the camp? All right. You’ll be

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