Page 65 - THE JUNGLE BOOK

The Jungle Book

log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath
they would all shout together: ‘This is true; we all say so.’
Mowgli nodded and blinked, and said ‘Yes’ when they
asked him a question, and his head spun with the noise.

‘Tabaqui the Jackal must have bitten all these people,’ he
said to himself, ‘and now they have madness. Certainly
this is dewanee, the madness. Do they never go to sleep?
Now there is a cloud coming to cover that moon. If it
were only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in
the darkness. But I am tired.’
That same cloud was being watched by two good
friends in the ruined ditch below the city wall, for
Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well how dangerous the
Monkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to
run any risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a
hundred to one, and few in the jungle care for those odds.
‘I will go to the west wall,’ Kaa whispered, ‘and come
down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor.
They will not throw themselves upon my back in their
hundreds, but—‘
‘I know it,’ said Bagheera. ‘Would that Baloo were
here, but we must do what we can. When that cloud
covers the moon I shall go to the terrace. They hold some
sort of council there over the boy.’

64 of 241