Page 194 - THE JUNGLE BOOK

The Jungle Book

on the fodder at Kala Nag’s side. At last the elephants
began to lie down one after another as is their custom, till
only Kala Nag at the right of the line was left standing up;
and he rocked slowly from side to side, his ears put

forward to listen to the night wind as it blew very slowly
across the hills. The air was full of all the night noises that,
taken together, make one big silence— the click of one
bamboo stem against the other, the rustle of something
alive in the undergrowth, the scratch and squawk of a
half-waked bird (birds are awake in the night much more
often than we imagine), and the fall of water ever so far
away. Little Toomai slept for some time, and when he
waked it was brilliant moonlight, and Kala Nag was still
standing up with his ears cocked. Little Toomai turned,
rustling in the fodder, and watched the curve of his big
back against half the stars in heaven, and while he watched
he heard, so far away that it sounded no more than a
pinhole of noise pricked through the stillness, the ‘hoot-
toot’ of a wild elephant.
All the elephants in the lines jumped up as if they had
been shot, and their grunts at last waked the sleeping
mahouts, and they came out and drove in the picket pegs
with big mallets, and tightened this rope and knotted that
till all was quiet. One new elephant had nearly grubbed up

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