Joseph Rudyard Kipling

The rea­son the beasts give among them­selves is that Man is the weak­est and most de­fense­less of all liv­ing things, and it is un­sports­man­like to touch him. They say too—and it is true—that man-eaters be­come mangy, and lose their teeth.

have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our pack or in my time,

have seen Mowgli among the Ban­dar-log. He bade me tell you. I watched. The Ban­dar-log have taken him be­yond the river to the Mon­key City—to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a night, or ten nights, or an hour. I have told the bats to watch through the dark time. That is my mes­sage. Good hunt­ing, all you be­low!”

called me speck­led frog.”
“

mon­keys called the place their city, and pre­tended to de­spise the Jun­gle Peo­ple be­cause they lived in the for­est. And yet they never knew what the build­ings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in cir­cles on the hall of the king’s coun­cil-cham­ber, and scratch for fleas and pre­tend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roof­less houses and col­lect pieces of plas­ter and old bricks i

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of In­dia de­spise Tabaqui be­cause he runs about mak­ing mis­chief, and telling tales, and eat­ing rags and pieces of leather from the vil­lage rub­bish-heaps. They are afraid of him too, be­cause Tabaqui, more than any­one else in the jun­gle, is apt to go mad, and then he for­gets that he was ever afraid of any­one, and runs through the for­est bit­ing ev­ery­thing in his way. Even the tiger hides when lit­tle Tabaqui goes mad, for mad­ness is the most dis­grace­ful thing that can over­take a wild crea­ture. We call it hy­dropho­bia, but they call it de­wa­nee—the mad­ness—and run.

I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be en­tered with the oth­ers. I my­self will teach him.”

Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the fire-pot was be­tween Mowgli’s knees. When they were all gath­ered to­gether, Shere Khan be­gan to speak—a thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule.

Akela raised his old head wearily:

“Free Peo­ple, and ye too, jack­als of Shere Khan, for twelve sea­sons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an un­tried buck to make my weak­ness known. It was clev­erly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Coun­cil Rock now. There­fore I ask, ‘Who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf?’ For it is my right, by the Law of the Jun­gle, that ye come one by one.”