“When Baloo hurt my head,” said Mowgli (he was still on hisback), “I went away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and hadpity on me. No one else cared.” He snuffled a little.
“The pity of the Monkey People！” Baloo snorted. “Thestillness of the mountain stream！ The cool of the summer sun！Andthen, man-cub？”
“And then, and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to eat,and they——they carried me in their arms up to the top of the trees andsaid I was their blood brother except that I had no tail, and should be theirleader some day.”
“They have no leader,” said Bagheera. “They lie. They havealways lied.”
“They were very kind and bade me come again. Why have I neverbeen taken among the Monkey People？ They stand on their feet as I do.
They do not hit me with their hard paws. They play all day.Let me getup！ Bad Baloo, let me up！ I will play with them again.”
“Listen, man-cub,” said the Bear, and his voice rumbled likethunder on a hot night. “I have taught you all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle——except the Monkey-Folk who live inthe trees. They have no law. They are outcasts.They have no speech oftheir own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen,and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way.
They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast andchatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs inthe jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all isforgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drinkwhere the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we donot hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast you everheard me speak of the Bandar-log till today？”
“No,” said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still nowBaloo had finished.
“The Jungle-People put them out of their mouths and out of theirminds. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if theyhave any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do notnotice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads.”
He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattereddown through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlingsand angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.
“The Monkey-People are forbidden,” said Baloo, “forbidden tothe Jungle-People. Remember.”
“Forbidden,” said Bagheera, “but I still think Baloo should havewarned you against them.”
“I——I？ How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. TheMonkey People！ Faugh！”
A fresh shower came down on their heads and the two trottedaway, taking Mowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the monkeyswas perfectly true. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other"s path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would 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 to make little huts of fallen branches without thinking how he came to do it. The Monkey-People, watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful. This time, they said, they were really going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the jungle ——so wise that everyone else would notice and envy them.
Therefore they followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jungle very quietly till it was time for the midday nap, and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of himself, slept between the Panther and theBear, resolving to have no more to do with the Monkey People.
