"Ho, Little Brother," began Black Panther, speaking to Sa'-zada, "why should we who are great in our own jungles listen to these empty-headed Bandar-log? Was there ever any good at their hands?"
"Oo-oo! A-huk, a-huk!" cried Hanuman, "you of all the thieving slayers should know of that matter. How many times have you been saved from danger because of our watchfulness—and also Bagh the Killer! Many a hard drive, the hunt drive of the Men-kind, has come to nothing because of us—because we never sleep. When your stomach is full you sleep soundly, trusting to a warning from us, the Bandar-log. Nothing can be done in the jungles that we do not know. And do we steal silently away as is your method? Not a bit of it. By the safety of Jungle-dwellers! we give the cry of beware! Listen——
"A-huk, a-huk! Chee-chee-chee! Waugh, waugh, a-huk!" and the voice of the gray-whiskered, black-faced ape reverberated on the dead night air through the houses of Animal Town like the clangor of a cracked bell.
"That is quite true," declared Mor, the Peacock; "I also am one of the Jungle Watchers—though I get little credit for it. None of the Dwellers thank us; and sometimes in their anger the Sahibs who are making the drive shoot us for our trouble, saying that we have spoiled sport. Many a jungle life have I saved through my cry of 'Miaou! Miaou!'"
"Disturbers of sleep!" sneered Black Panther; "there is little to choose between you—you're a noisy lot of beggars."
"You are hardly fair, Pardus," remonstrated Sa'-zada. "I quite believe what Hanuman says, for it is well known that some of the Monkey-tribe saved Gibraltar to the British by their watchfulness, and the men are more grateful than you, for to this day monkeys are protected and made much of there."
"It was my people did that," cried Magot, the Rock Ape, blinking his deep, narrow-set eyes. "We have lived there for a long time."
"And in Benares, where I lived once, we are people of great honor," added a white-whiskered Monkey. "I should like to see Black Pardus harm one of us there."
The speaker was Entellus, the sacred Hanuman Monkey, whose rights of protection in the City of Temples, Benares, was almost greater than that of the human dwellers.
"You can't twiddle your thumbs! You can't twiddle your thumbs!" cried Cockatoo, mockingly.