"AND THEY ALL CLAMBERED ON TO MY BACK."
"'Oh, ho!' cried the leader, swinging by his tail from a limb of the Mangrove tree, and peering down at me; 'the wind is driving all the dead trees from this side to the other. Get aboard, children, quick.' And they all clambered on to my back, shoving and pushing like a lot of Jackal pups——"
"Have I not said it," cried Gidar, the Jackal, "that Sher Abi is a devourer of our young? Jackal pups—murderer!"
"Half way across," resumed Sher Abi, "I opened an eye to take a squint at the general condition of these Bandar-log, as to which might be fat and which might be lean, and, would you believe it, the leader of these fool people saw me looking, and screamed with fright. I closed all the valves of nostrils and eyes and sank in the water. The Bandar-log were so excited that more than half of them jumped into my jaws, and Abni, who came back, hearing the noise, took care of the others. Eh-hu! Gluck! Monkeys are stupid, but not bad eating."
"Listen to that, Comrades," cried Water Monkey. "Sher Abi the Poacher boasts of killing my people. Have I not said that our life is one of danger? He and Python are as bad as Men. My mother was killed by a Man, and all for the sake of a few mangoes."
"But how are we to know that Mango-tree was not as others in the Jungle?" pleaded Monkey. "True it grew close to a bungalow, but what of that? Close to the Jungle, trees and bungalows are so mixed up that nobody knows which is free land and which is bond land. Have I not seen even the Men-kind frightened over such matters, and killing each other. But, as I have said, this Man, who was a Sahib, shot my mother as she was in a tree. She clung to a limb, and, young as I was, I helped her, holding on to her arms. All day she cried, and cried, and cried, just as you have heard the young of the Men-kind; and all night she cried, too. In the morning the Sahib came out, and I heard him say that he hadn't slept all night because of the wailing that was like a babe's. When he looked up at my mother she became so afraid that she fell dead at his feet. Peeping down through the leaves I saw the fear look that Hathi has spoken of come into the Man's eyes, only they did not look evil as they had when he pointed the fire-stick at us. I swung down from branch to branch to my mother, and sitting beside her, cried also, being but a little chap and all alone in the Jungle. Then the Man took me up in his arms and said: 'Poor little Oungea. It was a shame to kill the old girl; I feel like a murderer——'
"He took me into the bungalow and I had a fine life of it, though he taught me many things that were evil."
"I don't believe that," sneered Pardus.