About the book
This classic collection of stories opens with Mowgli, a human child raised by a wolf pack in the Indian jungle, who learns the Law of the Jungle from Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther while the tiger Shere Khan hunts him. Other tales follow a brave mongoose in an Indian garden and a white seal searching for a safe home.
The opening
Mowgli’s Brothers
Now Rann the Kite brings home the night That Mang the Bat sets free— The herds are shut in byre and hut For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power, Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call!—
Good hunting all That keep the Jungle Law!
Night-Song in the Jungle
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills
when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned,
and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs,
and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived.
“Augrh!” said Father Wolf.
“It is time to hunt again.”
He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined:
“Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves.
And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world.”
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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.
But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad,