Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made,
and then he said spitefully:
"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He
will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me."
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River,
twenty miles away.
"He has no right!" Father Wolf began angrily--"By the Law
of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due
warning. He will frighten every head of game within ten miles,
and I--I have to kill for two, these days."
"His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for
nothing," said Mother Wolf quietly. "He has been lame in one foot
from his birth. That is why he has only killed cattle. Now the
villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, and he has come
here to make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for
him when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the
grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!"
"Shall I tell him of your gratitude?" said Tabaqui.
"Out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out and hunt with thy master.
Thou hast done harm enough for one night."
"I go," said Tabaqui quietly. "Ye can hear Shere Khan below
in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message."
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to
a little river he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of
a tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle
knows it.
"The fool!" said Father Wolf. "To begin a night's work with
that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat
Waingunga bullocks?"
"H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,"
said Mother Wolf. "It is Man."
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to
come from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that
bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes
them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
"Man!" said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. "Faugh!
Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must
eat Man, and on our ground too!"
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a
reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing
to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside
the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for
this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of
white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with
gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle
suffers. 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.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "Aaarh!"
of the tiger's charge.
塔巴奎挺直了坐着，享受着自己搞的恶作剧，然后他恶意地说：“
大个子沙里汗已经换了他的捕猎地了。他告诉我，他要在下个满月的时候
在这些山丘间捕猎。”
沙里汗是生活在20英里外梵恭加河边的一只老虎。
“他没权这样！”狼爸爸开始生气了。“根据丛林法则，他没有权利不先警告我们就换地方。他会吓着10英里内的每个生物，而我——我在这些日子里，不得不为两只狼捕猎。”
“他的母亲叫他瘸子是有理由的，”母狼平静地说。“他一出生就瘸了一条腿。
这就是为什么他只能捕猎牛群。现在梵恭加河边的村民们很生他的气，于是他
就跑这儿来惹怒这里的居民。当他还很远的时候，他们就得在丛林中乱跑，
我们和我们的孩子在草刚见亮时就得奔跑。是的，我们真的很感激沙里汗！”
“要我把你们的感激转告给他吗？” 塔巴奎说。
“滚！”公狼咬牙切齿地喊道。“滚出去，和你的主人去捕猎吧。
今晚你搞的破坏已经够多的了。“
“我走，” 塔巴奎平静地说。“你能听见沙里汗就在下面的矮丛里。
我大概已经替自己省了这份劲了。”
公狼侧耳倾听，在下面绵延至一条小河的山谷里，他听到了一只老虎，干渴、愤怒、引诱、有节奏的哀鸣。这只虎什么也没捕到，但他并不在乎全丛林知道这一点。
“这个蠢货！”公狼说。“用那种噪音开始夜晚的工作！
他认为，我们的鹿会像他的梵恭加肥水牛那样吗？”
“嘘，今晚他不捕鹿或水牛。”母狼说。“他捕的是人。”
哀鸣已经变成了一种咕噜的喉音，好象是从四方发出的一样。
这种噪音常能迷惑开阔地上睡觉的伐木者和吉普赛人，
有时还会驱使他们跑去将自己送到老虎嘴中。
“人类！”公狼说，一边露出了他所有的白牙。“见鬼！
难道在水塘里没有足够的甲虫和青蛙吗？他干吗非得吃人类，
而且还是在我们的地盘上！”
丛林的法则从不是没有原因去命令任何生物的。它禁止野兽吃人，除非
是他在向他的孩子们展示如何捕猎的时候，然后他还得远离他种群部落
的捕猎地去捕猎。这项禁令的真实原因是，如果杀了人，迟早骑在大象
身上，带着枪的白人会来，同来的还有上百带着铜锣，火箭和火炬的土著人。
那样，丛林中所有的居民就得倒霉了。野兽们自己的说法则是，人类是所有
生物中最弱，最没抵抗力的一种，和这样的族群接触太没运动性。他们还说——
这倒是真的——吃人类的动物会生疥疮，变得污秽，牙齿会掉。
咕噜的喉音变大了，最终变成一声厉吼“哈呀！”老虎进攻了。