The Jungle Books (33 page)

“But the people of the Cold Lairs do not live in burrows.” Mowgli knew that Kaa was talking of the Monkey-People.

“This thing was not living, but seeking to live,” Kaa replied, with a quiver of his tongue. “He ran into a burrow that led very far. I followed, and having killed. I slept. When I waked I went forward.”

“Under earth?”

“Even so. Coming at last upon a white hood [a white cobra], who spoke of things beyond my knowledge, and showed me many things I had never before seen.”

“New game? Was it good hunting?” Mowgli turned quickly on his side.

“It was no game, and would have broken all my teeth,
but the white hood said that a man—he spoke as one that knew the breed—that a man would give the hot breath under his ribs for only the sight of those things.”

“We will look,” said Mowgli. “I now remember that I was once a man.”

“Slowly—slowly. It was haste killed the yellow snake that ate the sun. We two spoke together under the earth, and I spoke of thee, naming thee as a man. Said the white hood (and he is indeed as old as the jungle): ‘It is long since I have seen a man. Let him come, and he shall see all these things, for the least of which very many men would die.’ ”

“That
must
be new game. And yet the Poison-People do not tell us when game is afoot. They are unfriendly folk.”

“It is
not
game. It is—it is—I cannot say what it is.”

“We will go there. I have never seen a white hood, and I wish to see the other things. Did he kill them?”

“They are all dead things. He says he is the keeper of them all.”

“Ah! As a wolf stands above meat he has taken to his own lair. Let us go.”

Mowgli swam to the bank, rolled in the grass to dry himself, and the two set off for the Cold Lairs, the deserted city of which you may have heard. Mowgli was not in the least afraid of the Monkey-People in those days, but the Monkey-People had the liveliest horror of Mowgli. Their tribes, however, were raiding in the jungle, and so the Cold Lairs stood empty and silent in the moonlight. Kaa led up to the ruins of the queen’s pavilion that stood on the terrace, slipped over the rubbish, and dived down the half-choked staircase that went underground from the centre of the pavilion. Mowgli gave the Snake Call—“We be of one blood, ye and I”—and followed on his hands and knees. They crawled a long distance down a sloping passage that turned and twisted several times, and at last came to where the root of some great tree, growing thirty feet overhead, had forced out a solid stone in the wall. They crept through the gap,
and found themselves in a large vault, whose domed roof had been also broken away by tree-roots so that a few streaks of light dropped down into the darkness.

“A safe lair,” said Mowgli, rising to his firm feet. “but over-far to visit daily. And now what do we see?”

“Am I nothing?” said a voice in the middle of the vault, and Mowgli saw something white move, till, little by little, there stood up the hugest cobra he had ever set eyes on—a creature nearly eight feet long, and bleached by being in darkness to an old ivory-white. Even the spectacle marks of his spread hood had faded to a faint yellow. His eyes were as red as rubies, and altogether he was most wonderful to see.

“Good hunting!” said Mowgli, who carried his manners with his knife, and that never left him.

“What of the city?” said the white cobra, without answering the greeting. “What of the great, the walled city—the city of a hundred elephants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle past counting—the city of the King of Twenty Kings? I grow deaf here, and it is long since I heard the war-gongs.”

“The jungle is above our heads,” said Mowgli. “I know only Hathi and his sons among elephants. Bagheera has slain all the horses in one village, and—what is a king?”

“I told thee,” said Kaa softly to the cobra. “I told thee, four moons ago, that thy city was not.”

“The city—the great city of the forest whose gates are guarded by the king’s towers—can never pass. They built it before my father’s father came from the egg, and it shall endure when my sons’ sons are as white as I. Salomdhi, son of Chandrabija, son of Viyeja, son of Yegasuri, built it in the days of Bappa Rawal. Whose cattle are
ye?
”

“It is a lost trail,” said Mowgli, turning to Kaa. “I know not his talk.”

“Nor I. He is very old. Father of Cobras, there is only the jungle here, as it has been since the beginning.”

“Then who is
he
,” said the white cobra, “sitting down
before me, unafraid, knowing not the name of the king, talking our talk through a man’s lips? Who is he with the knife and the snake’s tongue?”

“Mowgli they call me,” was the answer. “I am of the jungle. The wolves are my people, and Kaa here is my brother. Father of Cobras, who art thou?”

“I am the warden of the king’s treasure. Kurrun Raja built the stone above me, in the days when my skin was dark, that I might teach death to those who came to steal. Then they let down the treasure through the stone, and I heard the song of the Brahmins my masters.”

“
Umm!
” said Mowgli to himself. “I have dealt with one Brahmin already, in the man pack, and—I know what I know. Evil comes here in a little.”

“Five times since my wardship has the stone been lifted, but always to let down more, and never to take away. There are no riches like these riches—the treasures of a hundred kings. But it is long and long since the stone was last moved, and I think that my city has forgotten.”

“There is no city. Look up. Yonder are the roots of the great trees tearing the stones apart. Trees and men do not grow together,” Kaa insisted.

“Twice and thrice have men found their way here,” the white cobra answered savagely, “but they never spoke till I came upon them groping in the dark, and then they cried only a little time. But
ye
come with lies, man and snake both, and would have me believe that my city is not, and that my wardship ends. Little do men change in the years. But
I
change never! Till the stone is lifted, and the Brahmins come down singing the songs that I know, and feed me with warm milk, and take me to the light again, I—I—
I
, and no other, am the warden of the king’s treasure! The city is dead, ye say, and here are the roots of the trees? Stoop down, then, and take what ye will. Earth has no treasure like these. Man with the snake’s tongue, if thou canst go alive by the way that thou hast entered at, the lesser kings will be thy servants!”

“Again the trail is lost,” said Mowgli, coolly. “Can any jackal have burrowed so deep and bitten this great white hood? He is surely mad. Father of Cobras, I see nothing here to take away.”

“By the gods of the sun and moon, it is the madness of death upon the boy!” hissed the cobra. “Before thine eyes close I will allow thee this favour. Look thou, and see what man has never seen before!”

“They do not well in the jungle who speak to Mowgli of favours,” said the boy, between his teeth, “but the dark changes all, as I know. I will look, if that please thee.”

He stared with puckered-up eyes round the vault, and then lifted up from the floor a handful of something that glittered.

“Oho!” said he. “This is like the stuff they play with in the man pack. Only this is yellow and the other was brown.”

He let the gold pieces fall, and moved forward. The floor of the vault was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and silver that had burst from the sacks it had been originally stored in, and, in the long years, the metal had packed and settled as sand packs at low tide. On it and in it, and rising through it, as wrecks lift through the sand, were jewelled elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded with plates of hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises. There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets. crested and beaded with pigeon’s-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell, and rhinoceroshide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted
swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never sees the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets; there were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets, head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were belts seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals, cat’s-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within.

The white cobra was right. No mere money would begin to pay the value of this treasure, the sifted pickings of centuries of war, plunder, trade, and taxation. The coins alone were priceless, leaving out of count all the precious stones, and the dead weight of the gold and silver alone might be two or three hundred tons. Every native ruler in India to-day, however poor, has a hoard to which he is always adding. And, though once in a long while, some enlightened prince may send off forty or fifty bullock-cart loads of silver to be exchanged for Government securities, the bulk of them keep their treasure and the knowledge of it very closely to themselves.

But Mowgli naturally did not understand what these things meant. The knives interested him a little, but they did not balance as well as his own, and so he dropped them. At last he found something really fascinating laid on the front of a howdah half buried in the coins. It was a two-foot
ankus
, or elephant-goad—something like a small boat-hook. The top was one round shining ruby, and eight inches of the handle below it were studded with rough turquoises close together, giving a most satisfactory grip. Below them was a rim of jade with a flower-pattern running round it—only the leaves were emeralds, and the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, green stone. The rest of the handle was a shaft of pure ivory, while the point—the spike and hook—was gold-inlaid steel with pictures of elephant-catching: and the pictures
attracted Mowgli, who saw that they had something to do with his friend Hathi.

The white cobra had been following him closely.

“Is it not worth dying to behold?” he said. “Have I not done thee a great favour?”

“I do not understand,” said Mowgli. “The things are hard and cold, and by no means good to eat. But this”—he lifted the
ankus
—“I desire to take away, that I may see it in the sun. Thou sayest they are all thine. Wilt thou give it to me, and I will bring thee frogs to eat?”

The white cobra fairly shook with evil delight. “Assuredly I will give it,” he said. “All that is here I will give thee—till thou goest away.”

“But I go now. This place is dark and cold, and I wish to take the thorn-pointed thing to the jungle.”

“Look by thy foot! What is that there?”

Mowgli picked up something white and smooth. “It is the bone of a man’s head,” he said quietly. “And here are two more.”

“They came to take the treasure away many years ago. I spoke to them in the dark, and they lay still.”

“But what do I need of this that is called treasure? If thou wilt give me the
ankus
to take away, it is good hunting. If not, it is good hunting none the less. I do not fight with the Poison-People, and I was also taught the Master Word of thy tribe.”

“There is but one Master Word here. It is mine!”

Kaa flung himself forward with blazing eyes. “Who bade me bring the man?” he hissed.

“I surely,” the old cobra lisped. “It is long since I have seen Man, and this man speaks our tongue.”

“But there was no talk of killing. How can I go to the jungle and say that I have led him to his death?” said Kaa.

“I talk not of killing till the time. And as to thy going or not going, there is the hole in the wall. Peace, now, thou fat monkey-killer! I have but to touch thy neck, and the jungle will know thee no longer. Never man came here that went away with the breath under
his ribs. I am the warden of the treasure of the king’s city!”

“But, thou white worm of the dark, I tell thee there is neither king nor city! The jungle is all about us!” cried Kaa.

“There is still the treasure. But this can be done. Wait a while, Kaa of the Rocks, and see the boy run. There is room for great sport here. Life is good. Run to and fro a while, and make sport, boy!”

Mowgli put his hand on Kaa’s head quietly.

“The white thing has dealt with men of the man pack until now. He does not know me,” he whispered. “He has asked for this hunting. Let him have it.” Mowgli had been standing with the
ankus
held point down. He flung it from him quickly, and it dropped crossways just behind the great snake’s hood, pinning him to the floor. In a flash, Kaa’s weight was upon the writhing body, paralysing it from hood to tail. The red eyes burned, and the six spare inches of the head struck furiously right and left.

“Kill!” said Kaa, as Mowgli’s hand went to his knife.

“No,” he said, as he drew the blade, “I will never kill again save for food. But look you, Kaa!” He caught the snake behind the hood, forced the mouth open with the blade of the knife, and showed the terrible poison-fangs of the upper jaw lying black and withered in the gum. The white cobra had outlived his poison, as a snake will. “
Thuu
” [It is dried up],
¹
said Mowgli, and motioning Kaa away, he picked up the
ankus
, setting the white cobra free.

“The king’s treasure needs a new warden,” he said gravely. “Thuu, thou hast not done well. Run to and fro and make sport, Thuu!”

“I am shamed. Kill me!” hissed the white cobra.

“There has been too much talk of killing. We will go now. I take the thorn-pointed thing, Thuu, because I have fought and worsted thee.”