The Jungle Book

From LSWiki

Description

a hide-bound parchment book.

The writing is in Anglic, and reads:
   The Jungle Book

A medium-sized volume of parchment carefully bound in hide.  Etched on the front cover is a title and the image of a boy crouched
next to a wolf, both staring at something outside of the picture.  It is closed.  It is closed.  You appraise it at seventy-one gold.  
It looks about a quarter of a dimin long, one and seventeen twentieths dimins wide, and two and nine twentieths dimins tall.
It weighs about seventeen twentieths of a dekan.

The commands 'open <item>', 'close <item>', and 'turn page [in <item>] [to <number>]' may be used with it.  Keeping the hide-bound
parchment book costs six keep points.  The hide-bound parchment book was created by Lost Souls; the source code was last updated
Tue Mar 15 02:15:36 2016.  The material hide was created by Lost Souls; the source code was last updated Tue Mar 15 02:18:37 2016.
The material parchment was created by Lost Souls; the source code was last updated Tue Mar 15 02:18:43 2016.

Text

                 The Works of Rudyard Kipling

                        The Jungle Book

                        Rudyard Kipling


CONTENTS

MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
HUNTING-SONG OF THE SEEONEE PACK
KAA'S HUNTING
ROAD-SONG OF THE BANDAR-LOG
"TIGER! TIGER!"
MOWGLI'S SONG
THE WHITE SEAL
LUKANNON
"RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI"
DARZEE'S CHAUNT
TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS

SHIV AND THE GRASSHOPPER
HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS
PARADE-SONG OF THE CAMP ANIMALS 


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.


MOWGLI'S BROTHERS

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 the 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"; and he
was going to spring downhill 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 the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in 
this world."
     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. They are afraid of him
too, because Tabaqui, more than any one else in the jungle, is
apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of
any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his
way. Even the tiger hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for
madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild
creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee --
the madness -- and run.
     "Enter, then, and look," said Father Wolf, stiffly; "but
there is no food here."
     "For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui; "but for so mean a person

as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log
[the Jackal People], to pick and choose?" He scuttled to the
back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some
meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.
     "All thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips.
"How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! 
And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that 
the children of kings are men from the beginning."
     Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any one else that there is
nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces; and
it pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
     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 during 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
fair 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 in the dark 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 that he hunts
to-night," said Mother Wolf; "it is Man." The whine had changed

Total pages 235.

Relevant Skills

skills gained when read for first time go here