Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-12-22

moorings. They stayed on as long as any
Of their summer food was left to them,
and they tried to gather nuts in the jungle,
but shadows With glazing eyes watched
them and rolled before them even at noon.
and when they ran back afraid to their
walls on the tree trunks they had passed
not five minutes before the bark would be
stripped and chiseled with the stroke of
some great-taloned paw. The more they
kept to their village the holder grew tho
wild things that gamboled and beloved
on the grazing grounds by the Waingunga
They had no time to patch and plaster the
rear walls Of the empty byres lacking on
to the jungle, SO the pig trampled them
down, and the vines hurried after and
threw their elbows over the new-won
ground. and the coarse grass whistled be-
hind the vines like the lances of the goblin
army following a retreat. The single men
had left earlier, and carried the news far
and near that the village was doomed.
Who could fight, they saiA, against the
jungle, or the gods Of the Jungle when the
very cobra had left his hole in the plat
form under the peepul? So their little
commerce with the outside world shrunk
as the trodden paths across the open grew
fewer and fainter; and the nightly trump
etings of HATH and his three sons ceased
to trouble them, for they had no more to
lose. The crop on the ground and the
seed in the ground had been taken. The
outlying fields were already losing their
shape, and 1T was time to throw them
selves on the charity of the English at
Kanhiwira.
Native fashion they delayed their depart
ure from one day to another till the first
rains caught them and the unmended roofs
let in a flood, and the grazing ground stood
ankle deep. And all nature came on with
a rush after the heat of the summer. Then
they waded out, men, women and children,
through the binding hot rain of the morn
ing; but turned naturally for one look at
their homes
They heard, as the last burdened family
filed through the gate. a crash or falllnR
beams and thatch behind the walls. Then
they saw a shiny, snake black trunk lifted
for an instant, scattering sodden thatch
to and fro. 1t disappeared, and there was
another crash, followed by squeal. HATH
had been plucking off the roofs of the huts
as you pluck water-lilies, ard rebound
ing beam had hit him. 1t only needed this
to unchai1 his full strength, for of all
ri ngs in the jungle the wild elephant en-
ragged is the most vantonly destructive.
He kicked backward at a mud wall that
crumbled at the stroke, and as 1T crumblcd
melted to yellow mud under the torrent of
lain. Then he wheeled and suuealed and
tore through the narrow streets leaning
against the huts right and lett, shivering
the crazy doors and crumpling up the
caves, while his three sons ragged behind
as they had ragged at the sack at Bhurt-
pore.
THE jungle will swallow these shells -
said a quiet voice in the wreckage. 1T is
the outer wall that must lie down., and
Mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his
ba re shoulders and arms, leaped back from
a wall that was settling like tired buff
falo.
"All in good time" painted HATH. ooh,
but my tusks were red at Bhurtpore! To
the outer wall, children. With the head!
Together! Again! With the tusk stab and
weaken! Now!'
The four were in line side by side, and
the outer wall bulged split and fell, and
the villagers, dumb with horror. saw the
savage. clay-streaked heads of the wreck
ers in the ragged gap. Then they fled.
houseless and foodless, down the valley as
their village, smashed and overturned,
shredded and tossed and trampled. melted
behind them. month later the place was
a dimpled mound covered with soft green
young stuff; and by the end of the rains
there was the roaring jungle In full blast
on the spot that had been under plough
not six months before.
(The End)