THE JUNGLE BOOK by Rudyard Kipling - FULL Audio Book | Greatest Audio Books - YouTube THE JUNGLE BOOK by Rudyard Kipling - FULL Audio Book | Greatest Audio Books Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Mar 18, 2013 THE JUNGLE BOOK by Rudyard Kipling - FULL Audio Book | Greatest Audio Books The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by English Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893--94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont.

There is evidence that it was written for his daughter Josephine, who died in 1899 aged six, after a rare first edition of the book with a poignant handwritten note by the author to his young daughter was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire in 2010. The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle."[3] Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.[4] The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned "man cub" Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle.

The most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. As with much of Kipling's work, each of the stories is preceded by a piece of verse, and succeeded by another. The Jungle Book, because of its moral tone, came to be used as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts, a junior element of the Scouting movement. This use of the book's universe was approved by Kipling after a direct petition of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who had originally asked for the author's permission for the use of the Memory Game from Kim in his scheme to develop the morale and fitness of working-class youths in cities. Akela, the head wolf in The Jungle Book, has become a senior figure in the movement, the name being traditionally adopted by the leader of each Cub Scout pack. - SUBSCRIBE to Greatest Audio Books: Akela | Disney Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia The Jungle Book Akela, like the other wolves, is seen at the beginning of the film.

He appears when the pack learns that Shere Khan had returned to their part of the jungle. Akela states that Shere Khan wants to kill Mowgli and not even the strength of the entire pack could fight him off, so he has Bagheera take Mowgli to the Man-Village. Akela and the wolves are not seen again afterward. Jungle Cubs Akela and his mate, Leah , appear as teenagers in the episode " The Coming of the Wolves ". At one point, their pack leader, Cain , reveals that he has had feelings for Leah and wanted her all to himself, but she rejects him. Akela and Leah then decide to leave the pack. When Cain and his pack give chase, Akela and Leah manage to escape and seek refuge in the lair without knowing it belongs to the cubs. After Hathi panics at the sight of the two wolves and flees, Akela and Leah laugh awkwardly and decide to rest where they are. The cubs later have a falling-out with Akela and Leah, who both eventually decide to leave. However, when Cain and his pack arrive at the lair and plan to attack, Akela and the cubs all stand up to him.

Akela and Cain then engage in a brutal fight over Leah. In the aftermath, Akela defeats Cain and then orders him to leave the cubs' lair and never return. Cain picks himself up and reluctantly does so. Shere Khan and the other cubs, having a change of heart, tell the two wolves that they can stay at their lair. Just then, Leah goes into labor and has eight wolf puppies. As a reward for the cubs' kindness, Akela and Leah make them the godfathers of their puppies. The Jungle Book (2016) Akela appears in the 2016 live-action film adaptation, voiced by Giancarlo Esposito . Esposito has described Akela as "strong and hardened" and welcoming of Mowgli into his pack, but at the same time, worried that Mowgli will one day compromise the safety of his family. Akela appears in the film as the alpha wolf, the strong patriarch of the Seeonee wolf pack. After his old friend Bagheera finds Mowgli in the jungle, it is Akela who approves of Mowgli's entrance into the pack and lets him be adopted by Raksha .

He and Raksha teach Mowgli the ways of the wolves, and over time, Akela comes to disapprove of Mowgli using tools and innovative tricks, saying that they are not the wolf way. During the drought that hits the Seoni Jungle, the wolves gather with the other animals at the Water Truce, the watering hole where the animals make peace with one another in times of famine to drink safely. During their drinking, Akela notices Mowgli using tools to gather water and gives him a gentle reprimand. When Shere Khan shows himself at the watering hole for a drink, Akela orders Mowgli to stay behind him and refers to the boy as part of his pack when the tiger detects his presence. Shere Khan threatens the pack if they refuse to turn Mowgli over, and causes internal strife with his words. The tiger agrees not to violate the sanctity of the Water Truce and warns Akela that he will return when the monsoon season fills the Water Truce. After the encounter, the entire pack debates on whether or not Mowgli should leave the pack or not. However, Mowgli decides to leave so that no one is hurt because of him.

With Bagheera agreeing to take him, Akela agrees that Mowgli should go to the Man-Village, and watches him leave. When Shere Khan returns, he and Akela sit together and discuss Mowgli. Akela says that Mowgli has left the jungle and that with him gone, he and Shere Khan have no quarrel any longer. However, the furious tiger attacks and throws Akela off a cliff, killing him. Shere Khan then assumes Akela's position as alpha of the wolf pack and tells them to spread the word of Akela's demise, hoping it will lure Mowgli back to his death. Akela's demise spreads quickly through the jungle and has far-reaching consequences, as it causes Mowgli to avenge him after hearing it from King Louie . With the help of Bagheera, Baloo the bear, and the other wolves including Raksha, Mowgli manages to kill Shere Khan, avenging Akela's death. In the aftermath of the battle with Shere Khan, Raksha becomes the new leader of the Seeonee pack while Mowgli is reaccepted by the wolves as part of their family.

Gallery The Disney Wiki has a collection of images and media related to Akela . Trivia Akela means "single" or "solitary" in Hindi; Kipling also calls him the "Lone Wolf." Indeed, in the original stories, after he misses his kill and is demoted from the position of Alpha, Akela leaves his pack to hunt alone. Disney's Jungle Book marks Jon Favreau's superb return to CGI By Kirk Honeycutt “The Jungle Book” is magic. From the first sequence, where a young boy dashes terrified through an Indian jungle pursued by … what is it? what kind of creature? … you are in the thrall of the kind of movie magic Disney once sprung on families — the thrill of unimaginable adventures with talking animals and a brave young boy and a world of mystery and jeopardy and struggle and growing up.

Somehow, perhaps miraculously given how Hollywood filmmakers prostitute CGI for unfathomable grotesqueries, a team of filmmaker headed by Jon Favreau, who stumbled a bit following his own scintillating debut in CGI, “Iron Man” (2008), has pulled together a movie that combines the magic of the early Disney — meaning the man, not the corporate empire — with state-of-the-art filmmaking and storytelling that places a premium on emotions, sentiment and fun. The original “Jungle Book” (1967) was actually Walt Disney’s last animated feature. He died a few months prior to its release. One could carp that he had lightened and, yes, “Disneyfied” Rudyard Kipling’s somewhat darker literary works, as he did European fairy tales for years. But the modern-day filmmakers had the good sense to realize that Disney was making films for families, not Bloomsbury. So they stick with the Disney version yet instill not only a modern sensibility but seamless artistry into the proceedings.

Watching this film you sense its literary and cinematic history, of Kiplings’ collection of fables first published in magazines in 1893–94, possibly for his daughter Josephine; of the Korda brothers’ 1942 Hollywood backlot life-action adaptation of the stories with the young Indian actor Sabu; of Disney’s original animated effort ; and of numerous TV shows and stage adaptations as well as an anime series and a Chuck Jones TV cartoon. But it’s the Disney version that prevails here, geared for enchantment, for spirited comedy and thrills that tickle the eight-year-old in us all. Like Kipling himself, the film uses animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons in this coming-of-age-in-the-jungle tale of a young “man-cub,” Mowgli, raised by a family of wolves. Neel Sethi, a native New Yorker of Indian descent, supposedly won the role over about 2,000 auditioning youngsters, and you can well believe it. The boy has natural instincts for the kind of wide-eyed wonder, superb athleticism, ferocious curiosity and petulant defiance that would keep a man-cub alive in the jungle.

He is the movie’s only human character. His companions are beautifully rendered CG animals, all moving in accordance to the laws of nature yet with just enough body language that inflects a scene with comedy or drama, to let you know that this is a world of fable. It is also a world of morality. The laws of the jungle are strictly observed, these being rules laid down to preserve the safety of families and communities, all imparted to the boy by head wolf Akela (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) and Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o), his wolf mother. Unlike his animal companions, Mowgli has few gifts for survival other than “tricks,” meaning, of course, human ingenuity that allows him to devise various apparatuses to gain an advantage or the ability to think his way out of jams. Yet danger lurks. When the fearsome tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) makes clear his intention to destroy the small human in their midst — man being the greatest enemy of jungle inhabitants — Mowgli must make a journey back to human civilization with the help of Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), his black panther/mentor.

On his journey, with Shere Khan dogging his heels the entire way, Mowgli encounters Baloo (Bill Murray), a free-spirited bear; Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), a seductive python; and the huge though musical ape King Louie (Christopher Walken), who rules over a colony of wild monkeys. His friendship with Baloo grows so strong, albeit one-sided since his “tricks” in securing honey do more for Baloo’s comfort than his own, he begins to rethink whether or not he wants to live in a human village. The original Disney cartoon was, of course, a musical and Favreau and writer Justin Marks are unwilling not to give a shout-out to their predecessor. So a couple of musical numbers pop up. So photo-realistic are the CG animals that this at first strikes you as odd, as a violation of the film’s carefully established tone. But the filmmakers were probably right to give a nod back in time. If wolves and bears can talk, they might as well sing. Plus it forms a linkage to Disney as well as Kipling.

The movie paints its jungle and animals with a magnificent combination of CG animation, motion-capture techniques and live-action shooting to create a realistic but not-quite-real environment in which Mowgli can romp. Using a library of 100,000 photos of real Indian jungle locations, the effects artists lay out a lush, believable jungle that become Mowgli’s playground. Marks’ screenplay performs its own juggling act, incorporating just enough of a modern sensibility to let you know you’re not in Kipling’s late 19th century jungle, nor in Disney late 1960s jungle for that matter. I think this is what gives the film its own special magic, the sense of a timeless tale that stretches back to 1893 yet feels contemporary. One can endlessly remake Kipling and Dickens and other stories by great writers, but they must be re-imagined for contemporary audiences. “The Jungle Book” does this in ways many of the current CGI-riddled movies do not. It never goes overboard, abstaining from the grandstanding that plagues so many comic-book movies. “The Jungle Book” feels grounded in its own reality, which it never violates.

A few sequences, especially Mowgli’s encounter with the wild monkey kingdom, feel extraneous, lively as they are. Yet they remain consist in tone with the rest of the adventure. Composer John Debney’s score is a unifying element. It’s a classic orchestral sound punctuated with ethnic instruments that swells with the action but never overwhelms it. “The Jungle Book” transports one back to childhood games surrounded by a reality that commands awe with every frame. As I say, it’s magic.

Opens: April 15, 2016 (Walt Disney Studios) Production: A Fairview Entertainment production Cast: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken, Garry Shandling, Brighton Rose Director: Jon Favreau Based on the books by: Rudyard Kipling Producers: Jon Favreau, Brigham Taylor Executive producers: Peter Tobyansen, Molly Allen, Karen Gilchrist Director of photography: Bill Pope Production designer: Christopher Glass Visual effects supervisors: Robert Legato, Adam ValdezCasting: Sarah Halley Finn Costume designer: Laura Jean Shannon Editor: Mark Livolsi The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling : Mowgli’s Brothers The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling 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.” “Good Luck Go With You, O Chief of the Wolves.” 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, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and 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 anyone else that there is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces. 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 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.

Then there was a howl — an untigerish howl — from Shere Khan. “He has missed,” said Mother Wolf. “What is it?” Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in the scrub. “The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire, and has burned his feet,” said Father Wolf with a grunt. “Tabaqui is with him.” “Something is coming uphill,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear. “Get ready.” The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world — the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground. “Man!” he snapped. “A man’s cub.

Look!” Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk — as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face, and laughed. “Is that a man’s cub?” said Mother Wolf. “I have never seen one. Bring it here.” A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf’s jaws closed right on the child’s back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs. “How little! How naked, and — how bold!” said Mother Wolf softly. The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm hide. “Ahai! He is taking his meal with the others. And so this is a man’s cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man’s cub among her children?” “I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our Pack or in my time,” said Father Wolf. “He is altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot.

But see, he looks up and is not afraid.” The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan’s great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui, behind him, was squeaking: “My lord, my lord, it went in here!” “Shere Khan does us great honor,” said Father Wolf, but his eyes were very angry. “What does Shere Khan need?” “My quarry. A man’s cub went this way,” said Shere Khan. “Its parents have run off. Give it to me.” Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter’s campfire, as Father Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan’s shoulders and forepaws were cramped for want of room, as a man’s would be if he tried to fight in a barrel. “The Wolves are a free people,” said Father Wolf. “They take orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer.

The man’s cub is ours — to kill if we choose.” “Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog’s den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!” The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan. “The Tiger’s Roar Filled the Cave With Thunder.” “And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri — mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs — frog-eater — fish-killer — he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!” Father Wolf looked on amazed.

He had almost forgotten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was clear he shouted: “Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!” Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely: “Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?” “Keep him!” she gasped. “He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already.

And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli — for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee — the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee.” “But what will our Pack say?” said Father Wolf. The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which is generally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so. The Meeting at Council Rock.

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock — a hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs of men. There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that he had not been overlooked.

Akela from his rock would cry: “Ye know the Law — ye know the Law. Look well, O Wolves!” And the anxious mothers would take up the call: “Look — look well, O Wolves!” At last — and Mother Wolf’s neck bristles lifted as the time came — Father Wolf pushed “Mowgli the Frog,” as they called him, into the center, where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight. Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the monotonous cry: “Look well!” A muffled roar came up from behind the rocks — the voice of Shere Khan crying: “The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have the Free People to do with a man’s cub?” Akela never even twitched his ears. All he said was: “Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free People?

Look well!” There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth year flung back Shere Khan’s question to Akela: “What have the Free People to do with a man’s cub?” Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother. “Who speaks for this cub?” said Akela. “Among the Free People who speaks?” There was no answer and Mother Wolf got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting. Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council — Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey — rose upon his hind quarters and grunted. “The man’s cub — the man’s cub?” he said. “I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth.

Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.” “We need yet another,” said Akela. “Baloo has spoken, and he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?” A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down. “O Akela, and ye the Free People,” he purred, “I have no right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price. Am I right?” “Good! Good!” said the young wolves, who are always hungry.

“Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law.” “Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave.” “Speak then,” cried twenty voices. “To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man’s cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?” There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: “What matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted.” And then came Akela’s deep bay, crying: “Look well — look well, O Wolves!” Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one.

At last they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was very angry that Mowgli had not been handed over to him. “Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his whiskers, “for the time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man.” “It was well done,” said Akela. “Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be a help in time.” “Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the Pack forever,” said Bagheera. Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up — to be killed in his turn.

“Take him away,” he said to Father Wolf, “and train him as befits one of the Free People.” And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo’s good word. Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves almost before he was a child. And Father Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man. When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleep again.

When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do. Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, “Come along, Little Brother,” and at first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took his place at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun. At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats. He would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him that it was a trap.

He loved better than anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did Mowgli — with one exception. As soon as he was old enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull’s life. “All the jungle is thine,” said Bagheera, “and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.” Mowgli obeyed faithfully. “Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, ‘Come along, Little Brother.’” And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.

Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature to be trusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan. But though a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot it because he was only a boy — though he would have called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue. Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolves of the Pack, who followed him for scraps, a thing Akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his authority to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man’s cub. “They tell me,” Shere Khan would say, “that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes.” And the young wolves would growl and bristle. Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this, and once or twice he told Mowgli in so many words that Shere Khan would kill him some day.

Mowgli would laugh and answer: “I have the Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?” It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera — born of something that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki the Porcupine had told him; but he said to Mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head on Bagheera’s beautiful black skin, “Little Brother, how often have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?” “As many times as there are nuts on that palm,” said Mowgli, who, naturally, could not count. “What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk — like Mao, the Peacock.” “But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui has told thee too.” “Ho! ho!” said Mowgli.

“Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some rude talk that I was a naked man’s cub and not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him better manners.” “That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he would have told thee of something that concerned thee closely. Open those eyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the jungle. But remember, Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. Many of the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a man.” “And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?” said Mowgli. “I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn.

Surely they are my brothers!” Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes. “Little Brother,” said he, “feel under my jaw.” Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under Bagheera’s silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald spot. “There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark — the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born among men, and it was among men that my mother died — in the cages of the king’s palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I paid the price for thee at the Council when thou wast a little naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera — the Panther — and no man’s plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away. And because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan.

Is it not so?” “Yes,” said Mowgli, “all the jungle fear Bagheera — all except Mowgli.” “Oh, thou art a man’s cub,” said the Black Panther very tenderly. “And even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men at last — to the men who are thy brothers — if thou art not killed in the Council.” “But why — but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli. “Look at me,” said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him steadily between the eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half a minute. “That is why,” he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. “Not even I can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love thee, Little Brother. The others they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from their feet — because thou art a man.” “I did not know these things,” said Mowgli sullenly, and he frowned under his heavy black eyebrows. “What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue.

By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill — and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck — the Pack will turn against him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then — and then — I have it!” said Bagheera, leaping up. “Go thou down quickly to the men’s huts in the valley, and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.” By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it. “The Red Flower?” said Mowgli. “That grows outside their huts in the twilight. I will get some.” “There speaks the man’s cub,” said Bagheera proudly. “Remember that it grows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for time of need.” “Good!” said Mowgli.

“I go. But art thou sure, O my Bagheera”— he slipped his arm around the splendid neck and looked deep into the big eyes —“art thou sure that all this is Shere Khan’s doing?” “By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am sure, Little Brother.” “Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will pay Shere Khan full tale for this, and it may be a little over,” said Mowgli, and he bounded away. “That is a man. That is all a man,” said Bagheera to himself, lying down again. “Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunting than that frog-hunt of thine ten years ago!” Mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that something was troubling her frog. “What is it, Son?” she said. “Some bat’s chatter of Shere Khan,” he called back.

“I hunt among the plowed fields tonight,” and he plunged downward through the bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley. There he checked, for he heard the yell of the Pack hunting, heard the bellow of a hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there were wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves: “Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show his strength. Room for the leader of the Pack! Spring, Akela!” The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him over with his forefoot. He did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells grew fainter behind him as he ran into the croplands where the villagers lived. “Bagheera spoke truth,” he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle fodder by the window of a hut. “To-morrow is one day both for Akela and for me.” Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on the hearth.

He saw the husbandman’s wife get up and feed it in the night with black lumps. And when the morning came and the mists were all white and cold, he saw the man’s child pick up a wicker pot plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre. “Is that all?” said Mowgli. “If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.” So he strode round the corner and met the boy, took the pot from his hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy howled with fear. “They are very like me,” said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as he had seen the woman do. “This thing will die if I do not give it things to eat”; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway up the hill he met Bagheera with the morning dew shining like moonstones on his coat. “Akela has missed,” said the Panther. “They would have killed him last night, but they needed thee also. They were looking for thee on the hill.” “I was among the plowed lands. I am ready.

See!” Mowgli held up the fire-pot. “Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou not afraid?” “No. Why should I fear? I remember now — if it is not a dream — how, before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm and pleasant.” All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire pot and dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that satisfied him, and in the evening when Tabaqui came to the cave and told him rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran away. Then Mowgli went to the Council, still laughing. Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly being flattered. Bagheera lay close to Mowgli, and the fire pot was between Mowgli’s knees.

When they were all gathered together, Shere Khan began to speak — a thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime. “He has no right,” whispered Bagheera. “Say so. He is a dog’s son. He will be frightened.” Mowgli sprang to his feet. “Free People,” he cried, “does Shere Khan lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?” “Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak —” Shere Khan began. “By whom?” said Mowgli. “Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack alone.” There were yells of “Silence, thou man’s cub!” “Let him speak. He has kept our Law”; and at last the seniors of the Pack thundered: “Let the Dead Wolf speak.” When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long.

Akela raised his old head wearily:— “Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the Jungle, that ye come one by one.” There was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela to the death. Then Shere Khan roared: “Bah! What have we to do with this toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle for ten seasons.

Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not give you one bone. He is a man, a man’s child, and from the marrow of my bones I hate him!” Then more than half the Pack yelled: “A man! A man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.” “And turn all the people of the villages against us?” clamored Shere Khan. “No, give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him between the eyes.” Akela lifted his head again and said, “He has eaten our food. He has slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of the Law of the Jungle.” “Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The worth of a bull is little, but Bagheera’s honor is something that he will perhaps fight for,” said Bagheera in his gentlest voice. “A bull paid ten years ago!” the Pack snarled. “What do we care for bones ten years old?” “Or for a pledge?” said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his lip.

“Well are ye called the Free People!” “No man’s cub can run with the people of the jungle,” howled Shere Khan. “Give him to me!” “He is our brother in all but blood,” Akela went on, “and ye would kill him here! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are eaters of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere Khan’s teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children from the villager’s doorstep. Therefore I know ye to be cowards, and it is to cowards I speak. It is certain that I must die, and my life is of no worth, or I would offer that in the man-cub’s place. But for the sake of the Honor of the Pack — a little matter that by being without a leader ye have forgotten — I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye. I will die without fighting. That will at least save the Pack three lives.

More I cannot do; but if ye will, I can save ye the shame that comes of killing a brother against whom there is no fault — a brother spoken for and bought into the Pack according to the Law of the Jungle.” “He is a man — a man — a man!” snarled the Pack. And most of the wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to switch. “Now the business is in thy hands,” said Bagheera to Mowgli. “We can do no more except fight.” Mowgli stood upright — the fire pot in his hands. Then he stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolflike, the wolves had never told him how they hated him. “Listen you!” he cried. “There is no need for this dog’s jabber. Ye have told me so often tonight that I am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life’s end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should.

What ye will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. That matter is with me; and that we may see the matter more plainly, I, the man, have brought here a little of the Red Flower which ye, dogs, fear.” He flung the fire pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in terror before the leaping flames. Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit and crackled, and whirled it above his head among the cowering wolves. “Thou art the master,” said Bagheera in an undertone. “Save Akela from the death. He was ever thy friend.” Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and quiver. “Good!” said Mowgli, staring round slowly. “I see that ye are dogs. I go from you to my own people — if they be my own people.

The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship. But I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.” He kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. “There shall be no war between any of us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go.” He strode forward to where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin. Bagheera followed in case of accidents. “Up, dog!” Mowgli cried. “Up, when a man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze!” Shere Khan’s ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes, for the blazing branch was very near. “This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men.

Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down thy gullet!” He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear. “Pah! Singed jungle cat — go now! But remember when next I come to the Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan’s hide on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will not kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I think that ye will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though ye were somebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out — thus! Go!” The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and Mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling with the sparks burning their fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli’s part. Then something began to hurt Mowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.

“What is it? What is it?” he said. “I do not wish to leave the jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?” “No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use,” said Bagheera. “Now I know thou art a man, and a man’s cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears.” So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before. “Now,” he said, “I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to my mother.” And he went to the cave where she lived with Father Wolf, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably. “Ye will not forget me?” said Mowgli. “Never while we can follow a trail,” said the cubs. “Come to the foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we will come into the croplands to play with thee by night.” “Come soon!” said Father Wolf.

“Oh, wise little frog, come again soon; for we be old, thy mother and I.” “Come soon,” said Mother Wolf, “little naked son of mine. For, listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs.” “I will surely come,” said Mowgli. “And when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan’s hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them in the jungle never to forget me!” The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside alone, to meet those mysterious things that are called men.

Question: In Kipling's 'The Jungle Book' what kind of creature is Akela?
Answer: A WOLF