The Jungle Book

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"The proper way," said the camel. "We all sat down--"

"Oh, my crupper and breastplate!" said the troop-horse under his breath.
"Sat down!"

"We sat down--a hundred of us," the camel went on, "in a big square, and
the men piled our packs and saddles, outside the square, and they fired
over our backs, the men did, on all sides of the square."

"What sort of men? Any men that came along?" said the troop-horse. "They
teach us in riding school to lie down and let our masters fire across
us, but Dick Cunliffe is the only man I'd trust to do that. It tickles
my girths, and, besides, I can't see with my head on the ground."

"What does it matter who fires across you?" said the camel. "There are
plenty of men and plenty of other camels close by, and a great many
clouds of smoke. I am not frightened then. I sit still and wait."

"And yet," said Billy, "you dream bad dreams and upset the camp at
night. Well, well! Before I'd lie down, not to speak of sitting down,
and let a man fire across me, my heels and his head would have something
to say to each other. Did you ever hear anything so awful as that?"

There was a long silence, and then one of the gun bullocks lifted up his
big head and said, "This is very foolish indeed. There is only one way
of fighting."

"Oh, go on," said Billy. "Please don't mind me. I suppose you fellows
fight standing on your tails?"

"Only one way," said the two together. (They must have been twins.)
"This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon
as Two Tails trumpets." ("Two Tails" is camp slang for the elephant.)

"What does Two Tails trumpet for?" said the young mule.

"To show that he is not going any nearer to the smoke on the other
side. Two Tails is a great coward. Then we tug the big gun all
together--Heya--Hullah! Heeyah! Hullah! We do not climb like cats nor
run like calves. We go across the level plain, twenty yoke of us, till
we are unyoked again, and we graze while the big guns talk across the
plain to some town with mud walls, and pieces of the wall fall out, and
the dust goes up as though many cattle were coming home."

"Oh! And you choose that time for grazing?" said the young mule.

"That time or any other. Eating is always good. We eat till we are yoked
up again and tug the gun back to where Two Tails is waiting for it.
Sometimes there are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of
us are killed, and then there is all the more grazing for those that are
left. This is Fate. None the less, Two Tails is a great coward. That is
the proper way to fight. We are brothers from Hapur. Our father was a
sacred bull of Shiva. We have spoken."

"Well, I've certainly learned something tonight," said the troop-horse.
"Do you gentlemen of the screw-gun battery feel inclined to eat when you
are being fired at with big guns, and Two Tails is behind you?"

"About as much as we feel inclined to sit down and let men sprawl all
over us, or run into people with knives. I never heard such stuff. A
mountain ledge, a well-balanced load, a driver you can trust to let you
pick your own way, and I'm your mule. But--the other things--no!" said
Billy, with a stamp of his foot.

"Of course," said the troop horse, "everyone is not made in the same
way, and I can quite see that your family, on your father's side, would
fail to understand a great many things."

"Never you mind my family on my father's side," said Billy angrily, for
every mule hates to be reminded that his father was a donkey. "My father
was a Southern gentleman, and he could pull down and bite and kick into
rags every horse he came across. Remember that, you big brown Brumby!"

Brumby means wild horse without any breeding. Imagine the feelings of
Sunol if a car-horse called her a "skate," and you can imagine how the
Australian horse felt. I saw the white of his eye glitter in the dark.

"See here, you son of an imported Malaga jackass," he said between
his teeth, "I'd have you know that I'm related on my mother's side to
Carbine, winner of the Melbourne Cup, and where I come from we aren't
accustomed to being ridden over roughshod by any parrot-mouthed,
pig-headed mule in a pop-gun pea-shooter battery. Are you ready?"

"On your hind legs!" squealed Billy. They both reared up facing each
other, and I was expecting a furious fight, when a gurgly, rumbly
voice, called out of the darkness to the right--"Children, what are you
fighting about there? Be quiet."

Both beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor
mule can bear to listen to an elephant's voice.

"It's Two Tails!" said the troop-horse. "I can't stand him. A tail at
each end isn't fair!"

"My feelings exactly," said Billy, crowding into the troop-horse for
company. "We're very alike in some things."

"I suppose we've inherited them from our mothers," said the troop horse.
"It's not worth quarreling about. Hi! Two Tails, are you tied up?"

"Yes," said Two Tails, with a laugh all up his trunk. "I'm picketed for
the night. I've heard what you fellows have been saying. But don't be
afraid. I'm not coming over."

The bullocks and the camel said, half aloud, "Afraid of Two Tails--what
nonsense!" And the bullocks went on, "We are sorry that you heard, but
it is true. Two Tails, why are you afraid of the guns when they fire?"

"Well," said Two Tails, rubbing one hind leg against the other, exactly
like a little boy saying a poem, "I don't quite know whether you'd
understand."

"We don't, but we have to pull the guns," said the bullocks.

"I know it, and I know you are a good deal braver than you think
you are. But it's different with me. My battery captain called me a
Pachydermatous Anachronism the other day."

"That's another way of fighting, I suppose?" said Billy, who was
recovering his spirits.

"You don't know what that means, of course, but I do. It means betwixt
and between, and that is just where I am. I can see inside my head what
will happen when a shell bursts, and you bullocks can't."

"I can," said the troop-horse. "At least a little bit. I try not to
think about it."

"I can see more than you, and I do think about it. I know there's a
great deal of me to take care of, and I know that nobody knows how to
cure me when I'm sick. All they can do is to stop my driver's pay till I
get well, and I can't trust my driver."

"Ah!" said the troop horse. "That explains it. I can trust Dick."

"You could put a whole regiment of Dicks on my back without making me
feel any better. I know just enough to be uncomfortable, and not enough
to go on in spite of it."

"We do not understand," said the bullocks.

"I know you don't. I'm not talking to you. You don't know what blood
is."

"We do," said the bullocks. "It is red stuff that soaks into the ground
and smells."

The troop-horse gave a kick and a bound and a snort.

"Don't talk of it," he said. "I can smell it now, just thinking of it.
It makes me want to run--when I haven't Dick on my back."

"But it is not here," said the camel and the bullocks. "Why are you so
stupid?"

"It's vile stuff," said Billy. "I don't want to run, but I don't want to
talk about it."

"There you are!" said Two Tails, waving his tail to explain.

"Surely. Yes, we have been here all night," said the bullocks.

Two Tails stamped his foot till the iron ring on it jingled. "Oh, I'm
not talking to you. You can't see inside your heads."

"No. We see out of our four eyes," said the bullocks. "We see straight
in front of us."

"If I could do that and nothing else, you wouldn't be needed to pull the
big guns at all. If I was like my captain--he can see things inside his
head before the firing begins, and he shakes all over, but he knows too
much to run away--if I was like him I could pull the guns. But if I were
as wise as all that I should never be here. I should be a king in the
forest, as I used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when I liked.
I haven't had a good bath for a month."

"That's all very fine," said Billy. "But giving a thing a long name
doesn't make it any better."

"H'sh!" said the troop horse. "I think I understand what Two Tails
means."

"You'll understand better in a minute," said Two Tails angrily. "Now you
just explain to me why you don't like this!"

He began trumpeting furiously at the top of his trumpet.

"Stop that!" said Billy and the troop horse together, and I could
hear them stamp and shiver. An elephant's trumpeting is always nasty,
especially on a dark night.

"I shan't stop," said Two Tails. "Won't you explain that, please?
Hhrrmph! Rrrt! Rrrmph! Rrrhha!" Then he stopped suddenly, and I heard
a little whimper in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last.
She knew as well as I did that if there is one thing in the world the
elephant is more afraid of than another it is a little barking dog. So
she stopped to bully Two Tails in his pickets, and yapped round his big
feet. Two Tails shuffled and squeaked. "Go away, little dog!" he said.
"Don't snuff at my ankles, or I'll kick at you. Good little dog--nice
little doggie, then! Go home, you yelping little beast! Oh, why doesn't
someone take her away? She'll bite me in a minute."

"Seems to me," said Billy to the troop horse, "that our friend Two Tails
is afraid of most things. Now, if I had a full meal for every dog I've
kicked across the parade-ground I should be as fat as Two Tails nearly."

I whistled, and Vixen ran up to me, muddy all over, and licked my nose,
and told me a long tale about hunting for me all through the camp. I
never let her know that I understood beast talk, or she would have
taken all sorts of liberties. So I buttoned her into the breast of my
overcoat, and Two Tails shuffled and stamped and growled to himself.

"Extraordinary! Most extraordinary!" he said. "It runs in our family.
Now, where has that nasty little beast gone to?"

I heard him feeling about with his trunk.

"We all seem to be affected in various ways," he went on, blowing his
nose. "Now, you gentlemen were alarmed, I believe, when I trumpeted."

"Not alarmed, exactly," said the troop-horse, "but it made me feel as
though I had hornets where my saddle ought to be. Don't begin again."

"I'm frightened of a little dog, and the camel here is frightened by bad
dreams in the night."

"It is very lucky for us that we haven't all got to fight in the same
way," said the troop-horse.

"What I want to know," said the young mule, who had been quiet for a
long time--"what I want to know is, why we have to fight at all."

"Because we're told to," said the troop-horse, with a snort of contempt.

"Orders," said Billy the mule, and his teeth snapped.

"Hukm hai!" (It is an order!), said the camel with a gurgle, and Two
Tails and the bullocks repeated, "Hukm hai!"

"Yes, but who gives the orders?" said the recruit-mule.

"The man who walks at your head--Or sits on your back--Or holds the nose
rope--Or twists your tail," said Billy and the troop-horse and the camel
and the bullocks one after the other.

"But who gives them the orders?"

"Now you want to know too much, young un," said Billy, "and that is one
way of getting kicked. All you have to do is to obey the man at your
head and ask no questions."

"He's quite right," said Two Tails. "I can't always obey, because I'm
betwixt and between. But Billy's right. Obey the man next to you who
gives the order, or you'll stop all the battery, besides getting a
thrashing."

The gun-bullocks got up to go. "Morning is coming," they said. "We will
go back to our lines. It is true that we only see out of our eyes, and
we are not very clever. But still, we are the only people to-night who
have not been afraid. Good-night, you brave people."

Nobody answered, and the troop-horse said, to change the conversation,
"Where's that little dog? A dog means a man somewhere about."

"Here I am," yapped Vixen, "under the gun tail with my man. You big,
blundering beast of a camel you, you upset our tent. My man's very
angry."

"Phew!" said the bullocks. "He must be white!"

"Of course he is," said Vixen. "Do you suppose I'm looked after by a
black bullock-driver?"

"Huah! Ouach! Ugh!" said the bullocks. "Let us get away quickly."

They plunged forward in the mud, and managed somehow to run their yoke
on the pole of an ammunition wagon, where it jammed.

"Now you have done it," said Billy calmly. "Don't struggle. You're hung
up till daylight. What on earth's the matter?"

The bullocks went off into the long hissing snorts that Indian cattle
give, and pushed and crowded and slued and stamped and slipped and
nearly fell down in the mud, grunting savagely.

"You'll break your necks in a minute," said the troop-horse. "What's the
matter with white men? I live with 'em."

"They--eat--us! Pull!" said the near bullock. The yoke snapped with a
twang, and they lumbered off together.

I never knew before what made Indian cattle so scared of Englishmen.
We eat beef--a thing that no cattle-driver touches--and of course the
cattle do not like it.

"May I be flogged with my own pad-chains! Who'd have thought of two big
lumps like those losing their heads?" said Billy.

"Never mind. I'm going to look at this man. Most of the white men, I
know, have things in their pockets," said the troop-horse.

"I'll leave you, then. I can't say I'm over-fond of 'em myself. Besides,
white men who haven't a place to sleep in are more than likely to be
thieves, and I've a good deal of Government property on my back. Come
along, young un, and we'll go back to our lines. Good-night, Australia!
See you on parade to-morrow, I suppose. Good-night, old Hay-bale!--try
to control your feelings, won't you? Good-night, Two Tails! If you pass
us on the ground tomorrow, don't trumpet. It spoils our formation."

Billy the Mule stumped off with the swaggering limp of an old
campaigner, as the troop-horse's head came nuzzling into my breast, and
I gave him biscuits, while Vixen, who is a most conceited little dog,
told him fibs about the scores of horses that she and I kept.

"I'm coming to the parade to-morrow in my dog-cart," she said. "Where
will you be?"

"On the left hand of the second squadron. I set the time for all my
troop, little lady," he said politely. "Now I must go back to Dick. My
tail's all muddy, and he'll have two hours' hard work dressing me for
parade."

The big parade of all the thirty thousand men was held that afternoon,
and Vixen and I had a good place close to the Viceroy and the Amir of
Afghanistan, with high, big black hat of astrakhan wool and the great
diamond star in the center. The first part of the review was all
sunshine, and the regiments went by in wave upon wave of legs all moving
together, and guns all in a line, till our eyes grew dizzy. Then the
cavalry came up, to the beautiful cavalry canter of "Bonnie Dundee," and
Vixen cocked her ear where she sat on the dog-cart. The second squadron
of the Lancers shot by, and there was the troop-horse, with his tail
like spun silk, his head pulled into his breast, one ear forward and one
back, setting the time for all his squadron, his legs going as smoothly
as waltz music. Then the big guns came by, and I saw Two Tails and two
other elephants harnessed in line to a forty-pounder siege gun, while
twenty yoke of oxen walked behind. The seventh pair had a new yoke, and
they looked rather stiff and tired. Last came the screw guns, and Billy
the mule carried himself as though he commanded all the troops, and his
harness was oiled and polished till it winked. I gave a cheer all by
myself for Billy the mule, but he never looked right or left.

The rain began to fall again, and for a while it was too misty to see
what the troops were doing. They had made a big half circle across the
plain, and were spreading out into a line. That line grew and grew and
grew till it was three-quarters of a mile long from wing to wing--one
solid wall of men, horses, and guns. Then it came on straight toward the
Viceroy and the Amir, and as it got nearer the ground began to shake,
like the deck of a steamer when the engines are going fast.

Unless you have been there you cannot imagine what a frightening effect
this steady come-down of troops has on the spectators, even when they
know it is only a review. I looked at the Amir. Up till then he had not
shown the shadow of a sign of astonishment or anything else. But now his
eyes began to get bigger and bigger, and he picked up the reins on his
horse's neck and looked behind him. For a minute it seemed as though he
were going to draw his sword and slash his way out through the English
men and women in the carriages at the back. Then the advance stopped
dead, the ground stood still, the whole line saluted, and thirty bands
began to play all together. That was the end of the review, and the
regiments went off to their camps in the rain, and an infantry band
struck up with--

The animals went in two by two,
Hurrah!
The animals went in two by two,
The elephant and the battery mul',
and they all got into the Ark
For to get out of the rain!

Then I heard an old grizzled, long-haired Central Asian chief, who had
come down with the Amir, asking questions of a native officer.

"Now," said he, "in what manner was this wonderful thing done?"

And the officer answered, "An order was given, and they obeyed."

"But are the beasts as wise as the men?" said the chief.

"They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he
obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his
lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his major,
and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding
three regiments, and the brigadier the general, who obeys the Viceroy,
who is the servant of the Empress. Thus it is done."

"Would it were so in Afghanistan!" said the chief, "for there we obey
only our own wills."

"And for that reason," said the native officer, twirling his mustache,
"your Amir whom you do not obey must come here and take orders from our
Viceroy."




Parade Song of the Camp Animals

ELEPHANTS OF THE GUN TEAMS

We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,
The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees;
We bowed our necks to service: they ne'er were loosed again,--
Make way there--way for the ten-foot teams
Of the Forty-Pounder train!

GUN BULLOCKS

Those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball,
And what they know of powder upsets them one and all;
Then we come into action and tug the guns again--
Make way there--way for the twenty yoke
Of the Forty-Pounder train!

CAVALRY HORSES

By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes
Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons,
And it's sweeter than "Stables" or "Water" to me--
The Cavalry Canter of "Bonnie Dundee"!

Then feed us and break us and handle and groom,
And give us good riders and plenty of room,
And launch us in column of squadron and see
The way of the war-horse to "Bonnie Dundee"!

SCREW-GUN MULES

As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill,
The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still;
For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,
Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to
spare!

Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road;
Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load:
For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,
Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to
spare!

COMMISSARIAT CAMELS

We haven't a camelty tune of our own
To help us trollop along,
But every neck is a hair trombone
(Rtt-ta-ta-ta! is a hair trombone!)
And this our marching-song:
Can't! Don't! Shan't! Won't!
Pass it along the line!
Somebody's pack has slid from his back,
Wish it were only mine!
Somebody's load has tipped off in the road--
Cheer for a halt and a row!
Urrr! Yarrh! Grr! Arrh!
Somebody's catching it now!

ALL THE BEASTS TOGETHER

Children of the Camp are we,
Serving each in his degree;
Children of the yoke and goad,
Pack and harness, pad and load.
See our line across the plain,
Like a heel-rope bent again,
Reaching, writhing, rolling far,
Sweeping all away to war!
While the men that walk beside,
Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed,
Cannot tell why we or they
March and suffer day by day.
Children of the Camp are we,
Serving each in his degree;
Children of the yoke and goad,
Pack and harness, pad and load!