night’s doings. To move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely because they knew that at any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap upon them and bear them down.

But now all that life-and-death fun was ended, and the Jungle People came up, starved and weary, to the shrunken river, — tiger, bear, deer, buffalo, and pig, all together, — drank the fouled waters, and hung above them, too exhausted to move off.