“Good hunting!” said Mowgli, who carried his manners with his knife, and that never left him.

“What of the city?” said the White Cobra, without answering the greeting. “What of the great, the walled city — the city of a hundred elephants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle past counting — the city of the King of Twenty Kings? I grow deaf here, and it is long since I heard their war-gongs.”

“The Jungle is above our heads,” said Mowgli. “I know only Hathi and his sons among elephants. Bagheera has slain all the horses in one village, and — what is a King?”

“I told thee,” said Kaa softly to the Cobra, — ”I told thee, four moons ago, that thy city was not.”