hand could not turn aside. “Look! I touch thee here, Little Brother! Here, and here! Are thy hands numb? Here again!”

The game always ended in one way — with a straight, driving blow of the head that knocked the boy over and over.

Mowgli could never learn the guard for that lightning lunge, and, as Kaa said, there was not the least use in trying.

“Good hunting!” Kaa grunted at last; and Mowgli, as usual, was shot away half a dozen yards, gasping and laughing. He rose with his fingers full of grass, and followed Kaa to the wise snake’s pet bathing-place — a deep, pitchy-black pool surrounded with rocks, and made interesting by sunken tree-stumps. The boy slipped in, Jungle-fashion, without a sound, and dived