for fun and in the hope of being noticed.  Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People could see them.  They were always just going to have a leader, and laws and customs of their own, but they never did, because their memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they compromised things by making up a saying, “What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will think later,” and that comforted them a great deal.  None of the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none of the beasts would notice them, and that was why they were so pleased when Mowgli came to play with them, and they heard how angry Baloo was.

They never meant to do any more—­the Bandar-log never mean anything at all; but one of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and he told all the others that Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in the tribe, because he could weave sticks together for protection from the wind; so, if they caught him, they could make him teach them.  Of course Mowgli, as a woodcutter’s child, inherited all sorts of instincts, and used to make little huts of fallen branches without thinking how he came to do it.  The Monkey-People, watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful.  This time, they said, they were really going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the jungle—­so wise that everyone else would notice and envy them.  Therefore they followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli through the jungle very quietly till it was time for the midday nap, and Mowgli, who was very much ashamed of himself, slept between the Panther and the Bear, resolving to have no more to do with the Monkey People.

The next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and arms—­hard, strong, little hands—­and then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared.  The Bandar-log howled with triumph and scuffled away to the upper branches where Bagheera dared not follow, shouting:  “He has noticed us!  Bagheera has noticed us.  All the Jungle-People admire us for our skill and our cunning.”  Then they began their flight; and the flight of the Monkey-People through tree-land is one of the things nobody can describe.  They have their regular roads and crossroads, up hills and down hills, all laid out from fifty to seventy or a hundred feet above ground, and by these they can travel even at night if necessary.  Two of the strongest monkeys caught Mowgli under the arms and swung off with him through the treetops, twenty feet at a bound.  Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy’s weight held them back.  Sick and giddy as Mowgli was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below