“He has not eaten,” said Baloo, with a grunt of relief, as soon as he saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket.  “Be careful, Bagheera!  He is always a little blind after he has changed his skin, and very quick to strike.”

Kaa was not a poison snake—­in fact he rather despised the poison snakes as cowards—­but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once lapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said.  “Good hunting!” cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches.  Like all snakes of his breed Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at first.  Then he curled up ready for any accident, his head lowered.

“Good hunting for us all,” he answered.  “Oho, Baloo, what dost thou do here?  Good hunting, Bagheera.  One of us at least needs food.  Is there any news of game afoot?  A doe now, or even a young buck?  I am as empty as a dried well.”

“We are hunting,” said Baloo carelessly.  He knew that you must not hurry Kaa.  He is too big.

“Give me permission to come with you,” said Kaa.  “A blow more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—­I have to wait and wait for days in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape.  Psshaw!  The branches are not what they were when I was young.  Rotten twigs and dry boughs are they all.”

“Maybe thy great weight has something to do with the matter,” said Baloo.

“I am a fair length—­a fair length,” said Kaa with a little pride.  “But for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown timber.  I came very near to falling on my last hunt—­very near indeed—­and the noise of my slipping, for my tail was not tight wrapped around the tree, waked the Bandar-log, and they called me most evil names.”

“Footless, yellow earth-worm,” said Bagheera under his whiskers, as though he were trying to remember something.

“Sssss!  Have they ever called me that?” said Kaa.

“Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we never noticed them.  They will say anything—­even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they are indeed shameless, these Bandar-log)—­because thou art afraid of the he-goat’s horns,” Bagheera went on sweetly.

Now a snake, especially a wary old python like Kaa, very seldom shows that he is angry, but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing muscles on either side of Kaa’s throat ripple and bulge.

“The Bandar-log have shifted their grounds,” he said quietly.  “When I came up into the sun today I heard them whooping among the tree-tops.”

“It—­it is the Bandar-log that we follow now,” said Baloo, but the words stuck in his throat, for that was the first time in his memory that one of the Jungle-People had owned to being interested in the doings of the monkeys.

“Beyond doubt then it is no small thing that takes two such hunters—­leaders in their own jungle I am certain—­on the trail of the Bandar-log,” Kaa replied courteously, as he swelled with curiosity.