jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons
I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has
been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that
plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to
make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill
me here on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make
an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the
Jungle, that ye come one by one.'

There was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight Akela to the
death. Then Shere Khan roared: 'Bah! what have we to do with this
toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived
too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me.
I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle for ten
seasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not
give you one bone. He is a man, a man's child, and from the marrow of
my bones I hate him!'

Then more than half the Pack yelled: A man! a man!

What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.

'And turn all the people of the villages against us?' clamoured Shere
Khan. 'No; give him to me. He is a man, and none of us can look him
between the eyes.'

Akela lifted his head again, and said: 'He has eaten our food. He has
slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of
the Law of the Jungle.'

'Also, I paid for him with a Bull when he was accepted. The worth of
a bull is little, but Bagheera's honour is something that he will
perhaps fight for,' said Bagheera, in his gentlest voice.

'A bull paid ten years ago!' the Pack snarled. 'What do we care for
bones ten years old?'

'Or for a pledge?' said Bagheera, his white teeth bared under his
lip. 'Well are ye called the Free People!'

'No man's cub can run with the people of the jungle,' howled Shere
Khan. 'Give him to me!'

'He is our brother in all but blood,' Akela went on; 'and ye would
kill him here! In truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are eaters
of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere Khan's
teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children from the villager's
door-step Therefore I know ye to be cowards, and it is to cowards I
speak. It is certain that I must die, and my life is of no worth, or
I would offer that in the man-cub's place. But for the sake of the
Honour of the Pack,--a little matter that by being without a leader
ye