so I have never gone empty but I wished that I had killed
a goat; and also I have never killed a goat but I wished it had been
buck; nor buck but I wished it had been nilghai. But thus do we feel,
all of us."

"Thou hast no other desire?" the big snake demanded.

"What more can I wish? I have the Jungle, and the favour of the Jungle!
Is there more anywhere between sunrise and sunset?"

"Now, the Cobra said----" Kaa began. "What cobra? He that went away just
now said nothing. He was hunting."

"It was another."

"Hast thou many dealings with the Poison People? I give them their own
path. They carry death in the fore-tooth, and that is not good--for they
are so small. But what hood is this thou hast spoken with?"

Kaa rolled slowly in the water like a steamer in a beam sea. "Three or
four moons since," said he, "I hunted in Cold Lairs, which place thou
hast not forgotten. And the thing I hunted fled shrieking past the tanks
and to that house whose side I once broke for thy sake, and ran into the
ground."

"But the people of Cold Lairs do not live in burrows." Mowgli knew that
Kaa was telling of the Monkey People.

"This thing was not living, but seeking to live," Kaa replied, with
a quiver of his tongue. "He ran into a burrow that led very far. I
followed, and having killed, I slept. When I waked I went forward."

"Under the earth?"

"Even so, coming at last upon a White Hood [a white cobra], who spoke of
things beyond my knowledge, and showed me many things I had never before
seen."

"New game? Was it good hunting?" Mowgli turned quickly on his side.

"It was no game, and would have broken all my teeth; but the White Hood
said that a man--he spoke as one that knew the breed--that a man would
give the breath under his ribs for only the sight of those things."

"We will look," said Mowgli. "I now remember that I was once a man."

"Slowly--slowly. It was haste killed the Yellow Snake that ate the sun.
We two spoke together under the earth, and I spoke of thee, naming thee
as a man. Said the White Hood (and he is indeed as old as the Jungle):
'It is long since I have seen a man. Let him come, and he shall see all
these things, for the least of which very many men would die.'"

"That MUST be new game. And yet the Poison People do not tell us when
game is afoot. They are an unfriendly folk."

"It is NOT game. It is--it is--I cannot say what it is."

"We will go there. I have never seen a White Hood, and I w