could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that
made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness;
the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where
four roads met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public
wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs
sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and
pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest.
And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to
use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council
chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run
in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old
bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight
and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the
terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose trees and
the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored
all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of
little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what
they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling
each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and
made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they
would all rush together in mobs and shout: "There is no one in the
jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the
Bandar-log." Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city
and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice
them.

Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not like
or understand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the Cold
Lairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli
would have done after a long journey, they joined hands and danced about
and sang their foolish songs. One of the monkeys made a speech and told
his companions that Mowgli's capture marked a new thing in the history
of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show them how to weave sticks
and canes together as a protection against rain and cold. Mowgli picked
up some creepers and began to work them in and out, and the monkeys
tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost interest and began
to pull their friends' tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.