heavy weight of Shere Khan's raw hide on his shoulders, while
Akela and Gray Brother trotted behind, so that the triple trail
was very clearly marked. Presently Buldeo came to where Akela,
as you know, had gone back and mixed it all up. Then he sat
down, and coughed and grunted, and made little casts round and
about into the Jungle to pick it up again, and, all the time he
could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him.
No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be
heard; and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very
clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old
man as a school of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and
as they ringed him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech
began below the lowest end of the scale that untrained human
beings can hear. [The other end is bounded by the high squeak of
Mang, the Bat, which very many people cannot catch at all. From
that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.]

"This is better than any kill," said Gray Brother, as Buldeo
stooped and peered and puffed. "He looks like a lost pig in
the Jungles by the river. What does he say?" Buldeo was
muttering savagely.

Mowgli translated. "He says that packs of wolves must have
danced round me. He says that he never saw such a trail in
his life. He says he is tired."

"He will be rested before he picks it up again," said Bagheera
coolly, as he slipped round a tree-trunk, in the game of
blindman's-buff that they were playing. "NOW, what does the
lean thing do?"