A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.

Kipling so loved his masonic experience that he memorialised its ideals in his famous poem "The Mother Lodge". He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".

George Orwell called him a "prophet of British imperialism". : /ˈrʌdjəd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ RUD-yəd KIP-ling; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer poet and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India and his tales for children. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in England in both prose and verse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.