owed, with the small wild foxes that live on
the dead and dying of the herds; and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved
parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps came after
the nilghai. The least little thing would have turned the scattered,
straggling droves that grazed and sauntered and drank and grazed again;
but whenever there was an alarm some one would rise up and soothe them.
At one time it would be Ikki the Porcupine, full of news of good feed
just a little farther on; at another Mang would cry cheerily and flap
down a glade to show it was all empty; or Baloo, his mouth full of
roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line and half frighten, half
romp it clumsily back to the proper road. Very many creatures broke back
or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go forward. At
the end of another ten days or so the situation was this. The deer and
the pig and the nilghai were milling round and round in a circle of
eight or ten miles radius, while the Eaters of Flesh skirmished round
its edge. And the centre of that circle was the village, and round the
village the crops were ripening, and in the crops sat men on what they
call machans--platforms like pigeon-perches, made of sticks at the top
of four poles--to scare away birds and other stealers. Then the deer
were coaxed no more. The Eaters of Flesh were close behind them, and
forced them forward and inward.

It was a dark night when Hathi and his three sons slipped down from the
Jungle, and broke off the poles of the machans with their trunks; they
fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom falls, and the men that
tumbled from them heard the deep gurgling of the elephants in their
ears. Then the vanguard of the bewildered armies of the deer broke down
and flooded into the village grazing-grounds and the ploughed fields;
and the sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig came with them, and what the deer
left the pig spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of wolves would
shake the herds, and they would rush to and fro desperately, treading
down the young barley, and cutting flat the banks of the irrigating
channels. Before the dawn broke the pressure on the outside of the
circle gave way at one point. The Eaters of Flesh had fallen back and
left an open path to the south, and drove upon drove of buck fled along
it. Others, who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal
next night.

But the work was practically done. When the vill