The pig -- who , of course , will go to the ends of the earth for a full meal -- moved first by companies , scuffling over the rocks , and the deer followed , 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 villagers looked in the morning they saw their crops were lost . And that meant death if they did not get away , for they lived year in and year out as near to starvation as the Jungle was near to them . When the buffaloes were sent to graze the hungry brutes found that the deer had cleared the grazing-grounds , and so wandered into the Jungle and drifted off with their wild mates ; and when twilight fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the village lay in their stables with their heads beaten in . Only Bagheera could have given those strokes , and only Bagheera would have thought of insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street . The villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that night , so Hathi and his three sons went gleaning among what was left ; and where Hathi gleans there is no need to follow .
The men decided to live on their stored seed-corn until the rains had fallen , and then to take work as servants till they could catch up with the lost year ; but as the grain-dealer was thinking of his well-filled crates of corn , and the prices he would levy at the sale of it , XXXXX 's sharp tusks were picking out the corner of his mud-house , and smashing open the big wicker chest , leeped with cow-dung , where the precious stuff lay .
Bagheera Baloo Hathi Ikki Jungle Mang fro starvation stealers year