The more they kept to their village , the bolder grew the wild things that gambolled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Waingunga . They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the empty byres that backed on to the Jungle ; the wild pig trampled them down , and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and threw their elbows over the new-won ground , and the coarse grass bristled behind the vines like the lances of a goblin army following a retreat . The unmarried men ran away first , and carried the news far and near that the village was doomed . Who could fight , they said , against the Jungle , or the Gods of the Jungle , when the very village cobra had left his hole in the platform under the peepul-tree ? So their little commerce with the outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across the open grew fewer and fainter . At last the nightly trumpetings of Hathi and his three sons ceased to trouble them ; for they had no more to be robbed of . The crop on the ground and the seed in the ground had been taken . The outlying fields were already losing their shape , and it was time to throw themselves on the charity of the English at Khanhiwara . Native fashion , they delayed their departure from one day to another till the first Rains caught them and the unmended roofs let in a flood , and the grazing-ground stood ankle deep , and all life came on with a rush after the heat of the summer . Then they waded out -- men , women , and children -- through the blinding hot rain of the morning , but turned naturally for one farewell look at their homes . They heard , as the last burdened family filed through the gate , a crash of falling beams and thatch behind the walls . They saw a shiny , snaky black trunk lifted for an instant , scattering sodden thatch . It disappeared , and there was another crash , followed by a squeal . Hathi had been plucking off the roofs of the huts as you pluck water-lilies , and a rebounding beam had pricked him . He needed only this to unchain his full strength , for of all things in the Jungle the wild elephant enraged is the most wantonly destructive . He kicked backward at a mud wall that crumbled at the stroke , and , crumbling , melted to yellow mud under the torrent of rain . Then he wheeled and squealed , and tore through the narrow streets , leaning against the huts right and left , shivering the crazy doors , and crumpling up the caves ; while his three sons raged behind as they had raged at the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore . `` The Jungle will swallow these shells , '' said a quiet voice in the wreckage . `` It is the outer wall that must lie down , '' and Mowgli , with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms , leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo . `` All in good time , '' panted Hathi .
`` Oh , but my tusks were red at XXXXX ; To the outer wall , children !
Bhurtpore Khanhiwara Mowgli Waingunga byres flood morning new-won right thatch