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.