CHAPTER VICHUNKY TAKES A TRIP
Poor Chunky did not know what to do. He could hardly move around on the bottom of the hole, because it was so small. It had not been made to catch him, but he did not know that. The black hunters who had dug the pit hoped to catch in it a small deer. Chunky was really a little too big for the pit-trap, but it was too late to think of that now. He was in it.
“Oh dear!” thought Chunky, “I wonder if any of my friends will come to help me out? I wish Tum Tum would come. He could lift me out with his strong trunk. I’ll call him.”
So, in a sort of grunting voice, Chunky called:
“Tum Tum! where are you? Please come and get me out of the hole!”
After he had called the name of his big animal friend Chunky kept still and listened. He could hear nothing but the sounds of the jungle all about him. He could not see anything except the earth sides of the deep pit.
“Tum Tum! where are you? Come and help me out of this hole!” called the hippo boy, in animal talk of course.
But no one answered him. He could hear the birds in the jungle making their queer noises, not at all like the sweet sound your canary makes. The birds screamed instead of singing, though now and then one or another would utter a pleasant note.
And the monkeys! How they chattered! Other animals ran here and there through the jungle, going to get something to eat or something to drink. None of them, however, paid any attention to Chunky’s calls. Tum Tum did not answer him, because the jolly elephant was far away; and if any of the other jungle animals heard what Chunky was saying, they did not reply to him. Perhaps they, too, were in some sort of trouble, or they may have been busy.
“Well, I guess no one is coming to help me out of this hole,” said Chunky to himself, after a while. “Oh, dear! I wish I’d been more careful, and had not stepped on the dried leaves over the hole. Then I wouldn’t have fallen in!”
But it was too late to think of that now. Chunky knew he must try to get out before the black or white hunters came, for that he was in a pit dug by these men the hippo boy very well knew. Tum Tum, as well as his father and mother, had told him about such places and had warned him to be careful.
“Imustget out!” thought Chunky.
So he turned and twisted himself about on the bottom of the pit, and tried to raise himself up to look over the top, but he could not. In the first place he was too heavy to raise himself up very far on his hind legs. If he had been Lightfoot, the leaping goat, about whom some stories have been told you, Chunky might have done this, or he might even have jumped out of the pit. But, as it was, he could only bob up a little way and then drop back again.
“Maybe I could dig my way out with my big, long teeth, the same as I dig up the grass roots at the bottom of the river,” thought Chunky to himself. “Oh, dear! I wish I were back in the river now! I’m going to try to dig myself out.”
But though Chunky’s front teeth, or tusks, answered well enough for digging up grass or lily roots on the bottom of the river, where the mud was soft, they were not made for digging in the hard, earthen sides of the pit. The hippo boy could only make a few scratches, and these did him no good.
“It’s of no use!” sadly thought Chunky. “I guess I’ll have to stay here. But if only Tum Tum would come! I’ll call him again!”
So lifting up his head, with his big, broad nose pointing toward the opening at the top of the pit, Chunky called:
“Tum Tum! Please come and help me!”
He waited, but no one answered. The jolly elephant was still far away. Pretty soon, however, a little bird perched itself on top of a tree where it could look down into the pit. The bird saw the hippo and heard his big voice calling.
“My! what a funny way you have of singing,” remarked the bird.
“I am notsinging,” answered Chunky.
“Not singing? Then what do you call it?” asked the bird, looking down at Chunky, its little head on one side, just as your canary often looks at you.
“No, I wasn’t singing,” went on Chunky. “I can’t sing—at least not like you. I was calling for my friend Tum Tum, the jolly elephant, to come and help me get out of this hole.”
“What did you want to go and get in the hole for?” asked the bird, somewhat pertly.
“I didn’t want to,” Chunky explained patiently. “I fell in. This isn’t a regular hole. It’s a trap. It was all covered with leaves, sticks and grass, and I didn’t see it until I stepped right into it. Now I can’t get out unless my friend Tum Tum comes and lifts me out with his big, strong trunk, as he lifted me out of the mud. Oh, if Tum Tum were only here!”
“Maybe I can find him for you,” said the bird kindly, realizing now that Chunky was in a sad plight.
“I wish you would!” exclaimed Chunky. “You can fly all over the jungle. Perhaps you will see Tum Tum, the jolly elephant. If you do, please tell him to come and help me.”
“I will,” promised the bird.
“And tell him to hurry, please,” went on Chunky. “If I don’t get out of here soon, the black or white hunters—whoever made this pit—will come and get me, and then maybe they’ll put me in a circus.”
“What’s a circus?” asked the bird.
“I don’t know, but Tum Tum does,” answered Chunky. “He was in one long ago. He can tell you what a circus is when you find him to ask him to come to help me.”
“So he can!” chirped the bird. “Well, I’ll go off and see if I can find your jolly elephant friend for you. Good-bye, Chunky. Don’t worry; I’ll get Tum Tum to help you.”
“Good-bye, birdie, and thank you,” said the hippo boy.
Then the bird flew away across the jungle, and the hippo stayed at the bottom of the pit-trap, waiting for what would happen next. Though he did not know it, his real adventures had begun, and he was to have a great many.
Away flew the bird over the jungle, but it did not find Tum Tum, at least in time to be of any use to Chunky. The jolly elephant was helpingthe white hunters catch some wild elephants for the circus. And, while this was going on, along came the black hunters who had dug the pit into which Chunky had fallen. The black hunters were Africans, and they had on very little clothing, for it was very hot.
Along the jungle path they came, with their spears and guns—for the white hunters had sold the black hunters guns—jabbering and talking in their own language. This would have sounded very queer to you, but no queerer than your talk would sound to those black Africans. And it sounded queer to Chunky, who heard it, down in the bottom of the pit as he was. But then his way of talking in animal language sounded queer to the black hunters, so matters were even, you see.
“I wonder if we have caught anything in our trap,” said one black hunter to another, as he walked along the jungle.
“I hope we have a nice deer, so we can have a good meal,” observed another.
They were close, now, to the pit they had dug, and the black men walked more softly along the jungle path, for they wanted to see what was in their trap without being seen. One of them went carefully up and looked in. When he saw Chunky, the hippo boy, at the bottom, the black man gave a cry of delight.
“Oh, we have caught a hippo! We have caught a young hippo!” he shouted, leaping about and waving his sharp spear over his head. “It is much better than a goat or a pig, for we shall have much more meat to eat. Ho! for the hippo!”
Of course the black hunter talked in his own language which his friends, the other hunters, understood. They gathered with him about the edge of the pit and looked down. They could see poor Chunky there, though, of course, they did not know his name.
“Ha!” cried the black hunters. “We shall have a fine meal now! We shall have lots to eat!”
For the reason they had dug the pit in the jungle was to get something to eat. They had no store or market where they could go to buy anything. When they were hungry they had to hunt pigs, elephants or hippos with their guns or spears, or trap them in pits or nets.
“We must get him out of the pit,” said the first black hunter. “We cannot cook him and eat him if he is down there.”
Chunky did not understand what the men were saying, and he did not know what they were going to do to him. But he soon found out. The men brought long ropes, made from twisted jungle vines, and lowered them down into thepit. They did not dare jump down themselves, for though Chunky was only a little hippo, compared to the grown ones, still he was strong, and his big teeth could bite very hard. The black hunters wanted to tie him with ropes before they lifted him out.
So down into the pit they dangled their strong vine ropes. Chunky saw them coming and felt them on his back, but he could not get out of the way of them. Soon they were tangled about his legs and body, and then, all the black hunters pulling together, they lifted the hippo out of the hole.
Chunky grunted and wiggled, but it was of no use. He could not get away from the ropes that were soon wound all about him.
Then just as one of the black hunters was about to stick him with a spear, to kill him, suddenly there was a loud noise in the jungle that made the black hunters look in the direction from which it sounded.
They saw, coming toward them, some white men with black men—servants to carry their guns, tents and boxes of food. It was a party of white hunters out seeking wild animals.
“What have you there?” asked the leader of the white hunters of the head of the black hunters—the one who had first looked down at Chunky in the pit. “What have you there?”
“We have a small hippo,” was the answer.
“And what are you going to do with him?”
“We are going to eat him, for we are hungry, and he has much meat on him—he is nice and fat.”
“Oh, don’t kill him!” said the white hunter. “I will buy him from you alive, and I’ll take him to a far-off land where people who do not see many hippos can see him. I can sell him to a circus. Don’t kill the little hippo. Sell him to me. Then you can buy other things to eat.”
“Well, we will do that,” said the black hunter. “But how can you carry this hippo alive to a far country?”
“I’ll show you,” answered the white hunter. “Leave him to me. Here are lots of beads and copper rings and looking glasses that flash in the sun like silver. I will give you these for the hippo.”
The black hunters liked very much the pretty things the white man had, so they took them and let him take Chunky, though of course the white man, as yet, did not know the hippo’s name.
“Make me a strong cage of jungle vines and poles of wood,” said the white hunter to his black helpers. “In the cage we will carry the hippo through the jungle until we come to the ‘great water,’ as you call the ocean. There, in a ship,I can take him to America, where I live. Make me a strong cage for the hippo.”
So they made a strong cage for Chunky, and when he was put in it and the ropes slipped off him, he could stand up, and move about, though he could not get out. And oh! how hot and tired and cramped and thirsty he was! How he would have liked to take a swim in his river, dive down out of sight and chew some of the sweet grass roots! But this was not to be.
Chunky was caught, and was in a cage, and, pretty soon, many of the black men with the white hunter, taking hold of poles thrust through the cage, began carrying Chunky through the jungle.
The little hippo boy was being taken away.He was beginning a very long trip, and on it he was to have many adventures.
“Oh, dear!” thought Chunky, as he felt himself being lifted up and carried along. “I guess that bird didn’t find Tum Tum and tell him to come and help me! I wonder what is going to happen to me?”
And well might Chunky, the happy hippo, wonder. He did not feel very happy now, but better times were coming, though he did not know it.
“The little hippo boy was being taken away”
“The little hippo boy was being taken away”