The Project Gutenberg eBook ofUmboo, the ElephantThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Umboo, the ElephantAuthor: Howard Roger GarisRelease date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5900]Most recently updated: June 4, 2012Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UMBOO, THE ELEPHANT ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Umboo, the ElephantAuthor: Howard Roger GarisRelease date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5900]Most recently updated: June 4, 2012Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Title: Umboo, the Elephant
Author: Howard Roger Garis
Author: Howard Roger Garis
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5900]Most recently updated: June 4, 2012
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UMBOO, THE ELEPHANT ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Circus Animal Stories
By
Author of"The Bedtime Stories""The Uncle Wiggily Series""The Daddy Series"Etc.
I Baby Umboo
II On The March
III Sliding Down Hill
IV Umboo Learns Something
V Picking Nuts
VI Umboo Is Lost
VII Umboo And The Snake
VIII Umboo Finds His Mother
IX To The Salt Spring
X In A Trap
XI Umboo Goes To School
XII Umboo Is Sold
XIII Umboo On The Ship
XIV Umboo In The Circus
XV Umboo Remembers
"Oh, my! But it's hot! It is just too hot for anything!" cried Chako, one of the monkeys in the circus cage. "It is hotter under this tent than ever it was in the jungle! Whew!" and he hung by his tail and swung to and fro from a wooden bar.
"In the jungle we could find a pool of water where we could keep cool," said another monkey, who was poking around the floor of the cage, hoping he could find a peanut. But there were only shells. "I wish I could go back to the jungle," he chattered.
"What did you come away from the jungle for, if you don't like it in this circus?" asked Woo-Uff, the big yellow lion, who lay on his back in his cage, his legs stuck up in the air, for he was cooler that way. "Why did you come from the jungle, Chako?"
"I didn't want to come," answered the swinging monkey. "But some white and black hunters caught me, and a lot more of us chattering chaps, and took us away from the jungle."
"That's right, my boy!" exclaimed the deep, rumbly voice of Umboo, the biggest elephant in the circus. "None of us animals would have come away from the jungle if we could have had our way. But, now that we are here, we must make the best of it."
"How can one make the best of it when it is so hot?" asked Chako. "The sun shines down on this circus tent hotter than ever it did in the jungle. And there is no pool of water where we can splash and be cool."
"Oh, if water is all you want, I can give you some of that," spokeUmboo. "Wait a minute!"
Near the elephants, of whom Umboo was one on a long line, chained to stakes driven in the ground, was a big tub of water, put there for them to drink when they wanted to. Umboo put his long, rubbery hose of a trunk down into this tub of water, and sucked up a lot, just as you fill your rubber ball at the bathroom basin.
"Look out now, monkeys!" cried the elephant. "It's going to rain!" and he sort of laughed away down in his throat. He couldn't laugh through his nose, as his nose was his trunk, and that was full of water. "Look out for a shower!" he cried.
With that the elephant went:
"Woof-umph!"
Out from his trunk, as if from a hose, sprinkled a shower of water. Over the cage of monkeys it sprayed, wetting them as might a fall of rain.
"Here comes some more!" cried Umboo, and again he dipped his trunk in the tub of water, sucked up some in the two hollow places, and again squirted it over the monkeys' cage.
"Oh, that's good! That's fine!" cried Chako. "That was like being in a jungle rain. I'm cooler now. Squirt some more, Umboo!"
"No, hold on, if you please!" rumbled another elephant. "It is all right for Umboo to splatter some water on you poor monkeys, but if he quirts away all in the tub we will have none to drink."
"That's so," said Umboo. "I can't squirt away all the water, Chako. We big elephants have to drink a lot more than you little monkeys. But when the circus men fill our tub again, I'll squirt some more on you."
"Thank you!" chattered Chako. "I feel cooler, anyhow. And we monkeys can't stand too much water. This felt fine!"
The monkeys in the cage were quite damp, and some began combing out their long hair with their queer little fingers, that look almost like yours, except that their thumb isn't quite the same.
"If Umboo can't squirt any more water on us, maybe he can do something else to help us forget that it is so hot," said Gink, a funny little monkey, who had a very long tail.
"What can he do, except squirt water on us?" asked Chako. "And I wish he'd do that again. It's the only thing to make us cooler."
"No, I wasn't thinking of that, though I do like a little water," spoke Gink. "But don't you remember, Umboo, you promised to tell us a story of how you lived in a jungle when you were a baby elephant?"
"Oh, yes, so he did!" exclaimed Chako. "I had forgotten about that. It will make us cooler, I think, to hear you tell a story, Umboo. Please do!"
"Well, all right, I will," said the big elephant, as he swung to and fro; because elephants are very seldom still, but always moving as they stand. And they sleep standing up—did you know that?
"I'll tell you a story about my jungle," went on Umboo. "But perhaps you will not like it as well as you did the story Snarlie the tiger told you."
"Oh, yes we will," said Snarlie himself, a big, handsome striped tiger in a cage not far from where the monkeys lived. "You can tell us a good story, Umboo."
"And make it as long as the story Woo-Uff, the lion, told us," beggedHumpo, the camel. "I liked his story."
"Thank you," spoke Woo-Uff, as he rolled over near the edge of his cage where he could hear better. "I'm glad you liked my story, Humpo, but I'm sure Umboo's will be better than mine. And don't forget the funny part, my big elephant friend."
"What funny part is that?" asked Horni, the rhinoceros.
"Oh, I guess he means where I once filled my trunk with water and squirted some on a man, as I did on the monkeys just now," said the swaying elephant.
"Why did you do that?" Chako wanted to know.
"Well, I'll tell you when I get to that part of my story," said the elephant. "Now do you all want to hear me talk?"
"Oh, yes! yes!" cried the animals in the circus tent. "Tell us your story, Umboo! Tell us about when you were a baby in the far-off jungle of Africa."
"I did not come from Africa; I came from an Indian jungle," said Umboo. "My friends, the African elephants, are much larger than I am, and they are wilder and fiercer, and so they are hardly every caught for the circus."
"I remember a great big elephant in a circus I was once with—not this one, though," said Humpo, the camel. "His name was Jug—no it was not Jug, and it wasn't Jig, but it began with a J."
"Maybe it was Jumbo," suggested Umboo.
"That was it—Jumbo!" cried Humpo. "He was a very big elephant."
"Yes, I guess he was," said Umboo. "I have heard of him, but I never saw him. He was an African elephant, and they are all large. Poor Jumbo!"
"Why do you say that?" asked Chako the monkey. "Poor Jumbo?"
"Because he is dead," said Umboo. "Poor Jumbo was struck by one of those big puffing animals, of steam and steel and iron, that pull our circus train over the shiny rails."
"You mean a choo-choo-locomotive-steam-engine," said Woo-Uff, the lion.
"I suppose that is the name," said Umboo. "Anyhow, Jumbo was hit by an engine, and, big as he was, it killed him. His bones, or skeleton, are in a museum in New York now."
"Is New York a jungle?" asked Gink, who had not been with the circus very long.
"New York a jungle? Of course not!" laughed Snarlie, the tiger. "New York is a big city, and sometimes we circus animals are taken there to help with the show. I've been in New York lots of times."
"Well, don't let it make you proud," said Chako, the other monkey. "I have been there myself, and I'd much rather be in the jungle."
"Say, are we going to listen to you animals talk or hear the story Umboo is going to tell us?" asked Humpo, the camel. "I thought he was going to make us forget the heat."
"So I am," said Umboo, in a kind voice, "Only I wanted to speak about old Jumbo, There used to be a song about him, many years ago. It went something like this, and I heard a little English boy sing it:
"Alice said to Jumbo:'I love you!'Jumbo said to Alice:'I don't believe you do;'Cause if you love me truly,As you say you do,Come over to AmericaTo Barnum's show!'"
"That's the song they used to sing about Jumbo, more than twenty years ago," said Umboo.
"My! How can you remember so far back?" asked Chako.
"Oh, we elephants live to a good old age," said Umboo. "Why, I am fifty years old now, and yet I am young! Some of the elephants in the jungle lived to be a hundred and twenty years old!"
"Oh, my!" cried Chako. "Did they have circuses as long ago as that?"
"Yes, but not the kind that traveled about, and showed in white tents," said Umboo. "But I have heard my father and mother say that we elephants live to be very old."
"And can you remember so far back, when you were a baby in the jungle?" asked Humpo.
"Oh, yes, very easily," answered Umboo. "I am going to tell you a story about how first I was a little elephant in the great, green forest, or jungle, and then I'll tell you how I was caught, and worked in a lumber yard in India, and how I was then sold to a circus."
"Well, then, please begin!" begged Chako. "It is getting hot again in this monkey cage, and if you haven't any water to squirt on us tell us your story."
"I will!" promised the elephant. And then, as the afternoon show was over, and it was not yet time for the night one to begin, the animals had a little quiet time to themselves. And, as they had done once before, they got ready to listen to a story.
In the book before this I have written for you the story of Woo-Uff, the lion. And before that I gave you the story of Snarlie, the tiger. And now we come to Umboo.
"The first thing I remember," began the elephant, "was when I was a little baby in the jungle."
"Were you very little?" asked Snarlie the tiger.
"Well, I have heard my mother say I weighed about two hundred pounds the first day I came into the world," answered Umboo. "So, though I was little for an elephant, I would have made a very big monkey, I suppose. And for a time I just stayed near my mother, between her two, big front legs, so the other elephants would not step on me, and I drank the milk my mother gave me, for my teeth were not yet ready for me to chew roots, leaves and grass."
"Tell us something that happened!" begged Chako, "and make it exciting, so we will forget about the heat!"
"Well," said Umboo, "I'll tell you of a terrible fright we had, and how—"
But just then something else happened. Into the tent came running one of the circus men, and he cried to another, who was asleep on some hay near the elephants.
"Come! Loosen Umboo! We need him to help us get one of the wagons out of the mud! Bring Umboo, the strongest of all elephants!"
Umboo, the big circus elephant, was unchained from the stake in the circus tent to which he was made fast, and led out by one of the men.
"Oh, where are you going?" asked Horni, the rhinoceros, who had been taking a little doze, and who woke up, just as the men came in. "I thought I heard some one say you were going to tell a story, Umboo," spoke the rhinoceros.
"I was going to, and I started it," the elephant answered, "but now I must go out and help push a wagon loose from where it is stuck in the mud. I'll be back pretty soon, for it is no trouble at all for me to push even a big circus wagon."
"Yes, you are very strong," said Chako, the monkey. "Well, don't forget to come back and tell us about the jungle. That will make us forget the heat."
"Come, Umboo!" called one of the men, as he loosed the heavy elephant chains. "You must help us with the wagon."
Out of the circus tent walked the big elephant. He could understand some of the things the circus men said to him, just as your dog can understand you, when you call:
"Come here, Jack!" Then he runs to you, wagging his tail. But if you say:
"Go on home, Jack!"
How his tail droops, and how sadly your dog looks at you, even though you know it is best for him to go back, and not, perhaps, go to school with you, like Mary's little lamb.
So, in much the same way, Umboo knew what the men wanted of him. He was led across the circus lot, outside the big, white tent, that was gay with many-colored flags, and as Umboo swayed along, some boys, who were watching for what they might see, caught sight of the great elephant.
"Hey, Jim! Here's one of the big ones!" shouted one boy.
"Maybe he's going to take a drink out of the canal," said another.
"Maybe they're going to give him a swim," spoke a third boy.
But the men had something else for Umboo to do just then. They led him to where one of the big wagons, covered with red and gold paint, and shiny with pieces of looking glass, was stuck fast in the mud on a hill. For it had rained the day before the circus came to show in the town, and the ground was soft.
"Now, Umboo!" called the circus man, who was really one of the elephant keepers, and who gave them food and water, "now, Umboo, let us see if you can get this wagon out of the mud, as you did once before. The horses can not pull it, but you are stronger than many horses."
The horses, with red plumes on their heads, were still hitched to the wagon. There were eight of them, but they had pulled and pulled, and still the wagon was stuck in the mud.
"Are you going to help us, Umboo?" asked one of the horses who knew the elephant, for the circus animals can talk among themselves, just as you boys and girls do. "Are you going to help us?"
"I am going to try," Umboo answered. "You look tired, horsies! Take alittle rest now, while I look and see which is the best way to push.Then, when I blow through my nose like a trumpet horn, you pull andI'll push, and we'll have the wagon out of the mud very soon!"
Umboo was led up to the back of the wagon. He looked at where the wheels were sunk away down in the soft ground, and then, being the strongest and most wise of all the beasts of the world, the elephant put his big, broad head against the wagon.
"Now, then, horsies! Pull!" he cried, trumpeting through his trunk, which was hollow like a hose. "Pull, horsies!"
The horses pulled and Umboo, the elephant, pushed, and soon the wagon was out on firm, hard ground.
"That's good!" cried the circus man. "I knew Umboo could do it!"
Then he gave the elephant a sweet bun, which he had saved for him, and back to the tent went Umboo.
"Now, please go on with your story!" begged Chako. "Tell us what happened in the jungle."
"I will," said Umboo, and this is the story he told. Umboo was only one of a number of baby elephants that lived with their fathers and mothers in the deep, green jungles of India. Not like the other jungle beasts were the elephants, for the big animals had no regular home. They did not live in caves as did the lions and tigers, for no cave was large enough for a herd of elephants.
And, except in the case of solitary, or lonely elephants, which are often savage beasts, or "rogues," all elephants live in herds—a number of them always keeping together, just like a herd of cows.
Another reason why elephants do not live in one place, like a lion's cave, or in a nest or lair under the thick grass where a tiger brings up her striped babies, is that elephants eat so much that they have to keep moving from place to place to get more food.
They will eat all there is in one part of the jungle, and then travel many miles to a new place, not coming back to the first one until there are more green leaves, fresh grass, or new bark on the trees which they have partly stripped.
So Umboo, the two-hundred-pound baby elephant, lived with his mother in the jungle, drinking nothing but milk for the first six months, as he had no teeth to chew even the most tender grass.
"Well, are you strong enough to walk along now?" Umboo's mother asked him one day in the jungle, and this was when he was about half a week old.
"Oh, yes, I can walk now," said the baby elephant, as he swayed to and fro between his mother's front legs, while she stood over him to keep the other big elephants, and some of the half-grown elephant boys and girls, from bumping into him, and knocking him over. "I can walk all right. But why do you ask me that?" Umboo wanted to know.
"Because the herd is going to march away," said Mrs. Stumptail, which was the name of Umboo's mother. "They are going to march to another part of the jungle, and your father and I will march with them, as we do not want to be left behind. There is not much more left here to eat. We have taken all the palm nuts and leaves from the trees. We have only been waiting until you grew strong enough to march."
"Oh, I can march all right," said Umboo, telling his story to the circus animals in the tent. "Look how fast I can go!"
Out he started from under his mother's body, striding across a grassy place in the jungle. But Umboo was not as good at walking as he had thought. Even though he weighed two hundred pounds his legs were not very strong, and soon he began to totter.
"Look out!" cried his mother. "You are going to fall!" and she reached out her trunk and wound it around Umboo, holding him up.
"Hello!" trumpeted Mr. Stumptail, coming up just then with a big green branch in his trunk. "What's the matter here?"
"Umboo was just showing me how well he could walk," said his mother, speaking elephant talk, of course. "I told him the herd would soon be on the march, and that he must come along."
"But we won't go until he is strong enough," said Umboo's father. "Here," he said to Mrs. Stumptail, "eat this branch of palm nuts. They are good and sweet. Eat them while I go and see Old Tusker. I'll tell him not to start to lead the herd to another part of the jungle until Umboo is stronger."
Then, giving the mother elephant a branch of palm nuts, which food the big jungle animals like best of all, Mr. Stumptail went to see Tusker, the oldest and largest elephant of the jungle—he who always led the herd on the march.
"My new little boy elephant is not quite strong enough to march, yet," said Mr. Stumptail to Tusker. "Can we wait here another day or two?"
"Oh, yes, of course, Mr. Stumptail," said the kind, old head elephant. "You know the herd will never go faster than the mothers and baby elephants can travel."
And this is true, as any old elephant hunter will tell you.
"Thank you," said Mr. Stumptail, to Tusker; for elephants are polite to each other, even though, in the jungle, they sometimes may be a bit rough toward lions and tigers, of whom they are afraid.
Back to the mother elephant and Baby Umboo went Mr. Stumptail, to tell them there was no hurry about the herd marching away. And two or three days later Umboo had grown stronger and was not so wobbly on his legs. He could run about a little, and once he even tried to bump his head against another elephant boy, quite older than he was.
"Here! You mustn't do that!" cried his mother. "What trick are you up to now?"
"Well, this elephant laughed at your tail," said Umboo. "He said it was a little short one, and not long like his mother's!"
"Don't mind that!" said Mrs. Stumptail, with a sort of laugh away down in her trunk. "All our family have short, or stumpy tails. That is how we get our name. The Stumptail elephants are very stylish, let me tell you."
"Oh, then it's all right," said Umboo, who was called by that name because he had made that sort of noise or sound through his nose, when he was a day old. And elephants and jungle folk are named for the sort of noises they make, or for something they do, or look like, just as Indians are named.
So Umboo played in the deep jungle forest with the other little elephant boys and girls until his mother and father saw that he was strong enough to walk well by himself.
"Now we will start on a long march!" called Tusker one day. "The jungle here is well eaten, and, besides, it is no longer safe for us here. So we will march."
"Why isn't the jungle safe here any more?" asked Umboo of his mother.
"I'll tell you," answered Tusker, who heard what the little elephant asked. "The other day," went on the big chap, "I went to the top of the hill over there," and he pointed with his trunk. "I heard up there a noise like thunder, but it was not thunder."
"What was it?" asked Umboo, who liked to listen to the talk of the old herd-leader. The other little elephants also gathered around to listen.
"It was the noise of the guns of the hunters," said Tusker. "They arecoming to our jungle, and where the hunters come is no place for us.So we must march away and hide. Also there is not much food left here.We must go to a new jungle-place."
Raising his trunk in the air Tusker gave a loud call. All the other elephants gathered around him, and off he started, leading the way through the green forest.
"Now if I go too fast for any of you baby elephants, just squeak and I'll stop," said the big, kind elephant. "We will go only as fast as you little chaps can walk."
"You are very kind," said Mrs. Stumptail, helping Umboo, with her trunk, to get over a rough bit of ground.
On and on marched the elephants to find a new place in the jungle, where they would be safe from the hunters, and where they could find more sweet bark, leaves and palm nuts to eat. Umboo walked near his mother, as the other small elephant boys and girls walked near their mothers, and the bigger elephants helped the smaller and weaker ones over the rough places.
Pretty soon, in the jungle, the herd of elephants came to what seemed a big silver ribbon, shining in the sun. It sparkled like a looking glass on a circus wagon, though, as yet, neither Umboo, nor any of the other big animals had ever seen a show.
"What is that?" asked Umboo of his mother.
"That is a river of water," she answered. "It is water to drink and wash in."
"Oh, I never could drink all that water," said the baby elephant.
"No one expects you to!" said his mother, with an elephant laugh. "But we are going to swim across it to get on the other side."
"What is swimming?" asked Umboo.
"It means going in the water, and wiggling your legs so that you will float across and not sink," said Mrs. Stumptail. "See, we are at the jungle river now, and we will go across."
"Oh, but I'm afraid!" cried Umboo, holding back. "I don't want to go in all that water."
Mrs. Stumptail reached out her trunk and caught her little boy around the middle of his stomach.
"You must do as I tell you!" she said. "Up you go!" and she lifted him high in the air.
"Oh, did she let you fall?" suddenly asked Chako, who, with the other animals in the circus tent, was eagerly listening to the story Umboo was telling. "Did she let you fall?"
"Look here!" cried Snarlie, the tiger, when Chako, the monkey, had asked his question. "Look here, Chako! You mustn't interrupt like that when Umboo is talking! Let him tell his story, just as you let me tell mine. And maybe Umboo's jungle story will go in a book, as mine did."
"Is yours in a book?" asked Humpo, the camel.
"It is," answered Snarlie, and he did not speak at all proudly as some tigers might. "My story is in a book, and there are pictures of me, and also Toto, the little Indian princess. For I came from India, just as Umboo did."
"Now who is talking?" asked Woo-Uff, the lion. "I thought we were to listen to Umboo's story."
"That's right—we were," said Snarlie. "I'm sorry I talked so much.But I was telling Chako about the books we are in, Woo-Uff."
"Yes, books are all well enough," said the lion, "but give me a good piece of meat. Now go on, Umboo. What was it Chako asked?"
"I wanted to know if Umboo's mother let him fall when she lifted him high up in her trunk when they came to the jungle river," said the monkey in the circus cage.
"No," answered Umboo, "she did not drop me. My mother was very strong, and her trunk had a good hold of me. She didn't drop me at all."
"Then what did she lift you up for?" asked Chako. "Once, in the jungle where I came from, I saw a big elephant lift up a tiger in his trunk, and the elephant threw the tiger down on the ground as hard as he could, and hurt him."
"That was because the tiger was going to bite the elephant if he could," answered Umboo. "Elephants only have their tusks, and trunk and big feet to fight with. They can't bite as you monkeys can, nor as lions and tigers can. But my mother lifted me up in her trunk to put me on her back."
"What did she want to do that for?" asked Humpo, the camel. "Was a hunter coming with a gun?"
"No, but she was going to swim across the river with the rest of the herd," answered Umboo, "and she knew I was too little to know how to swim yet. I learned how later, though, and I liked the water. But this time my mother took me across the river on her back."
"It's a good thing your mother didn't have a camel-back like Humpo," said Woo-Uff, with a sort of chuckling laugh.
"Why?" asked Horni, the rhinoceros.
"Because, if Mrs. Stumptail had a back, with humps in, as the camels have, Umboo would have fallen off into the water," said the lion, as he opened his big mouth in a sleepy yawn, showing his big, white, sharp teeth.
"My mother's back was big and strong," said Umboo. "It was flat, and not humpy, like a camel's, though their backs are all right on the desert. My mother lifted me up on her back with her trunk, and there I sat while she and the other elephants waded into the river."
And then the circus elephant went on telling his story.
Into the jungle river walked the elephants, the littlest ones on their mothers' backs, and some, very small ones, held in their mothers' trunks, which were lifted high in the air. These were the babies of the herd who were too small to ride safely on the backs of the big creatures.
"Pooh! I'm bigger than you! I can swim like the other elephants!" said Keedah; a large elephant boy, as he looked up and saw Umboo on his mother's back. "I don't have to be carried across a river! I can swim by myself."
"And so will my little boy, soon," said Mrs. Stumptail. "Swim on your own side, Keedah, and don't splash water on Umboo."
But Keedah was a little elephant chap full of mischief, and he did not do as he was told. Instead he filled his trunk with water and sprayed it all over Umboo.
"Ouch!" cried the little elephant baby, for the water felt cold, at first. "Stop it, Keedah!"
"Ha! Ha! I made you get wet, whether you swim or not!" laughed Keedah."I'll put some more water on you!"
"No you don't! Now you swim along!" suddenly cried Mrs. Stumptail."Get away!"
With that she tapped Keedah on his head with her trunk two or three times, and, when an elephant wants to, it can strike very hard with its long nose, even though it seems soft.
"Ouch! Ouch!" trumpeted Keedah as he swam out of reach of Mrs.Stumptail. "Ouch! Let me alone!"
"Learn to behave yourself then," said Umboo's mother.
"I'm going to tell my father on you!" cried the mischievous little elephant.
"Well, it won't do you any good," said a heavy voice behind him, and there was Keedah's father himself swimming along. "I saw what you did to Umboo," went on the old gentleman elephant, "and Mrs. Stumptail did just right to tap you with her trunk. Now be a good boy, and don't shower any more water on the baby elephants."
So Keedah promised that he wouldn't, and Umboo clung as tightly as he could, with his sprawly legs, to his mother's broad back as she swam across the river.
The water was wide, at this part of the jungle, but elephants are good swimmers. They can go in very deep water, and as long as they can keep the tip end of their trunk out, so they can breathe, the rest of their body can sink away down below the surface. And when the elephants are in the water the flies, mosquitoes and other biting bugs of the jungle can not harm them.
For, though the skin of elephants, rhinoceros beasts, and even the hippopotami, is very thick, some bugs can bite through it enough to give pain, and the animals don't like that. But in the water nothing can bite them, unless it's a crocodile, and none of those big fellows would come near a whole herd of elephants.
"What are we going to do when we get on the other side of the river?" asked Umboo of his mother, as he reached his trunk down in the water and took a little drink.
"Oh, we will rest a while, eat something, perhaps, and then we will keep on marching to a better part of the jungle," she answered.
"I know what I'm going to do when I get on the other shore," spokeKeedah, as once more he swam up along side of Umboo and his mother.
"What?" asked the little elephant who was having such a nice ride across the river. "What are you going to do?"
"I am going to have a slide down hill," went on Keedah, who did not seem to be going to make any more trouble.
"What's sliding down hill?" asked Umboo, and of course, you understand, all this talk was in animal language.
"Sliding down hill is fun," went on Keedah. "You know Old Tusker went up to the top of a place, called a hill, to look and see about the hunters in the jungle. Well, there is a hill on the other side of this river, and when we get across I'm going to the top of it and slide down.
"It's hard work going up hill," went on the larger elephant boy, "but it's easy coming down. You just sit on your hind legs, hold your trunk up in the air and down you come as fast as anything!"
"And be careful you don't bump into anything," said Mrs. Stumptail. "Sliding down hill is all right if you don't bump into anything. You must be careful, Umboo. Don't slide down any hills unless you ask me first."
"I won't," promised the baby elephant. "But tell me more about it,Keedah. Did you ever slide down hill?"
"Many a time. I was with the herd last year when we swam this same river. I could swim then, too, and when we came to the hill I climbed up. Then I came down lots faster than I walked up, and I went splash into the river. That didn't hurt at all," he said to Umboo's mother.
"No, it doesn't hurt to slide into the water," said the old elephant lady. "If you do any sliding, Umboo, see that you splash into the water, and not on the hard ground."
"I will, after I learn to swim," spoke Umboo.
A little later the herd of elephants were safely across the jungle river. Some rested in the shade of trees, pulling off the low branches and the palm nuts. Others rolled in the mud, to make a sort of coating over their skins, to keep off the flies. Others went to the top of the hill to slide down, and Keedah went with them.
"Oh, mother! I wish I could slide!" said Umboo, when he saw what fun the other elephants were having. They really did slide down hill, just as otters do, only the otter, or beaver, likes to have water on his slide, and the elephants did not care whether their slide was wet or dry. Down they came, over sticks and stones, and their skin was so tough that they never got hurt. And yet a fly could bite through that same hide! But that is because a fly has a very fine, sharp bill, which can go through the tiny pores, or holes, in the elephant's skin.
"Oh, I want to slide!" said Umboo to his mother. "I'm big enough, and if I can't swim when I splash in the water, you can be near to pull me out. Please let me slide down hill!"
"And did she let you?" asked Snarlie, the tiger, as the elephant stopped in the telling his story long enough to take a bite of hay. "Did she let you, Umboo?"
Umboo, the big circus elephant, swallowed the sweet hay he had been chewing, and was about to keep on with the telling of his story about the things that happened to him when he was a little chap in the Indian jungle, when a lot of men came in the tent where the animals were standing about, or resting in their cages.
"Oh, now we can't hear any more of the story," said Chako, the big monkey, to Gink the little, long-tailed chap.
"Why can't we?" Gink wanted to know.
"Because the circus is going to move on. Our cage will be put on the steam cars, and away we will go, and Umboo, and the rest of the elephants, will be put in big box-cars."
"Won't we ever see him again, or hear more of his story?" asked Gink, who had not been with the circus very long, and so did not know much about it.
"Oh, yes, of course we'll hear more later on," answered Chako, "but not until tomorrow. Now the circus is going to move."
And that is just what happened. The men closed the sides of the cages, shutting the animals up in them. The tent was taken down, horses were hitched to the wagons, and away went the whole, big circus on a train to the next town where the show was to be given.
"It's too bad!" exclaimed Horni, the rhinoceros, who had a big horn on the end of his nose. "It's too bad, Umboo! I wanted to hear you tell about sliding down hill."
"I'll tell you tomorrow," said the elephant. "Now I have to go and help the horses, by pushing on some of the heavy wagons with my head. I'll finish the sliding-down-hill part of my story tomorrow."
"All right, don't forget!" called Chako, just before the men closed down the sides of the monkey cage.
"I won't," promised Umboo.
"It was the same way when I was telling my story," said Snarlie, the tiger. "Every now and then I had to stop when the circus moved from one place to another."
All through the night the trains of cars, with the circus wagons, tents, horses and performers, rolled along. In the morning the cars stopped just outside a big city, where the show was to be given for three days.
"And now I'll have a chance to tell you a lot more about what we elephants did in the jungle," said Umboo, when, once more, all the animal friends were in the tent together. "That is I'll tell you more, if you aren't tired of hearing it," he added.
"Tired? I should say not!" chattered Gink. "Go on, Umboo, if you please. Tell us a lot more!"
"And don't forget about sliding down hill," added Woo-Uff, the lion."Did your mother let you?"
"Oh, yes, she let me," answered Umboo. "At first she did not want to, for a lot of the big elephants were having this fun. But, after a while, when they went away from the hill, having slid down enough, and when Keedah, and some of the other elephant boys and girls, took their turn, I went with them.
"At first I was a little afraid, when I got to the top of the hill, and saw how steep it was, and how far it seemed down to the bottom where the river ran. But I stuck my front feet out in front of me, and I sat down on the back part of my hind legs, where my skin is very thick, and then, all of a sudden Keedah came up behind me and gave me a push." "Did you go down?" asked Snarlie, laughing so that his sharp, white teeth showed in his red mouth.
"Did I go down? I should say I did!" cried Umboo. "I went down so fast I almost turned over in a somersault, the way the trick dogs do in our circus. And, at first, I was scared.
"But the hill of dirt was smooth, without any big stones in it, and away I slid. When I got to the water, in I went with a big splash; though of course I didn't make as much of a splatter as some of the larger elephants did."
"Was it fun?" asked Humpo, the camel.
"At first I didn't like it," answered Umboo. "The water got up my trunk, and choked me a little, and took my breath away. But my mother stood on the bank of the river and soon pulled me out; and when I went down next time I curled my trunk up, so then I was all right."
The other circus animals liked so much to hear Umboo's story of sliding down hill, that they kept asking him questions about it until nearly dinner time. But when the men came in the tent, bringing hay for the horses, elephants and camels, big chunks of meat for the lions and tigers, and dried bread for the monkeys, then all the animals were quiet for a time—at least they made no noise except chewing.
And after their meal they all went to sleep for a little while, those in cages curling up in a corner, and the horses lying down on straw, but the elephants took their sleep standing up, for an elephant, even in the jungle, never lies down except perhaps to roll in water, or a mud-puddle. And the only time they lie down in a circus is when they are doing some trick.
"Now I guess you have slid down hill enough, Umboo," said the elephant's mother to him. "It is all right to have some fun, but there are other things to do in the jungle besides that. You must learn a few things."
"I had to learn things too," said Woo-Uff. "I had to learn how to creep up on fat goats, and knock them over with my big paws. There was an old lion named Boom-Boom, and he and I—"
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" called Humpo, the camel, as he was chewing some hay in the circus tent after his dinner. "Is this your story, or Umboo's?"
"Oh, I forgot. I beg your pardon, Umboo!" said the big lion. "Please go on."
So Umboo went on telling his story, speaking of how his mother told him there were other things to do in the jungle besides sliding down hill to splash into the river.
It was some time after this, when Umboo had grown larger and stronger, and two of his tusks or teeth, had grown out of his jaw, sticking far beyond his lips, that his mother said to him:
"Now, Umboo, it is time you learned how to get something to eat for yourself. Up to now I have given you milk, or you have eaten the sweet palm nuts or the tree branches I pulled down for you, or those the other elephants left. Now it is time you learned to do things for yourself. Come with me, Umboo."
"Where are we going?" asked the small elephant. That is he was smaller than his mother, though he was very large along side of a dog or a cat. "Where are we going?"
"Far into the jungle," answered Mrs. Stumptail.
Umboo followed after her, brushing his way through the bushes, pushing aside even those that had thorns on them, for he never felt the sharp pricks through his thick skin, though, as I have told you, some kinds of bugs can bite their way through even this.
Suddenly, as Umboo walked along behind his mother, he began to sniff the air through his trunk.
"What is that good smell?" he asked, in elephant talk, of course. "It smells just like those nice, sweet roots you gave me to eat the other day."
"And that is just what you do smell, Umboo," said his mother. "Near here, in the jungle, grow trees with those sweet roots. If you want to eat some now see if you can find any. In that way you will learn when I am not with you. Hunt around now, and see if you can't smell where the sweet roots grow."
Umboo was hungry and he wanted, very much, to get the roots. So he began sniffing with his trunk close to the ground. When he moved one way the smell was not so strong.
"That means you are moving away from the roots," his mother told him."Come over this way."
So Umboo moved the other way, and the smell of the sweet roots grew stronger, just as when you come nearer to a bakery or candy shop.
"Ah! Here they are! Right down under the ground, here!" suddenly criedUmboo, tapping with his trunk on a certain place under a big tree."The roots are here, mother," he said. "But how am I going to get themout? I can't eat them if they are under the dirt!"
"How would you think you might get them out?" asked Mrs. Stumptail. "Come, be a smart elephant, Umboo. Use your brains. Elephants are the smartest animals in the world. Think a little and then see what you will do."
So Umboo thought, and then he remembered seeing what the other elephants did when they were hungry, and wanted to dig up tree roots.
"I guess I'll poke away the dirt with my feet," he said.
"Yes, that's a good way to begin," said Mrs. Stumptail.
So Umboo, with his big, broad fore feet, loosened the dirt over the tree roots. They were not down very deep, being the top roots, and not the big heavy ones, buried far down in the earth.
"Ha! Now I can see the roots!" cried the little boy elephant. "They are uncovered, but still I can't lift them up with my trunk, mother. What shall I do next?"
"What are your tusks for?" asked Mrs. Stumptail. "Don't be so silly!Pry up the roots with your tusks!"
So Umboo knelt down and put one of his big long teeth under a root.Then with a twist of his head he pried the root up from the ground.
"There! See how easy it is!" said his mother.
Then Umboo chewed the sweet root, but he did not swallow the hard, woody part. That would not have been good for him.
"Oh, but this is sweet!" he cried, shutting his eyes as he chewed away. "This is the sweetest root I ever ate."
"And you dug it up yourself! That is best part of it," said his mother. "You have learned to do something for yourself. Now, when you find yourself alone in the jungle, if you should stray away from the rest of the herd, you will know how to get something to eat. You have learned something."
"Is this all I have to learn?" Umboo wanted to know.
"Indeed not!" cried his mother. "There are many more things that you must know. But one thing at a time. A little later I will show you how to pull down a big tree, when there are palm nuts, or sweet branches, growing near the top, which you cannot reach, no matter how you try. Pulling trees down will be the next lesson. But dig up some more roots."
"I will dig some for you," said Umboo.
"Excuse me for not giving you some of the first ones I dug."
"Oh, that's all right," said Mrs. Stumptail. "I wanted you to learn, but you may give me some of the next ones you pry up."
Umboo uncovered more roots, and gave his mother some, and then, as he was moving to another part of the jungle, there suddenly sounded through the forest a loud, shrill cry.
"Quick, Umboo, come with me!" cried his mother. "That is Tusker calling us!"
"What does he want?" asked Umboo.
"He wants to tell us there is danger!" said Umboo's mother. "Hurry!Come with me back to the rest of the herd!"
Not stopping to dig up any more roots, Umboo rushed off through the jungle after his mother, who hurried on ahead. As they crashed along, breaking their way through bushes and knocking down small trees, they heard again the shrill trumpet of Tusker, the oldest and largest elephant of the jungle.
"What is he saying?" asked Umboo of his mother, as he hurried along, now close to her. "What is Tusker saying?"
"He is telling of some kind of danger," said the older elephant. "Just what it is I don't know. But the herd will be moving away very soon, to hide in a dark part of the jungle, and we must go with them."
As Umboo and his mother came out into an open part of the forest, where they had left the other elephants, when Umboo had been led away to be given his root-digging lesson, there was great excitement. Tusker stood on top of a little hill, his trunk high in the air, making all sorts of queer, trumpeting noises.
"We were waiting for you," said Mr. Stumptail to Umboo's mother. "We are going to run away and hide. Tusker is calling you."
"Well, tell him we are here now," said Mrs. Stumptail. "I had to giveUmboo his lesson."
"And I dug up some sweet roots," said the little elephant, "but I didn't have time to bring you any," he told his father.
"Some other time will do," spoke Mr. Stumptail. "Hello, Tusker!" he called through his trunk to the old, big elephant. "Here they are now! Umboo and his mother have come back. We can all go hide in the jungle."
"Why must we hide?" asked Umboo.
"Because Tusker smelled danger," answered Keedah, who was with the other small elephants where they were gathered together, the older ones about them. "He smelled white and black hunters, with guns, and they are coming to shoot us, Tusker says. So he called a warning to all of us."
"I heard it away off where I was digging up roots," said Umboo. "But did Tusker see the hunters with their guns?"
"No, I didn't see them," said Tusker himself, coming down from the hill just then. "But I smelled them, and that is the same thing. The wind was blowing from them to me, and I could smell them very plainly. Come now, elephants! Into the deep, dark part of the jungle, where the hunters can not find us, we will go—far into the jungle."
Then the herd moved off, and Umboo's mother told him, as they hurried along, that an elephant's eyes can not see very far.
"We have not a very sharp sight, like the hawks or the vultures," said Mrs. Stumptail, "so we have to depend on our noses. We can smell things a long way off, and when you are older you will get to know the difference between the sweet roots, under the ground, and the man-smell, which means danger.
"Tusker smelled the man-smell, even though he could not see the white and black hunters, and then he trumpeted through his trunk to tell us all to run away," said Mrs. Stumptail.
Through the jungle crashed the herd of elephants, not going any faster, though, than Umboo and the other small ones could trot along. Though an elephant is very big and heavy he can move swiftly through the forest, and go in places where no horse could travel, for the way would be too rough, and great vines and trees would be strung across the path. Indeed there is no path, the elephants making one for themselves, and when once a herd starts off it can hardly ever be caught by a hunter on foot.
"Do you think any of us will be shot?" asked Umboo, as he shuffled along beside his mother. "How does it feel to be shot?"
"My! But you ask a lot of questions," said Mrs. Stumptail; and I think Umboo was like a lot of boys and girls I know. But then if you don't ask questions how are you ever going to find out anything?
"I can tell you how it feels to be shot," said a middle-aged elephant, who was hurrying along, next to Mr. Stumptail. "It hurts very much, Umboo! It hurts very much, and worse than a whole lot of big bugs biting you at once."
"Were you ever shot?" asked Umboo.
"Indeed I was," answered the elephant, whose name was Bango, called so because he used to bang big trees down with his head. "I was shot twice."
"Tell me about it," said Umboo.
"It was some years ago," went on Bango. "I was with another herd, and we were eating away in the jungle. All at once I heard a noise like a little clap of thunder, and I felt a sharp pain in my head. One of the hard things the hunters shoot in their guns had hit me. Then another struck me in the leg."
"Didn't any of you smell the hunter coming?" asked Mr. Stumptail."Didn't you smell him and get out of the way?"
"No," answered Bango, "none of us did. The wind was blowing the wrong way, I guess. But as soon as we heard the gun, and when I gave a blast through my trunk, as I felt myself hurt, then all the herd knew what had happened, and away we rushed, just as we are rushing now. We went very fast."
"Did the hunter get any of you?" asked Umboo.
"Not that time. I was the only one hit," said Bango. "But another time five or six of the herd I was with were killed by hunters."
"What for?" asked Keedah, who was now more friendly with Umboo. "Why did the hunters kill the elephants, Bango?"
"To get their big teeth, or tusks. Our tusks are ivory, you know, and the hunter men, so I have been told, take our teeth to make into round balls, with which they play games, or they use them to put on machines that make tinkle-tinkle sounds."
By this Bango meant pianos, the keys of which used to be made from ivory, though now they are mostly celluloid. And the game men play, with balls made from elephants' tusks, is called billiards.
On and on through the jungle hurried the elephants, until at lastTusker, who led the way, came to a stop.
"This is far enough," he said. "I do not believe the hunters will find us here. We will rest now."
Indeed it was time to stop, for some of the smaller elephants were quite tired out. Big elephants can hurry through the jungle very fast for as long as twenty hours at a time, stopping, perhaps, only during the very hottest part of the day. And when an elephant is very tired it begins to perspire, or "sweat," over each eye, and two little hollow places there look as though they had been wet with a sponge.
In the cooler part of the shady jungle the elephants rested, some of them pulling down branches from the trees to get at the leaves or tender bark. Umboo began sniffing along the ground with his trunk.
"What are you doing?" asked Keedah.
"I am smelling for sweet roots," was the answer. "My mother showed me how to do it. Do you want me to show you?"
"I learned that long ago," said Keedah.
"Why I can even get palm nuts off a high tree by knocking the tree down. Can you do that? Smelling out earth-roots is nothing!"
"I think it is something," spoke Umboo. "And, when I get a little bigger my mother is going to show me how to pull over, or knock down, a whole tree. But now I am hungry for roots."
So Umboo kept on sniffing at the ground with his trunk. He was feeling quite hungry. Suddenly Keedah cried:
"Ha! I have found some sweet roots! I am going to dig them up!"
"And I have found some, too!" exclaimed Umboo, as through his long nose of a trunk he sniffed the good smell.
Then the two elephant boys dug up the earth with their feet, sort of pawing aside the soft dirt, and with their tusks they pried up the roots, chewing the soft part.
At first the older elephants were uneasy, or worried, for fear that, even though they were in a deep part of the jungle, the hunters might come after them. Tusker and some of the big father-elephants went about, with their trunks high in the air, sniffing, sniffing and sniffing for any smell of danger.
But there seemed to be none. The hunters were left many miles away, and the elephants could rest and eat in peace. For many months after this they roamed about, going from place to place in the jungle as they ate one spot bare of roots and leaves. Sometimes the place where they drank water would dry up, and they would have to move to another river or spring. For an elephant must have plenty of water.
All this while Umboo kept on digging up sweet roots when ever he felt he wanted some, until he could do it almost as well as his mother or father could.
One day, when the elephant boy was traveling through the jungle he looked up and saw, growing on top of a tree, some palm nuts. Elephants are very fond of these, and will go a great way to get them. There are many kinds of palm trees, and on some grow cocoanuts, and on others dates; but the palm nuts the elephants eat are different.
Umboo looked up at the palm nuts growing on the tree in the jungle, and said:
"Oh, how I wish I had some of those."
"Well," said Mrs. Stumptail, "how do you think you can get them?"
"If I were a monkey," said the elephant boy, "I could climb up the tree and pick them off." Umboo had often, in the jungle, seen the monkeys do this.
"But you are not a monkey," said his mother. "Can you reach up with your trunk and pull down the nuts?"
Umboo tried, but his trunk was not long enough.
"I guess the only way to get the nuts is to break down the tree; but how can I do that?" he asked.
"Your head is the strongest part of you," said Mrs. Stumptail. "See if you can knock the tree over."
"Bang!" went Umboo's head against the tree. The tree shook and shivered, and a few nuts were knocked down, but not enough.
"Well," said the elephant boy, as he banged the tree again, "I don't mind doing this for fun, as it doesn't hurt, but the tree doesn't seem to be coming down very fast. And I can't get the nuts until it does. What shall I do, mother?"
"Just think a little harder," said Mrs. Stumptail. "I want you to grow up to be a smart elephant boy, and to do that you must think for yourself. I shall not always be with you. Try and think now how to get the tree down."
"I know!" cried Umboo. "I can pull it over with my trunk!"
He wrapped his long trunk around the tree and began to pull. He had often pulled up small trees and bushes this way, but the palm nut tree was stronger. Though Umboo pulled and pulled, digging his feet hard down into the ground, the tree did not come up.
"Oh, dear!" said the elephant boy. "I don't believe anyone can get this tree down, Mother!"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Stumptail. "Don't be such a baby. Think hard, Umboo! You can easily uproot that tree and get all the nuts you want. Let me see you do it!"