Part 6 (1/2)

”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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 b.a.l.l.s made from elephants' tusks, is called billiards.

On and on through the jungle hurried the elephants, until at last Tusker, 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!”