Part 8 (1/2)

Perhaps it was this steam, which was like a fog, rising all around him, that puzzled Umboo. And most certainly he was puzzled, for, when he had been walking quite a distance, he suddenly stopped and listened.

”This is strange,” he said to himself. ”I don't hear any of the other elephants. And I ought to be back with the herd now.”

He listened more carefully, flapping his ears which were, by this time, about as large as a baby's bath tub. They were still growing. To and fro Umboo moved his ears, listening first one way and then the other. He could hear the patter of the rain, and the chatter of a monkey now and then, also the fluttering of the big jungle birds, with, every little while, the rustle of a snake. But the elephant boy could not hear the noise made by the other elephants.

”I guess I haven't walked far enough,” he said to himself. ”I must go along through the jungle some more. But I did not think I came as far as this when I was looking for a tree to knock over.”

So, taking a tighter hold of the branch of palm nuts in his trunk, off started Umboo again, splas.h.i.+ng through the muddy puddles. He looked this way and that, and he listened every now and then, stopping to do this, for he made so much noise himself, as he hurried along, that he could hear nothing else.

”Well, this is certainly funny!” thought Umboo, when he had stopped and listened about ten times. ”I can't hear any other elephants at all. I wonder if they could have gone away and left me?”

Then he knew, that, though the other animals might have gone away and left him, his father and mother would not do this.

”And,” thought Umboo, ”if there had been any danger from hunters and their guns, Tusker would have sounded his call, and I would have heard that. I guess I haven't gone back far enough.”

Then he hurried on again, but, after awhile, when he had listened and could hear nothing of the herd of elephants, and could not see them through the trees, Umboo began to be afraid.

”I guess I must be lost!” he said. ”That's it! My mother said it might happen to me, and it has. I'm lost!”

And so he was! Poor Umboo was lost in the jungle, and the rain was coming down harder than ever!

CHAPTER VII

UMBOO AND THE SNAKE

”Weren't you terribly frightened?” asked Chako, the lively monkey, as he swung by his tail from a bar in the top of his circus cage.

”Weren't you dreadfully scared, Umboo, when you found out you were lost in the jungle?”

”Indeed I was,” answered the elephant boy, who was telling his story to his friends in the big, white tent.

”I was lost once, in the jungle like that,” went on the monkey chap, ”and all I had to eat was a cocoanut. And I--”

”Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” cried Humpo the camel. ”Are we listening to your story, Chako, or to Umboo's?”

”Oh, that's so! I forgot!” exclaimed Chako. ”Go on, Umboo. I won't talk any more.”

”Well, I won't either--at least for a while,” said Umboo. ”For here come the keepers with our dinners. Let's eat instead of talking.”

And surely enough, into the circus tent came the men with the food for the animals--hay for the elephants, meat for the lions and tigers, and dried bread and peanuts for the monkeys.

Then after a sleep, which most animals take about as soon as they have eaten, it was time for the circus to begin. Into the tent where the jungle folk were kept, came the boys and girls, with their fathers and mothers, or uncles, aunts and cousins.

”Oh, look at the big elephant!” cried one boy. ”I'm going to give him some peanuts!” and he stopped in front of Umboo.

”No, don't!” cried a little girl who was with the boy. ”He might bite you.”

”Pooh! He can't!” said the boy. ”He can only reach me with his long nose of a trunk, and there aren't any teeth in that. His teeth are in his mouth, farther up.”

”Well, he's got a pinching thing on the end of his trunk,” spoke the little girl, ”and he can nip you.”