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, splashing 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."
"I don"t guess he will," went on the boy. "Anyhow I"d like to give him some peanuts."
"And I"d like to have them," said Umboo, in elephant talk, of course, which the other animals could understand, but which was not known to the little boy and girl, nor to the other children in the circus tent.
Then the little boy grew brave, and held out a bag, partly filled with peanuts, to Umboo, who took them in his trunk, and chewed them up, first, though, taking them out of the bag, for he did not like to chew paper.
"I wish I could ride on the elephant"s back!" said the little boy.
"Children do ride on the backs of elephants in India, the country where you and I came from, don"t they, Umboo?" asked Snarlie, the tiger, when the children had pa.s.sed on to the tent where the performers were to do their circus tricks.
"Oh, yes, many a ride I have given children in India," said Umboo.
"But that was after I was caught in the jungle trap and tamed."
"Tell us about that!" begged Chako.
"All in good time! All in good time," said the big elephant, in a sort of drowsy voice, for he had hardly slept through all his nap that day, before the circus crowds came in. "I have yet to tell you how I was lost, and how I got back to the rest of the herd. But seeing the children remind me of the days in India," added Umboo.
"And it reminded me also," spoke Snarlie. "Well do I recall how little Princess Toto rode on the back of a great elephant like yourself, Umboo, and how it was then I first saw her. Afterward I went to live with her, and there was a palace, with a fountain in it where the water sparkled in the sun."
"What"s a palace?" asked Chako, the monkey. "Is it something good to eat, like a cocoanut?"
"Indeed it is not," said Snarlie. "A palace is a big house, like this circus tent, only it is made of stone. Princess Toto and I lived there, but now I live in a circus, and I shall never see Toto again! I liked her very much."
"I like children, too," said Woo-Uff, the lion, in his deep, rumbly voice. "Once a little African boy named Gur was kind to me, and gave me a drink of water when I was caught in the net. He was a good boy."
"Did he ride on an elephant"s back?" asked Snarlie.
"I never saw him do that," answered the lion, "though he may have. But the elephants of Africa, where I came from, are wilder, larger and more fierce than those of India, where our friend Umboo used to live.
People hardly ever ride on an African elephant"s back."
"Well, let us hear more of Umboo"s story," suggested Humpo, the camel.
"It seems to me everyone is talking but him."
"That"s so," spoke Horni, the rhinoceros. "Please go on, Umboo. Tell us about how you were lost in the jungle."
So the big circus elephant, slowly swaying to and fro, and gently clanking his chains, told more of his jungle story.
When he looked all around among the trees, which were dripping water from the heavy rain, and when he could not see any of the other elephants, Umboo felt very badly indeed. For animals, even those who live in the jungle, get lonesome, the same as you boys and girls do when you go away from home.
"Well, if I am lost," thought Umboo to himself, as he held the branch of palm nuts, "I must see if I can not find the way home." For though elephants have no real home, traveling as they do to and fro in the jungle so much, Umboo called "home" the place where he had last seen his mother and the rest of the herd.
Since Umboo could not see a long way through the trees, as he might have done if he had eyes as sharp and bright as a big vulture bird, he had to do what most elephants do--smell. So he raised his trunk in the air, dropping the palm branch to the ground, and sniffed as hard as he could. He wanted to smell the elephant smell--the odor that would come from the herd of the big animals who were somewhere in the jungle eating leaves and bark.
But Umboo could not smell them. Nor could he smell any danger, and he was glad of that.