Umboo, the Elephant.
by Howard R. Garis.
CHAPTER I
BABY UMBOO
"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 sh.e.l.ls. "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," spoke Umboo. "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," begged Humpo, 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. .h.i.t 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."