Umboo, the Elephant | Page 5

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 are coming 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