Umboo, the Elephant | Page 2

"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 hit 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