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"I am glad of that. Now I'll hurry off and find them. Thank you for telling me." "Oh, that's all right," politely answered the rhinoceros. "I hope you find your mother and other friends. Good-bye!" He wiggled his horn at Umboo, who waved his trunk with the palm tree branch in it, and once more, off through the jungle started the elephant boy. On and on he went.
So the jungle elephants, who used to roam about with Tusker for their leader, lost most of their wildness, quieted down, and were sent to different places in India to work in the lumber yards, or to carry Princes on their backs. Umboo and his mother had to say good-bye, but they hoped to meet again, and though for a time Umboo felt sad, he soon forgot it as he had many things to learn.
For a moment it was quiet in the jungle, the only sound being the wind blowing in the trees, or the rubbing of the rough-skinned elephants' bodies, one against the other, making a queer, shuffling noise. The big animals crowded together in the middle of the stockade trap, and waited for what would happen next. "Is this the salt spring, Mother?" asked Umboo. "No," she sadly answered. "It is not.
Woo-Uff, the lion, laughed. "Ha! I wonder what makes that lion so jolly?" said one of the circus keepers. "Perhaps the elephant tickled him," suggested a second man. "Maybe he had a funny dream," spoke another. "Both wrong!" said Woo-Uff, in animal language that the other circus beasts could understand. "I was laughing at the way Umboo squirted water on the lemon-man."
So Umboo thought, and then he remembered seeing what the other elephants did when they were hungry, and wanted to dig up tree roots. "I guess I'll poke away the dirt with my feet," he said. "Yes, that's a good way to begin," said Mrs. Stumptail. So Umboo, with his big, broad fore feet, loosened the dirt over the tree roots.
"Now, Umboo!" called the circus man, who was really one of the elephant keepers, and who gave them food and water, "now, Umboo, let us see if you can get this wagon out of the mud, as you did once before. The horses can not pull it, but you are stronger than many horses." The horses, with red plumes on their heads, were still hitched to the wagon.
But I have not reached that part of his story yet. Sometimes, instead of being made to pile the logs in the lumber yard, Umboo would be taken into the forest, where the Indians cut the trees down. The forest was something like the jungle where the boy elephant had once lived with Tusker and the others, and where he had played, and once been lost.
There is the fellow who gave me the sour lemon inside the lump of sugar. Now is my chance to play a trick on him." The man, with the bag in his hand, walked toward Umboo. To that man all elephants looked alike. He did not know he had ever seen this one before, and had played a mean trick on him. And the man said to another man who was with him: "Watch me fool this elephant. I have an empty bag.
And so I got even with him for giving me a lemon," and the big elephant laughed, until he shook all over like a bath-tub full of jelly. "What happened after that?" asked Umboo. "Oh, after that the man went out of the circus tent," said the elephant. "Everybody was laughing at him and the funny faces he made. But the water didn't hurt him much, and he soon dried for it was a hot day."
He quietly rubbed the trunk of Umboo, patted him, and spoke kind words to him, feeding him good sugar. "Now, my trick elephant," he said, "we will soon be going ashore, and we will see how you like a circus." Many things happened to Umboo after he was taken out of the ship in which he had crossed the ocean.
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