Umboo, the Elephant Part 5

"Come over this way."

So Umboo moved the other way, and the smell of the sweet roots grew stronger, just as when you come nearer to a bakery or candy shop.

"Ah! Here they are! Right down under the ground, here!" suddenly cried Umboo, tapping with his trunk on a certain place under a big tree.

"The roots are here, mother," he said. "But how am I going to get them out? I can't eat them if they are under the dirt!"

"How would you think you might get them out?" asked Mrs. Stumptail.

"Come, be a smart elephant, Umboo. Use your brains. Elephants are the smartest animals in the world. Think a little and then see what you will do."

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. They were not down very deep, being the top roots, and not the big heavy ones, buried far down in the earth.

"Ha! Now I can see the roots!" cried the little boy elephant. "They are uncovered, but still I can't lift them up with my trunk, mother.

What shall I do next?"

"What are your tusks for?" asked Mrs. Stumptail. "Don't be so silly!

Pry up the roots with your tusks!"

So Umboo knelt down and put one of his big long teeth under a root.

Then with a twist of his head he pried the root up from the ground.

"There! See how easy it is!" said his mother.

Then Umboo chewed the sweet root, but he did not swallow the hard, woody part. That would not have been good for him.

"Oh, but this is sweet!" he cried, shutting his eyes as he chewed away. "This is the sweetest root I ever ate."

"And you dug it up yourself! That is best part of it," said his mother. "You have learned to do something for yourself. Now, when you find yourself alone in the jungle, if you should stray away from the rest of the herd, you will know how to get something to eat. You have learned something."

"Is this all I have to learn?" Umboo wanted to know.

"Indeed not!" cried his mother. "There are many more things that you must know. But one thing at a time. A little later I will show you how to pull down a big tree, when there are palm nuts, or sweet branches, growing near the top, which you cannot reach, no matter how you try.

Pulling trees down will be the next lesson. But dig up some more roots."

"I will dig some for you," said Umboo.

"Excuse me for not giving you some of the first ones I dug."

"Oh, that's all right," said Mrs. Stumptail. "I wanted you to learn, but you may give me some of the next ones you pry up."

Umboo uncovered more roots, and gave his mother some, and then, as he was moving to another part of the jungle, there suddenly sounded through the forest a loud, shrill cry.

"Quick, Umboo, come with me!" cried his mother. "That is Tusker calling us!"

"What does he want?" asked Umboo.

"He wants to tell us there is danger!" said Umboo's mother. "Hurry!

Come with me back to the rest of the herd!"

CHAPTER V

PICKING NUTS

Not stopping to dig up any more roots, Umboo rushed off through the jungle after his mother, who hurried on ahead. As they crashed along, breaking their way through bushes and knocking down small trees, they heard again the shrill trumpet of Tusker, the oldest and largest elephant of the jungle.

"What is he saying?" asked Umboo of his mother, as he hurried along, now close to her. "What is Tusker saying?"

"He is telling of some kind of danger," said the older elephant. "Just what it is I don't know. But the herd will be moving away very soon, to hide in a dark part of the jungle, and we must go with them."

As Umboo and his mother came out into an open part of the forest, where they had left the other elephants, when Umboo had been led away to be given his root-digging lesson, there was great excitement.

Tusker stood on top of a little hill, his trunk high in the air, making all sorts of queer, trumpeting noises.

"We were waiting for you," said Mr. Stumptail to Umboo's mother. "We are going to run away and hide. Tusker is calling you."

"Well, tell him we are here now," said Mrs. Stumptail. "I had to give Umboo his lesson."

"And I dug up some sweet roots," said the little elephant, "but I didn't have time to bring you any," he told his father.

"Some other time will do," spoke Mr. Stumptail. "h.e.l.lo, Tusker!" he called through his trunk to the old, big elephant. "Here they are now!

Umboo and his mother have come back. We can all go hide in the jungle."

"Why must we hide?" asked Umboo.

"Because Tusker smelled danger," answered Keedah, who was with the other small elephants where they were gathered together, the older ones about them. "He smelled white and black hunters, with guns, and they are coming to shoot us, Tusker says. So he called a warning to all of us."

"I heard it away off where I was digging up roots," said Umboo. "But did Tusker see the hunters with their guns?"

"No, I didn't see them," said Tusker himself, coming down from the hill just then. "But I smelled them, and that is the same thing. The wind was blowing from them to me, and I could smell them very plainly.

Come now, elephants! Into the deep, dark part of the jungle, where the hunters can not find us, we will go--far into the jungle."

Then the herd moved off, and Umboo's mother told him, as they hurried along, that an elephant's eyes can not see very far.

"We have not a very sharp sight, like the hawks or the vultures," said Mrs. Stumptail, "so we have to depend on our noses. We can smell things a long way off, and when you are older you will get to know the difference between the sweet roots, under the ground, and the man-smell, which means danger.

"Tusker smelled the man-smell, even though he could not see the white and black hunters, and then he trumpeted through his trunk to tell us all to run away," said Mrs. Stumptail.

Through the jungle crashed the herd of elephants, not going any faster, though, than Umboo and the other small ones could trot along.

Though an elephant is very big and heavy he can move swiftly through the forest, and go in places where no horse could travel, for the way would be too rough, and great vines and trees would be strung across the path. Indeed there is no path, the elephants making one for themselves, and when once a herd starts off it can hardly ever be caught by a hunter on foot.

"Do you think any of us will be shot?" asked Umboo, as he shuffled along beside his mother. "How does it feel to be shot?"