“Mr. Elephant pulled and cried, ‘Let go!’ and the harder he pulled the harder Old Man Crocodile pulled, until Mr. Elephant had that nose you see on him now called a trunk.
“By and by Old Man Crocodile had to catch his breath, and he let go, and down sat Mr. Elephant on the ground with a bang.
“Old Man Crocodile began to cry and say how sorry he was that he had grabbled Mr. Elephant—that he had no idea he was hurting a friend. He thought it was a hunter, and would Mr. Elephant please forgive him this once!—he would never do it again.”
“Is there where Old Man Crocodile got his tears?” asked Tito.
“That is how he began to cry,” said Jocko.
“Ho, ho, ho!” they both laughed, and then a terrible roar and trumpeting and all sorts of cries went up from the animals, for Mr. Elephant could not keep quiet when he heard what Jocko said about his trunk.
When Mr. Elephant began to trumpet Mr. Lion began to roar, and Jocko and Tito fled to the back of their cage and huddled together, trembling with fright.
“They can’t get us,” said Jocko. “Let them talk and scream. I guess we woke them up talking and laughing.”
The other animals made such a noise that the keepers came running to see what had happened, but, of course, they did not understand a thing they told them about the awful stories Jocko had told about them, and so all they could do was to give them a drink of water or a biscuit, hoping they would be quiet.
Far into the morning the animals scolded and told Jocko what they thought of him, but Tito and Jocko fell asleep in spite of the noise and Tito laughed in his dreams about the funny things Jocko had told him.