"I'll just shake it, to see if there is any milk inside," he said, and he held it up to his ear, and wiggled it to and fro. Surely enough there was plenty of the milky white juice inside, and Jumpo could hear it splashing around.
"Oh, this is fine!" he cried as he shook the cocoanut harder than before, and then—alas and alack-a-day! The first thing he knew the cocoanut had slipped from his paws.
Down upon the floor it fell, away it rolled, and before Jumpo could stop it that cocoanut had fallen out of the kitchen door of the little house in the tree, right down to the ground below.
"Oh, I must get it before mamma comes back!" exclaimed the green monkey. Quickly he scrambled down the tree, winding his tail around the lowest branch and leaping to the ground. But the cocoanut was nowhere to be seen.
"I wonder if Jacko could have taken it to play a joke on me?" thought Jumpo. Then he looked over toward the bushes, and he saw something moving, and there was the cocoanut rolling along, faster than ever.
"My! It must be going down hill!" cried Jumpo, as he sprang after it. Well, the cocoanut kept on going. Once Jumpo almost had it in his left paw, but the cocoanut hit a stone and bounded away from him. Then he almost had it in his right foot, but the cocoanut went splash into a little brook of water and the green monkey couldn't see it. Then it rolled out and he managed to get his tail around the nut, but it was so slippery that it got away from him—the cocoanut got away, not Jumpo's tail, you understand. No, that stayed fast on the monkey boy.
"Oh, I guess we won't have any cocoanut cake for supper to-night," thought the little green fellow. "I wish I had stayed out of the kitchen, as mamma told me. But I'm not going to give up yet. I'll get that cocoanut if it's possible!" So he ran on, faster than ever, but the cocoanut rolled quicker and quicker. It was now getting late, and Jumpo didn't know what to do. He could still see the cocoanut ahead of him, but he couldn't catch up to it.
"Oh, whatever shall I do?" he cried. And just then he saw something like a big red hole, with rows of sharp white teeth in it. At first he thought it was his red brother Jacko, but when he looked again he saw that it was the skillery-scalery alligator.
"Oh, I'm just waiting for you," said the 'gator with his mouth open real wide.
"Oh, dear!" cried Jumpo, "this comes of not minding one's mother. The cocoanut is gone and I'll soon be gone, too," for he surely thought the alligator would get him.