He listened more carefully, flapping his ears which were, by this time, about as large as a baby's bath tub. They were still growing. To and fro Umboo moved his ears, listening first one way and then the other. He could hear the patter of the rain, and the chatter of a monkey now and then, also the fluttering of the big jungle birds, with, every little while, the rustle of a snake. But the elephant boy could not hear the noise made by the other elephants.
"I guess I haven't walked far enough," he said to himself. "I must go along through the jungle some more. But I did not think I came as far as this when I was looking for a tree to knock over."
So, taking a tighter hold of the branch of palm nuts in his trunk, off started Umboo again, splashing through the muddy puddles. He looked this way and that, and he listened every now and then, stopping to do this, for he made so much noise himself, as he hurried along, that he could hear nothing else.
"Well, this is certainly funny!" thought Umboo, when he had stopped and listened about ten times. "I can't hear any other elephants at all. I wonder if they could have gone away and left me?"
Then he knew, that, though the other animals might have gone away and left him, his father and mother would not do this.
"And," thought Umboo, "if there had been any danger from hunters and their guns, Tusker would have sounded his call, and I would have heard that. I guess I haven't gone back far enough."
Then he hurried on again, but, after awhile, when he had listened and could hear nothing of the herd of elephants, and could not see them through the trees, Umboo began to be afraid.
"I guess I must be lost!" he said. "That's it! My mother said it might happen to me, and it has. I'm lost!"
And so he was! Poor Umboo was lost in the jungle, and the rain was coming down harder than ever!