"Because I can hear them," answered the snake. "I can hear the tramping of their big feet. I can hear them trumpeting through their long noses of trunks, and I can hear them tearing down the tree branches and stripping off the bark. That is how I know.
"I would go closer, and take you nearer to them, but some of them might step on me, without finding out first, that I would do them no harm. But you can easily find your way from here. Keep straight on," said the snake.
"Thank you, I will," answered Umboo. "I would give you some of these palm nuts, only I am saving them for my mother."
"Thank you," said the snake. "But I do not eat palm nuts. Take them on to your mother, elephant boy."
Then the snake glided away through the jungle, and, watching the end of her tail vanish under a bush, Umboo started off by himself. He had not heard the sounds spoken of by the serpent, but he knew the noises were such as a herd of elephants would make.
"She must have good ears, to hear what she heard," thought the elephant boy. "And yet her ears were not as large as mine."
So, flapping his own big ears, and wishing he could hear with them as well as the snake could with her small ones, Umboo stalked on through the jungle in the way she had told him to go.
It was not very long before he heard a crashing sound. Then he lifted his trunk, still holding the palm branch, and he sniffed and snuffed. And then, to the long, rubbery nose of the elephant boy, came the wild smell of other jungle animals.
"Ah! Now I smell the herd!" he cried. "Now I am not lost any more!
Hurray!"
Of course when an elephant says "Hurray" it is different than the way you boys and girls say it. But it means the same thing.