Umboo, the Elephant

by Howard Roger Garis

"What is going to happen now?" asked Umboo the big elephant boy of his mother, as the great creatures stood huddled together in the middle of the stockade, or trap. "What is going to happen now?"

"Wait and see," advised Mrs. Stumptail, and she was much worried.

I have called Umboo a "big" elephant boy, for he was small no longer. He had grown fast since I began telling you about him as a baby drinking milk, and now, though of course he was not as large as his mother or father, nor as strong as Tusker, I must not call him "little" any more.

"Come, Elephant brothers!" cried Tusker. "We will break down the trap fence, and then we shall be free to go out into our jungle again."

But it was not so easy to do this as it was to say it. The men who had built the fences and trap well know that the elephants would try to get out, and the stockade had been made very strong.

Besides this there had been dug, inside the trap, and close to where the heavy tree-stakes had been driven into the ground, a ditch, or trench. There was no water in this ditch but on account of the trench the elephants could not get near enough the inside of the fence to strike it with their heads. If they had done so they would have gotten their front feet into the dug-out place, and, perhaps, would have fallen over and hurt themselves.

So when Tusker and the others hoped to knock the fence down by hitting, or butting, it with their heads, they found they could not, as the ditch stopped them. They could only just reach the fence by stretching out their trunks; they could not bang it with their big heads as they wanted to.

"Can't we ever get out of the trap?" asked Umboo of his mother when Tusker and the others had found they could not knock down the stockade fence. "Can't we ever get out?"

"And did you ever get out?" eagerly asked Snarlie, the tiger, who, with the other circus animals, listened to Umboo's story. "Did you ever get out of the trap, Umboo?"

"Tell us about that part!" begged Woo-Uff, the lion. "Once I was caught in a trap, but it was made of a net, with ropes of bark. It was then that Gur, the kind boy, gave me a drink of water."