"I don't know," answered the keonkie, "but Zoop—that the was the name of my friend—said they were almost as good as the sweet sugar and palm nuts."
"Then they must be very good," said Umboo, "and I shall like them. Good-bye, friends!" he called. "Maybe some day I'll come back from the circus."
"But you never did; did you?" asked Snarlie the tiger, who, with the other animals in the tent, was listening to Umboo's story. "You never did go back, for you are here yet."
"No, I haven't gone back to India, and I don't believe I ever shall," spoke Umboo. "Sometimes I wish I could go back in the jungle for a little while, and get a few palm nuts, but the peanuts here are just as good, and there is never any danger."
"Please go on with your story," begged Horni, the rhinoceros. "I want to hear how you got over here, and joined the circus."
"I came on a ship, just as you did," answered Umboo, and then he went on to tell how he was led away from the lumber yard.
To get from the place where he had, for a year or more, been piling up teakwood logs, to the great, salt ocean which the ships crossed, Umboo had to take a ride on the railroad. He might have walked, but this would have taken too long.
Umboo had never before seen a railroad, a railroad car or a locomotive, and when he first noticed the big, black engine, puffing out smoke and steam, the elephant boy was as frightened as when he had seen the snake in the jungle. Umboo raised his trunk in the air, and made a loud trumpet sound of danger.
"Don't be afraid," said a tame elephant near by. "There is nothing to hurt you."
"Nothing to hurt me!" cried Umboo. "What do you call that big, black thing, whose breath steams out of the top of his head, as mine sometimes comes out of my trunk on a cold morning? Nothing to be afraid of? Why, that is worse than a big rhino! Much worse!"