In a short time they were by the side of Papa Ngooboo. They took a swim, then ascended the river to their shoals. After they had rested a while, Mr. Ngooboo said to his mate: “Dear, our feet are so shaped that we can both walk on land and swim. Our straight and crooked tusks allow us to get the grass at the bottom of the river. We are so built that we can stay under water a long time.”
The colony of ngooboos had a good time. They would play in the water, dive, and swim, often run after one another, and all this time the young ones were learning the wisdom belonging to the ngooboos.
Once in a while a troop of monkeys who were travelling would look upon the ngooboos from their trees, on the wooded shores of the river, and would say, “We have never seen such an ugly creature in our lives.”
Watching the ngooboos from among the thick trees lining the banks of the river were the small yellow osengi monkeys with their long tails, and their bosom friends, the hornbills, with their great beaks several inches long.
The osengis and the hornbills are great chums; indeed, they seem to be inseparable. So that when other birds of the forest see first the osengis, they say, the hornbills are near; if they see the hornbills first, they say, the osengis are not far off, and food is plentiful, and berries and fruits are to be found; and if they feed on these, they say, let us follow them, or go ahead of them.
How such friendship happens to exist between these two, no one can tell. It is the more unselfish in that, though they eat the same food, they never seem to quarrel about it. Sometimes the osengi would discover food first, sometimes the hornbills. “Kee, kee,” the osengis would often say plaintively to the hornbills, as they followed them; but the hornbills were always silent, never uttering a note, because they did not want other birds to know where they were.
The little osengis love the neighborhood of rivers, whose banks they follow in their wanderings; they like to sleep on the branches spreading over the water. When birds or animals see them, they say gladly, if they are thirsty, “Water is near, for we see the osengis.”
Every evening it is the custom of the ngooboos to land and pasture on the prairie; they generally land two or three hours after the sun sets, that is, between eight and nine o’clock.
At such times there is a great deal of grunting and snorting among them. They talk to one another, and each snort or grunt has a meaning. The ngooboos are very suspicious when they go on shore, for they do not feel at home on land as they do in the water.