Early in the morning Chunky, in his wooden cage, awoke in the jungle camp. It is so hot in Africa that when hunters travel they do so early in the morning and late in the afternoon. At mid-day the sun is too hot to walk out in it.
So, after breakfast, Chunky being given more grass and water, the black men picked up his cage again and set off. As they went along under the jungle trees, Chunky could hear, overhead, many monkeys chattering away.
“Oh, look at that poor hippo the hunters have caught,” said one. “Isn’t it too bad! I wouldn’t want to be in a cage.”
“Oh, I don’t mind it so much as I did at first,” said Chunky, speaking to the monkeys in jungle talk, which the black men and white men could not understand. “I’ve had enough to eat and drink and no one is hurting me. No crocodiles can get me here.”
“Well, you certainly are a happy chap,” went on the monkey who, by leaping from branch to branch overhead in the trees, easily kept up with the marching men carrying Chunky. “What makes you so jolly?”
“I guess I must have caught it from Tum Tum, the elephant,” was the answer, and Chunky actually opened his big mouth as if he were smiling.
“Oh, I know Tum Tum!” cried one of the monkeys. “He’s a jolly elephant who once was in a circus. And he knows a friend of ours.”
“Who?” asked another chattering chap.
“Mappo, the merry monkey,” was the answer. “Don’t you remember Mappo, who used to live in the jungle with us?”
“Oh, yes!”