Shaking the mud from his head and raising his trunk, Kabumpo let out such an ear-splitting trumpet, twenty Wakes fell to their knees, and the others dropped pick and shovel and stared at him in positive dismay.
"But, sir, it is quite customary to bury all visitors," quavered Torpy as soon as he could make himself heard. "We'll dig you up in six months and you'll be good as new. Our dormitories are so very comfortable, and all Gapers lie dormant for six months!"
"But I'm not a GAPER," screamed Kabumpo, interrupting himself with a yawn both wide and gusty.
"Oh, but you soon will be," asserted Torpy, squinting down at him earnestly. "Why, you're gaping already. Now lie down like a good beast. Sleeping underground is lovely."
"LOVELY!" repeated all the rest of the Wakes, beginning to croon as they shoveled. Kabumpo, opening his mouth to protest again, caught a bushel of earth between his tusks and, half choked and blind with rage, the Elegant Elephant hurled himself at the side of the pit. He could almost reach the top with his trunk and, as the Wakes squealing with alarm shoveled faster and faster, he wound his trunk round an old tree stump and by main strength hauled himself up over the edge.
"NOW!" he bellowed, spreading his ears like sails. "Where have you buried the boy? Quick, speak up or I'll pound you to splinters."
Snatching a log in his trunk, Kabumpo surged forward. But the terrified Wakes, instead of answering, fled for their lives, leaving Kabumpo all alone in the ghostly little valley.
"Randy! Randy, where are you? Oh, my poor boy, are you suffocated?"
Galloping this way and that, Kabumpo peered desperately about for a patch of newly turned earth. But only the wind whistling drearily through the dead branches of the pine trees came to answer him. Frantic with worry, the Elegant Elephant began pounding with his log on the headstones of the dormant Gapers, trumpeting at the same time in a way to wake the dead.