



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










Circus Animal Stories

UMBOO, THE ELEPHANT

By

HOWARD R. GARIS

Author of
"The Bedtime Stories"
"The Uncle Wiggily Series"
"The Daddy Series"
Etc.

CONTENTS

Chapter

I     Baby Umboo

II    On The March

III   Sliding Down Hill

IV    Umboo Learns Something

V     Picking Nuts

VI    Umboo Is Lost

VII   Umboo And The Snake

VIII  Umboo Finds His Mother

IX    To The Salt Spring

X     In A Trap

XI    Umboo Goes To School

XII   Umboo Is Sold

XIII  Umboo On The Ship

XIV   Umboo In The Circus

XV    Umboo Remembers




CHAPTER I

BABY UMBOO


"Oh, my! But it's hot! It is just too hot for anything!" cried Chako,
one of the monkeys in the circus cage. "It is hotter under this tent
than ever it was in the jungle! Whew!" and he hung by his tail and
swung to and fro from a wooden bar.

"In the jungle we could find a pool of water where we could keep
cool," said another monkey, who was poking around the floor of the
cage, hoping he could find a peanut. But there were only shells. "I
wish I could go back to the jungle," he chattered.

"What did you come away from the jungle for, if you don't like it in
this circus?" asked Woo-Uff, the big yellow lion, who lay on his back
in his cage, his legs stuck up in the air, for he was cooler that way.
"Why did you come from the jungle, Chako?"

"I didn't want to come," answered the swinging monkey. "But some white
and black hunters caught me, and a lot more of us chattering chaps,
and took us away from the jungle."

"That's right, my boy!" exclaimed the deep, rumbly voice of Umboo, the
biggest elephant in the circus. "None of us animals would have come
away from the jungle if we could have had our way. But, now that we
are here, we must make the best of it."

"How can one make the best of it when it is so hot?" asked Chako. "The
sun shines down on this circus tent hotter than ever it did in the
jungle. And there is no pool of water where we can splash and be
cool."

"Oh, if water is all you want, I can give you some of that," spoke
Umboo. "Wait a minute!"

Near the elephants, of whom Umboo was one on a long line, chained to
stakes driven in the ground, was a big tub of water, put there for
them to drink when they wanted to. Umboo put his long, rubbery hose of
a trunk down into this tub of water, and sucked up a lot, just as you
fill your rubber ball at the bathroom basin.

"Look out now, monkeys!" cried the elephant. "It's going to rain!" and
he sort of laughed away down in his throat. He couldn't laugh through
his nose, as his nose was his trunk, and that was full of water. "Look
out for a shower!" he cried.

With that the elephant went:

"Woof-umph!"

Out from his trunk, as if from a hose, sprinkled a shower of water.
Over the cage of monkeys it sprayed, wetting them as might a fall of
rain.

"Here comes some more!" cried Umboo, and again he dipped his trunk in
the tub of water, sucked up some in the two hollow places, and again
squirted it over the monkeys' cage.

"Oh, that's good! That's fine!" cried Chako. "That was like being in a
jungle rain. I'm cooler now. Squirt some more, Umboo!"

"No, hold on, if you please!" rumbled another elephant. "It is all
right for Umboo to splatter some water on you poor monkeys, but if he
quirts away all in the tub we will have none to drink."

"That's so," said Umboo. "I can't squirt away all the water, Chako. We
big elephants have to drink a lot more than you little monkeys. But
when the circus men fill our tub again, I'll squirt some more on you."

"Thank you!" chattered Chako. "I feel cooler, anyhow. And we monkeys
can't stand too much water. This felt fine!"

The monkeys in the cage were quite damp, and some began combing out
their long hair with their queer little fingers, that look almost like
yours, except that their thumb isn't quite the same.

"If Umboo can't squirt any more water on us, maybe he can do something
else to help us forget that it is so hot," said Gink, a funny little
monkey, who had a very long tail.

"What can he do, except squirt water on us?" asked Chako. "And I wish
he'd do that again. It's the