ed.

"Well, I'd have been first only I stumbled over a tree root," said
Gumble-umble.

He was always finding fault, it seemed.

Into the water splashed the five elephant children. They went out where
it was about deep enough to come up to their ears, and then they sucked
water up in their trunks and sprayed it over their backs, to drive away
the flies and gnats that bit them. Then they swam out into deep water,
and rolled and tumbled about, having great fun. They splashed each
other, squirted water all over, and soon were as cool as cucumbers on
ice.

All at once, through the jungle, there sounded a loud trumpeting.

"Hark!" cried Whoo-ee, as he stopped squirting water on Thorny. "What's
that?"

"It's Mr. Boom signaling that there's danger!" cried Tum Tum.

CHAPTER II

TUM TUM IS CAUGHT

Tum Tum, and the other elephants who were in swimming, made no more
noise than a fly walking up the window. They all kept quiet and
listened.

Through the jungle again sounded the trumpet call:

"Umph! Umph! Boom! Boom! Toom!"

"That sure means danger!" cried Tum Tum. "Come on! We had better go back
to where our fathers and mothers are."

"Indeed we had!" said Thorny, as she and Zunga waded to the shore, water
dripping from them.

"That's always the way!" complained Gumble-umble. "Just as we are having
fun, something has to happen."

"Look here!" exclaimed Whoo-ee, "you don't want to be caught in a trap,
do you?"

"Of course not," said Gumble-umble.

"And you don't want a hunter to shoot you, or to carry you away far off
somewhere, do you?"

"You know I don't," and Gumble-umble did not speak quite so crossly this
time.

"Well, then," said Whoo-ee, "let's do as Tum Tum is doing, and start for
home. There must be some danger, or Mr. Boom wouldn't have called to us
that way."

"Indeed he wouldn't," said Tum Tum, and he did not laugh in his jolly
way now. "My mother told me to be sure and listen for a call from Mr.
Boom. She said he would be looking for danger, and when he called, I was
to hurry home."

Tum Tum was out on the bank of the river now. Gumble-umble was the last
one of the elephants to come from the swimming pool.

"Let's hurry," said Tum Tum.

"That's what I say!" cried Thorny. "I don't want to be caught by some
hunter."

The elephant children knew what hunters were, for their fathers and
mothers had often told them about the natives who tried to catch
elephants. Indeed, some of the o