, winding his tail around the lowest
branch and leaping to the ground. But the cocoanut was nowhere to be
seen.

"I wonder if Jacko could have taken it to play a joke on me?" thought
Jumpo. Then he looked over toward the bushes, and he saw something
moving, and there was the cocoanut rolling along, faster than ever.

"My! It must be going down hill!" cried Jumpo, as he sprang after it.
Well, the cocoanut kept on going. Once Jumpo almost had it in his left
paw, but the cocoanut hit a stone and bounded away from him. Then he
almost had it in his right foot, but the cocoanut went splash into a
little brook of water and the green monkey couldn't see it. Then it
rolled out and he managed to get his tail around the nut, but it was so
slippery that it got away from him--the cocoanut got away, not Jumpo's
tail, you understand. No, that stayed fast on the monkey boy.

"Oh, I guess we won't have any cocoanut cake for supper to-night,"
thought the little green fellow. "I wish I had stayed out of the
kitchen, as mamma told me. But I'm not going to give up yet. I'll get
that cocoanut if it's possible!" So he ran on, faster than ever, but the
cocoanut rolled quicker and quicker. It was now getting late, and Jumpo
didn't know what to do. He could still see the cocoanut ahead of him,
but he couldn't catch up to it.

"Oh, whatever shall I do?" he cried. And just then he saw something like
a big red hole, with rows of sharp white teeth in it. At first he
thought it was his red brother Jacko, but when he looked again he saw
that it was the skillery-scalery alligator.

"Oh, I'm just waiting for you," said the 'gator with his mouth open real
wide.

"Oh, dear!" cried Jumpo, "this comes of not minding one's mother. The
cocoanut is gone and I'll soon be gone, too," for he surely thought the
alligator would get him.

In fact the alligator was just going to eat up the little green monkey
when the skillery-scalery creature gave his tail a big flop. Then
something round and brown sailed up into the air, came down ker-bunk,
right on the end of the 'gator's nose, and bounded off.

"Oh, my! Some one is shooting cannon balls at me!" cried the 'gator. "I
never can stand cannon balls." So away he went, as fast as he could,
taking his double-jointed tail with him. And listen, as the telephone
girl says, it wasn't a cannon ball at all, that had hit the 'gator, it
was the lost cocoanut.

Jumpo caught it as it came down, after the 'gator had acci