CHUNKY TAKES A TRIP
Poor Chunky did not know what to do. He could hardly move around on the
bottom of the hole, because it was so small. It had not been made to
catch him, but he did not know that. The black hunters who had dug the
pit hoped to catch in it a small deer. Chunky was really a little too
big for the pit-trap, but it was too late to think of that now. He was
in it.
“Oh dear!” thought Chunky, “I wonder if any of my friends will come to
help me out? I wish Tum Tum would come. He could lift me out with his
strong trunk. I’ll call him.”
So, in a sort of grunting voice, Chunky called:
“Tum Tum! where are you? Please come and get me out of the hole!”
After he had called the name of his big animal friend Chunky kept still
and listened. He could hear nothing but the sounds of the jungle all
about him. He could not see anything except the earth sides of the deep
pit.
“Tum Tum! where are you? Come and help me out of this hole!” called the
hippo boy, in animal talk of course.
But no one answered him. He could hear the birds in the jungle making
their queer noises, not at all like the sweet sound your canary makes.
The birds screamed instead of singing, though now and then one or
another would utter a pleasant note.
And the monkeys! How they chattered! Other animals ran here and there
through the jungle, going to get something to eat or something to
drink. None of them, however, paid any attention to Chunky’s calls. Tum
Tum did not answer him, because the jolly elephant was far away; and if
any of the other jungle animals heard what Chunky was saying, they did
not reply to him. Perhaps they, too, were in some sort of trouble, or
they may have been busy.
“Well, I guess no one is coming to help me out of this hole,” said
Chunky to himself, after a while. “Oh, dear! I wish I’d been more
careful, and had not stepped on the dried leaves over the hole. Then I
wouldn’t have fallen in!”
But it was too late to think of that now. Chunky knew he must try to
get out before the black or white hunters came, for that he was in a
pit dug by these men the hippo boy very well knew. Tum Tum, as well as
his father and mother, had told him about such places and had warned
him to be careful.
“I _must_ get out!” thought Chunky.
So he turned and twisted himself about on the bottom of the pit, and
tried to raise himself up to look over the top, but he could not. In
the first place he was too heavy to raise himself up very far on his
hind legs. If he had been Lightfoot, the leaping goat, about whom some
stories have been told you, Chunky might have done this, or he might
even have jumped out of the pit. But, as it was, he could only bob up a
little way and then drop back again.
“Maybe I could dig my way out with my big, long teeth, the same as I
dig up the grass roots at the bottom of the river,” thought Chunky to
himself. “Oh, dear! I wish I were back in the river now! I’m going to
try to dig myself out.”
But though Chunky’s front teeth, or tusks, answered well enough for
digging up grass or lily roots on the bottom of the river, where the
mud was soft, they were not made for digging in the hard, earthen sides
of the pit. The hippo boy could only make a few scratches, and these
did him no good.
“It’s of no use!” sadly thought Chunky. “I guess I’ll have to stay
here. But if only Tum Tum would come! I’ll call him again!”
So lifting up his head, with his big, broad nose pointing toward the
opening at the top of the pit, Chunky called:
“Tum Tum! Please come and help me!”
He waited, but no one answered. The jolly elephant was still far away.
Pretty soon, however, a little bird perched itself on top of a tree
where it could look down into the pit. The bird saw the hippo and heard
his big voice calling.
“My! what a funny way you have of singing,” remarked the bird.
“I am not _singing_,” answered Chunky.
“Not singing? Then what do you call it?” asked the bird, looking down
at Chunky, its little head on one side, just as your canary often looks
at you.
“No, I wasn’t singing,” went on Chunky. “I can’t sing――at least not
like you. I was calling for my friend Tum Tum, the jolly elephant, to
come and help me get out of this hole.”
“What did you want to go and get in the hole for?” asked the bird,
somewhat pertly.
“I didn’t want to,” Chunky explained patiently. “I fell in. This isn’t
a regular hole. It’s a trap. It was all covered with leaves, sticks and
grass, and I didn’t see it until I stepped right into it. Now I can’t
get out unless my friend Tum Tum comes and lifts me out with his big,
strong trunk, as he lifted me out of the mud. Oh, if Tum Tum were only
here!”
“Maybe I can find him for you,” said the bird kindly, realizing now
that Chunky was in a sad plight.
“I wish you would!” exclaimed Chunky. “You can fly all over the jungle.
Perhaps you will see Tum Tum, the jolly elephant. If you do, please
tell him to come and help me.”
“I will,” promised the bird.
“And tell him to hurry, please,” went on Chunky. “If I don’t get out of
here soon, the black or white hunters――whoever made this pit――will come
and get me, and then maybe they’ll put me in a circus.”
“What’s a circus?” asked the bird.
“I don’t know, but Tum Tum does,” answered Chunky. “He was in one long
ago. He can tell you what a circus is when you find him to ask him to
come to help me.”
“So he can!” chirped the bird. “Well, I’ll go off and see if I can find
your jolly elephant friend for you. Good-bye, Chunky. Don’t worry; I’ll
get Tum Tum to help you.”
“Good-bye, birdie, and thank you,” said the hippo boy.
Then the bird flew away across the jungle, and the hippo stayed at the
bottom of the pit-trap, waiting for what would happen next. Though he
did not know it, his real adventures had begun, and he was to have a
great many.
Away flew the bird over the jungle, but it did not find Tum Tum, at
least in time to be of any use to Chunky. The jolly elephant was
helping the white hunters catch some wild elephants for the circus.
And, while this was going on, along came the black hunters who had dug
the pit into which Chunky had fallen. The black hunters were Africans,
and they had on very little clothing, for it was very hot.
Along the jungle path they came, with their spears and guns――for the
white hunters had sold the black hunters guns――jabbering and talking
in their own language. This would have sounded very queer to you, but
no queerer than your talk would sound to those black Africans. And it
sounded queer to Chunky, who heard it, down in the bottom of the pit as
he was. But then his way of talking in animal language sounded queer to
the black hunters, so matters were even, you see.
“I wonder if we have caught anything in our trap,” said one black
hunter to another, as he walked along the jungle.
“I hope we have a nice deer, so we can have a good meal,” observed
another.
They were close, now, to the pit they had dug, and the black men walked
more softly along the jungle path, for they wanted to see what was in
their trap without being seen. One of them went carefully up and looked
in. When he saw Chunky, the hippo boy, at the bottom, the black man
gave a cry of delight.
“Oh, we have caught a hippo! We have caught a young hippo!” he shouted,
leaping about and waving his sharp spear over his head. “It is much
better than a goat or a pig, for we shall have much more meat to eat.
Ho! for the hippo!”
Of course the black hunter talked in his own language which his
friends, the other hunters, understood. They gathered with him about
the edge of the pit and looked down. They could see poor Chunky there,
though, of course, they did not know his name.
“Ha!” cried the black hunters. “We shall have a fine meal now! We shall
have lots to eat!”
For the reason they had dug the pit in the jungle was to get something
to eat. They had no store or market where they could go to buy
anything. When they were hungry they had to hunt pigs, elephants or
hippos with their guns or spears, or trap them in pits or nets.
“We must get him out of the pit,” said the first black hunter. “We
cannot cook him and eat him if he is down there.”
Chunky did not understand what the men were saying, and he did not
know what they were going to do to him. But he soon found out. The men
brought long ropes, made from twisted jungle vines, and lowered them
down into the pit. They did not dare jump down themselves, for though
Chunky was only a little hippo, compared to the grown ones, still he
was strong, and his big teeth could bite very hard. The black hunters
wanted to tie him with ropes before they lifted him out.
So down into the pit they dangled their strong vine ropes. Chunky saw
them coming and felt them on his back, but he could not get out of the
way of them. Soon they were tangled about his legs and body, and then,
all the black hunters pulling together, they lifted the hippo out of
the hole.
Chunky grunted and wiggled, but it was of no use. He could not get away
from the ropes that were soon wound all about him.
Then just as one of the black hunters was about to stick him with a
spear, to kill him, suddenly there was a loud noise in the jungle that
made the black hunters look in the direction from which it sounded.
They saw, coming toward them, some white men with black men――servants
to carry their guns, tents and boxes of food. It was a party of white
hunters out seeking wild animals.
“What have you there?” asked the leader of the white hunters of the
head of the black hunters――the one who had first looked down at Chunky
in the pit. “What have you there?”
“We have a small hippo,” was the answer.
“And what are you going to do with him?”
“We are going to eat him, for we are hungry, and he has much meat on
him――he is nice and fat.”
“Oh, don’t kill him!” said the white hunter. “I will buy him from you
alive, and I’ll take him to a far-off land where people who do not see
many hippos can see him. I can sell him to a circus. Don’t kill the
little hippo. Sell him to me. Then you can buy other things to eat.”
“Well, we will do that,” said the black hunter. “But how can you carry
this hippo alive to a far country?”
“I’ll show you,” answered the white hunter. “Leave him to me. Here are
lots of beads and copper rings and looking glasses that flash in the
sun like silver. I will give you these for the hippo.”
The black hunters liked very much the pretty things the white man had,
so they took them and let him take Chunky, though of course the white
man, as yet, did not know the hippo’s name.
“Make me a strong cage of jungle vines and poles of wood,” said the
white hunter to his black helpers. “In the cage we will carry the hippo
through the jungle until we come to the ‘great water,’ as you call the
ocean. There, in a ship, I can take him to America, where I live. Make
me a strong cage for the hippo.”
So they made a strong cage for Chunky, and when he was put in it and
the ropes slipped off him, he could stand up, and move about, though he
could not get out. And oh! how hot and tired and cramped and thirsty he
was! How he would have liked to take a swim in his river, dive down out
of sight and chew some of the sweet grass roots! But this was not to be.
Chunky was caught, and was in a cage, and, pretty soon, many of the
black men with the white hunter, taking hold of poles thrust through
the cage, began carrying Chunky through the jungle.
The little hippo boy was being taken away. He was beginning a very long
trip, and on it he was to have many adventures.
“Oh, dear!” thought Chunky, as he felt himself being lifted up and
carried along. “I guess that bird didn’t find Tum Tum and tell him to
come and help me! I wonder what is going to happen to me?”
And well might Chunky, the happy hippo, wonder. He did not feel very
happy now, but better times were coming, though he did not know it.
[Illustration: “The little hippo boy was being taken away”]