Orang-outang Starts Panic on Ship

Beast Attacks Steering Gear With Crowbar

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., May 20. -- The swan started something when it reached forth and plucked a bag of tobacco from the unsuspecting hand of the quartermaster.

All in a cluster the elephants began to trumpet, the tigers to roar, the monkeys to chatter, the snakes to hiss, and above all there was raised the clarion call of a giant orang-outang, or whatever it is an orang-outang does when it breaks out of the reservation.

Panic in Engine Room.
Many of the animals, freshly plucked from the primeval forests of India and therefore filled with jazz and pepper, were entirely willing to join the mutiny. The giant orang-outang chose the engine room to present his act. His arrival there was a signal for a grand hegira of engineers, firemen, coal passers, water tenders and other beavers who toil in the bowels of a sea-going steamship.

Let it be explained that all this happened aboard the good ship Haleakala while on its way to San Francisco from Calcutta.

No sooner had the orang-outang established himself as king of the engine room than he began to experiment with electric switches and such. In his enthusiasm the orang-outang touched two wires at once and the same time, an act that caused what is known as a short circuit.

The odor of singed hair filled the air. To get even the orang-outang unlimbered a crowbar and began to lambast the electrical switches, a bit of sabotage that caused the ship's officers to fire forty-six shots by actual count. Their aim was perfectly punk. Not a bullet registered. In the meantime the orang-outang's monkeying with the electrical steering gear caused the Haleakala to back toward Honolulu, a port that already had been visited.

After forty-six shots had been fired at the orang-outang the animal retreated to his cage and went to sleep.

Elephant Dies Aboardship.
Other incidents combined to make the voyage interesting, too. A bull elephant, weighing three tons, died and was derricked overboard, but the carcass failed to sink in spite of huge weights attached thereto.

Oh, yes, one thing more; a sailor got too near one of the lion's cages and the king of the beasts removed the southwest part of his trousers.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Illinois, May 22, 1920, page 1.