The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-05-13
SACRED ELEPHANTS.
Were Tattooed by Lascars and Sea
 Tragedy Followed.

From the New York Evening Sun.
 Ahoyl Masters and sea Captains, ahoy! If you run across the earcasses of a couple of pink, green, white and purple elephants afoat about due northeast of the Azores on your next trip out, don't take them for sea serpents or anything like that, for they aren't. They'll be just dead elephants, that's all. Then maybe you'll see plain ordinary drab one awash somewhere, but he'll be q dead elephant, too. Just cross your fingers and pass them by-they won't hurt you.
 This is probably the most unusual warn ing ever given to mariners. but it is deemed advisable, as the result of a tale told by the crew of the tramp steamship barenfels. just in from Calcutta. These three elephants were formerly part of the cargo of the Barenfels. and it was from her that they were thrown over board off the Azores.
 No the green, pink white and purple elephants weren't born that way They were painted that way, aboard the ship, surreptitiously. and thereby hangs the yarn.
 The Barenfels left Calcutta on March 10 and just before she sailed there were hosted aboard, to be delivered to a New York animal dealer, Alice. Bill and Joe, the three elephants, all young ones and
 
 ordinary spongy drab elephant, but Dill and Alice-they were extraordinary, two sleek sacred white elephants from Bur mah, beloved of all Mohammedans.
 It was no wonder, then, that Johab bin Halah, the serang, and the Lascar crew under him kow-towed and ashamed until they bored holes in the deck with their noses when Bill and Alice came aboard. They were most immeasurably honored at 1uxyf tho thaff. xx-lt tn ala .hnr ships in. such close proximity to their sin full selves, and there was nothing which they would not do to show their most abject devotion, and the voyage was bound to be a fair one under the sublime protectorate of these two sacred white beings
 All very well. The voyage was a fair one, but along about the first week in April, some time after the Barenfels had left Algiers and steamed through the Straits of Gibraltar out and up into the cold Atlantic, Johab bin HaIah who had early obtained the consent of the captain to become the elephants valet, made a sad discovery The cold weather was get ting into the side of Bill and Joe and Alice, crinkling and cracking it open like an earthquake. The elephantine cuticle was getting chapped
 Johab told Mir Ammermann, the sec ond officer. about it in horror-stricken tones and MT. Ammermann advised hot water and an oil massage. So hot water and oil 1t was, and the whole Lascar crew fighting for the honor of doing the mas saging. Of course, Joe. being an ordi- nary, everyday. plebian elephant, got scant attention, and his skin became as tender as a babys. He roared and trum- peted of nights in protest, but it didn't do any good. and at last Joe just up and died. He was buried at sea with no cere- mony on the same day, April 10. His death, however, frightened the Lascars They had visions of the white pair going the same way, and they were much per turbed. Perhaps they hadn't shown enough religious devotion to the beasts although MT. Ammermann says they prayed to, for and at the elephants three times day. At any rate something must be done.
 So the Lascars held council. and, after deal of grave discussion, Johab, the serang was suddenly seized with an in- spiration. The sacred white elephant had never been tattooed. he announced. That was what the matter was. They must be tattooed All very well. cried the others. but there was nothing aboard the ship to do the tattooing with.
 True, said Johab, there was no tattoo ing materials but there was paint and lots of it in the store room, and in all cOlOrs.
 Fine! They would paint Bill and Alice that night. So. at midnight, Johab stole into the store room and got the paint and brushes and transferred them stealthily to the quarters of the elephants between decks forward. And then and there was perpetrated on the white skins of Bill and Alice the most wonderful specimens of Malayan art that the Barenfels' officers in all their travels through the far east had ever seen. There were green temples and purple gods and pink tombstones and va rious other mysterious figures, which only the Mohammedan mind can interpret.
 Johab and his men were eminently sat- isfied with their work. but when the off, ficers saw it in the morning they shook their heads. The Lascars had painted over the, sore spots on the elephants slSiu and already it was plain that the beasts were feeling the effects of it. They were roaring and trumpeting and flashing their