NOAH'S ARK MARAMA.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 65, 19 March 1926, Page 8

NOAH'S ARK MARAMA.

A QUEER PASSENGER LIST.

MANY TRAVELLING LIGHT. iSOME WITH ONLY ONE TRUNK APIECE. Some queer passengers walked aboard the Marama this morning—when t'.ip tide suited. After her long lay-up during which she was converted into an oil-burner, this popular intercolonial vessel, which is far more comfortable than some of the more ambitious vessels uiat have followed her off the stocks, looked very spic and span. She has most comfortable quarters, and nice roomy deck cabins, all ready this morning for their occupants. The woodwork is all freshly painted, a clean white enamel, brass and nickel-plate things shone, and the corners of the eider-down quilts of the comfortable bunks was'turned down in the conventional manner. The teak decks no longer sullied by coal-dust, and all just washed down, were spotlessly clean. At one time she was not by any means certain as far as steaming capabilities were concerned, but the substi tution of oil for dirty coal fuel has changed all this. Altogether the red funneller made one wish one was on the passenger list.

But long before the cabin people clambered up the gangway there was an invasion of quite another sort. There were other passengers, and their embarkation was a matter of tides. It was no use thinking of getting them up the steep incline ■which the gangway would assume at high tide and the deck of the steamer would be many feet above the Prince's wharf, where she was tied up. There was a round dozen of them—the lead-coloured elephants which bulk so largely in Wirth's Circus, now going back to Australia after a very successful season in New Zealand. It takes special trains to shift Wirth's, and though there will be room for some others on the Marama, she seemed littered with circus animals and gear this morning.

When her main deck was level "with the wharf, at a very early hour, a temporary gangway of heavy planks was rigged aft and a similar contrivance forward. On the wharf there was a great collection of those big circus vans painted red with yellow lettering, all manner of caged things that made various noises and cries, and emitted 'smells of varying intensity.

Swaying their . trunks and forequarters in a sing-song sort of way the herd ef elephants was the great centre of attraction. They were all bulky except a baby one, which appeared to "weigh a few tons less than the others. One of the "old hands" was led up to the gangway and invited on board. Apparently he doubted the judgment of all sailors and stevedores and other waterfront people, for he examined the gangplanks like a clerk of works who suspects the contractor is trying to work in some shoddy material. Gingerly with one foot he tried his weight here and there, used his inquisitive trunk like a blind man uses his stick, and at last after many precautions, and obviously still highly suspicious, he was got aboard.

Aft on the Marama there is a small deck, railed off, and roofed in by the boat deck, and this made a convenient open air stable for ' these , weighty passengers—only one hoped none of them would lean too heavily against the taffrail, which looked very frail and near the water. Number Cnc was used as a decoy for five others, and if they showed too much coyness, those on board were used to haul the reluctant one on by means of a chain. Pushed and pulled and coaxed, the six allotted berths at this end of the ship were at last on board, and more or less securely chained by one foot to ring bolts or stanchions.

For'ard in the well-deck, just at the break of the forecastle, there was just room for the rest of the herd. Most of the other live stock, such as tigers, lions, seals, roosters, dogs, monkeys and other odds and ends were housed in their cages on the boat-deck, right at the stemwhere the prevailing wind .would carry most of tiie odours not of Araby well away from the human passengers. At breakfast this morning, watersiders and others about the ship were much interested in the table manners of various, members of the queer collection. A mother monkey suckling a little one about six inches long did not cease from her maternal duties even while she peeled with lightning speed and bolted several bananas, and the baby held on literally by the skin of its teeth and one hand gripped its mother's hairy chest. A truss of hay thrown to the elephants was. up-ended by a big fellow at the end of the row. With a touch of his foot and with a twist of his trunk the wrre bands snapped like string.

When breakfasting off hay, the elephant is a playful animal and rather like a youngster who has to be admonished to go on with bis meal and not play with the food. It was clear that they all' preferred the apples, tomatoes and •>ther trifles that were handed to them by admiring bystanders, direct down a pink and capacious throat, or first accepted almost humanly by the trunk.

A man on the wharf asked, "Why do they etow the animals right aft like that?" Evidently he had forgotten his Kipling.

"The wind was always failhT It was. most unajsy sailin', And the ladles in the cabins •Couldn't stand the stable air The bastes between the hatches They tuk and died in batches - Says Noah, "There's someone here \N ho hasn't paid his fare V