They did not manifest the same concern for others, but sat watching them without offering any protest. Even the stowaway who fed them and attended to their cage was permitted to approach the elephant; but their solicitude for me was remarked by every man on board. I was never able to tell what their opinion of the thing was. They were much less afraid of the elephant when they could see all of him, than they were of the trunk when they saw that alone. They may have thought the latter to be a big snake; but this is only a conjecture. At the beginning of the voyage I took six panels of my own cage and made a small cage for them. I taught them to drink water from a beer bottle with a long neck that could be put through a mesh of the wires. They preferred this mode of drinking and appeared to look upon it as an advanced idea. Elisheba always insisted on being served first; being a female, her wish was complied with. When she had finished, Aaron would climb up by the wires and take his turn. There is a certain sound, or word, which the chimpanzee always uses to express “good” or “satisfaction,” and he made frequent use of it. He would drink a few swallows of the water and then utter the sound, whereupon Elisheba would climb up again and taste. She seemed to think it something better than she was drinking, but finding it the same as she had had, she would again give way for him. Every time he used the sound she would take another taste and turn away; but she never failed to try it if he uttered the sound. The boy who cared for them on the voyage was disposed to play tricks on them. One of these ugly pranks was to turn the bottle up so that when they had finished drinking and took their lips away, the water would spill out and run down over them. Several times they declined to drink from the bottle while he was holding it, but when he let it go, it hung in such a position that they could not get the water out of it at all. At length Aaron solved the problem by climbing up one side of the cage and getting on a level with the bottle; then he reached across the angle formed by the two sides of the cage and drank. In this position it was no matter to him how much the water ran out; it couldn’t touch him. Elisheba watched him until she quite grasped the idea; then she climbed up in the same manner and slaked her thirst. I scolded the boy for serving them with such cruel tricks; but it taught me another lesson of value concerning the mental resources of the chimpanzee, for no philosopher could have found a much better scheme to obviate the trouble than did this cunning little sage in the hour of necessity.