Wolf

The hobby of Oliver W. Holton of Middletown, N. J., is keeping wild animals in pens on his estate. Last year his Italian leopard escaped but was trapped in a chicken yard before damaging anyone.

Last week, Mrs. Alma Mazza, the Holton's maid, heard screams where her Henry, aged 3, was playing on the back lawn with her master's son, Tommy Holton, aged 2. Henry ran in shrieking, "A big dog's biting Tommy!"

The "big dog" was playfully tossing the baby in the air and catching him again. It was one of Mr. Holton's two timber wolves; the female.

Mrs. Mazza kicked the wolf in the face, snatched up the child, fled into the kitchen, banged the door. The Holton's police dog, Trix, was in the kitchen. Trix smelled the blood. While Mrs. Mazza was making a bandage, the big dog rose on its hind legs, shoved open the kitchen door and ran out. The timber wolf, waiting outside, slipped into the kitchen.

Mrs. Mazza was not quick enough. A snarl, a grab, and again the wolf was tossing the child on the lawn, spanning the small chest easily with long, white-fanged jaws, shaking the small body as it fell.

Mrs. Mazza found a shotgun but no shells. Hysterical, she smashed the gun-butt down on the wolf's skull.

Mr. Holton later found his half-stunned beast in a dry pond bed nearby, and slew it with a rifle. His son died towards midnight of a punctured lung, torn abdomen, loss of blood.

Voyage

When the four-masted schooner, Kingsway, left Pensacola, Fla., last December, bound for the Gold Coast in Africa, she had a new master, Captain F. E. Lawry. Also, she had a bitter first mate, Fred Mortimer. Mate Mortimer, aged 72, had boasted just before the Kingsway sailed that he was the original "Mr. Pike" of Jack London's story, The Mutiny of the Elsinore. When Captain Lawry came aboard to replace the Kings-way's Captain Chase, who had sickened, Mate Mortimer gnawed his oath-cracked lips. He, "Mr. Pike," should have had that berth. He would show this Lawry, this interloper. . . .

On the run from Pensacola to Porto Rico, Mate Mortimer told the crew what dainty chow was served at Captain Lawry's table compared to their galley muck. The crew grumbled. At Porto Rico, the ship's cook deserted.

Captain Lawry signed on a new cook, one Earl Battice, Mississippi mulatto. With Mr. Battice came Mrs. Battice, wife. Mr. Battice insisted on having her along. The Kingsway, full of fate, started across the torrid Atlantic.

At the thought, the very thought, of a woman on board, Mate Mortimer ground his teeth. A woman was not merely unlucky but against all sea tradition. If Captain Lawry did not know that then he ought to read Jack London and learn something.

With the crew of the Kingsway, however, Mrs. Battice was not so unpopular. Bough, tough, deep-water tars though they were, they had to admit that her feminine touch made the ship more homelike. Waldemar Karl Badke, towheaded German, "donkeyman,"* got on especially well with her. Every one aboard, including Mr. Battice, knew that they were great friends. Mrs. Battice even drew the fact to her husband's attention, one day when Africa was still many dawns beyond the hot horizon. Mr. Battice strolled on deck to ask a shipmate for the loan of a razor. . .

From the Battices' cabin came a gurgling scream. All hands bounded down the companionway. There lay Mrs. Battice with a necklace of blood under her chin, from ear to ear. Mr. Battice was mumbling: "She said she loved Badke."

It took Mrs. Battice six days to die. Mr. Battice also groaned constantly, in rusty irons. The crew grew restive. Captain Lawry would command one thing, Mate Mortimer another. More often than not they obeyed Mate Mortimer. On two days they refused all work.

At Monrovia, Liberia, bound homeward, Captain Lawry shipped another cook, one Codjo, blackamoor, who came over the side wearing a blanket woven of human hair. From the first, his cooking was dubious. Then Captain Lawry and Mate Mortimer felt strangely ill. They were swelling, swelling. They bloated all over to "twice natural size." Fortified with strychnine, Captain Lawry staggered forward to berate Codjo, whom he found, sick as himself, lying naked in a bunk conjuring with three little sticks, a voodoo curse on the ship.

Mr. Battice had to be freed from his irons to keep life aboard the Kingsway. Mate Mortimer broke down and died. They buried him at Barbados.

Last week, when the Kingsway came to anchor off Staten Island, N. Y., Federal men took Mr. Battice ashore to be tried for murder, with Donkeyman Badke a material witness and statutory offender. Seamen Hans Malibar, Frederick Kline, Alex Christiansen, Sig Scvhwanborg and Erik Anderson, with Thomas Murray, acting first mate and onetime bosun, were held pending formal entry of the almost obsolete charge, "mutiny on the high seas."

New Product

Now STATE STREET OFFERS YOU

TWEAKER

With the coming of Tweaker the old order of things is gone. . . . Tweaker is new--different. . . See Tweaker today.

Such were enticing phrases used, last week, by the Tweaker Manufacturing Co. of Chicago to advertise a new product selling for $3.50.

The Chicago Tribune, not squeamish, carried an advertising sketch of a "tweaker." Superficially this instrument resembles a pair of scissors between the points and handles of which four flexible strands are strung and intertwined in curious fashion.

The owner of a tweaker proceeds to tweak by bringing the strands into close proximity with a human hair which is caught and held by squeezing the handles of the tweaker. Then, according to the Tweaker Company: With a gentle motion it rolls hair out--root and all. . . . Now razors, chemicals and painful wax go the way of all obsolete things.

* Operator of the "donkey engine" used for hoisting cargo, etc.