Castaways on Chimp Island

Can these brilliant chimps escape the jungle island the scientists have marooned them on?

Danny was tired of language lab. For far too long, it seemed, he had been drilled every day in American Sign Language. Itwas time to take a rest. So he pretended he could no longer learn and he had forgotten most of what he had learned. Danny was a chimp, one of several being trained by scientists. And though Danny thought that what he had done was smart, he had really outsmarted himself. The scientists decided that chimps could not learn sign language after all and stopped the experiments. Danny and three other chimps—Roger, Nibbles and Tarzan—were placed on a jungle island to return to nature.

The problems started right away. Tarzan did not seem to understand signs at all. Roger understood too much. He was, he said, a genius. And Nibbles was little more than a baby. She just wanted to go home to "Daddy."

Accompanying them for a short time were two humans: Dr. Simeon and his assistant, Brian. They promised to come back from time to time to check on what was happening to the island. It was this promise that kept the four going and that prompted Roger to work out schemes for getting off the island. The only problem was that Roger was not to be trusted, Danny was sure of that. And his schemes might work only for Roger. Danny yearned for his old language lab, if for nothing else—he had dreamed of being a TV star. But first come the realities of life in the wild and of the desperate plots of Roger.