ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 214, 7 September 1895, Page 2

ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

Dear, dear! When you come to think of it, how closely related things are. How one thing brings up another. Ideas are like a lot of beads on a string, aren't they ?

A letter I have just been reading makes me remember whab happened to me one winter about twenty years ago. The story is boo long to tell here, so I'll merely give you the tail end of it. I was supercargo on a barque bound from London to Rio. A tremendous gale, lasting five days, wrecked us. Forby-eighb hours after it ceased there were four men and no more left on the vessel. The captain had been killed by a falling epar, three of the crew washed overboard, and the rest of the ship's company (save us four) went away in the long boats with the firsb and second mates. We were baking in water through a leak ab the rate of six inches an hour. Working with all our might, the four of us could pump thab out in forty minutes, bub we must do ib every hour. Ib was awful work. For bwo days we kopb ib up, wibhoub sleep. Then we stopped, took bo the quarter boat and shoved off. The sea was quiet—no wind. While we lay-bo within a mile of her bhe ship throw up her nose and went down etern first.. We were picked up the nexb day by a Danish brig.

Now the odd thing is thab the letter which reminded mo of thab experience has nothing whatever to say aboub ships. Please help me to find out the association.

The lady who writes the letter aays that in July, 1881 i she gob a bad fright. Exactly whab ib was she doesn't bell. I wish she did. ■ Anyway it so upseb her bhat she didn't get over the effects of ib for nine years. After that her appetite fell off; ehe lost all real relish for food, and what she did cab only made trouble instead of nourishing her. Ib gave her pain in the pit of the stomach and (curiously enough) between the shoulders. She says her eyes and skin presently turned yellow as a buttercup. Her face and abdomen swellod, and her feob the same, the latter so much so that she was obliged to have her shoes made larger.

' I got little sleep ab nighb,' she says, ' and was in so much pain 1 had to bo propped up wibh pillows. For weeks together I could nob lie down in bed. I had a dry, hollow cough, and bad night sweats. Then diarrhoea eet in, and my bowels became ulcerated. I was often in dreadful agony for forty-eight hours ab a time. Then I would have a chill a« though a bucket of cold water were poured down my back. I got so low I could no longer sew, knit, or do any housework or look after my children. My sister had to come and help in the house.

• Every body said I was in a decline and must die. What I suffered for eighb years tongue cannob tell. The doctor could do nothing for me. He said my complaint was complicated and bad to deal with. In 1886 I went as. an outdoor pabienb bo bhe Shrewsbury Infirmary, bub only gob transient relief."

The writer is in good health now, bub why did her case remind me of bhe shipwreck ? Leb's eetble. that tirsb. The association is easy and natural. Jusb see. The ship sank because we four men hadn'b the strength to pump out the water aa fasb as ib came in. Twenty men might have gob her inbo port. Ib is the last straw that breaks the camel's back ; the last unenppliod need thab makes poverty abjecb and desperate.

These bodies of ours carry the aoeds of disease with them all the time—chiefly the poisons created by impevi'acb digestion, made worse by careless habite. Bub as long aa nothing extraordinary happens wo manage bo scrape along in a halMn-half sorb of fashion. Yet we've gob in our blood the stuff that any of a dozen diseases ie made of, only waiting for something to set ib afire. While bhe liver, kidneys, lungs and skin keep us fairly free—thab is, don'b let the load get too heavy—we say, "Ob, yoe, I'm tolerably well, thank you." Little pains and unpleasant symptoms bother ua now and then, but we don'b fancy they mean anything.

By-and-by somebhing happens. A cold, too hearty a meal, a night of dissipation, an affliction through death or loss of property, a fright, as in Mrs Bunco's cage, etc. Over we go. The lasb straw has crushed us. One loose spark has blown up the barrel of powder. The crew is too small to save the chip. The kidneys, liver, skin, and stomach strike work, and we musb have help righb away or perish. All of which meane the explosion of latent indigestion and dyspepsia poisons in bhe blood. There ! isn'b ib plain why I thoughb of the ship ? Now for the conclusion of the lady's story, She cays : "in 1889 I first: beard of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. Half a bottle made me feel bebter, and by keeping on taking it I was soon strong and well as ever. (Signed; Airs Ann Bunce The Park, Worthen. near Shrewsbury February 22nd, 1893." *'

It there were only a way to save sinking ships as certain and trustworthy aa Mother beige) s medicine is in the case of sinking human bodies, what a blessing ib would be to poor sailors*