DRAMAS OF THE SEAS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 6 (Supplement)

DRAMAS OF THE SEAS.

(By ANGUS MacGBEGOR.)

A week ago Half-Pint O'Brien was iwnintant messboy and fo'c'sle devil on fee Balu. Now, besides being a patient ita. the ship's sick bay, he is an ordinary seaman with an extraordinary privilege. Has dog sails with him. The pup is in jtilie sick bay with him, and in the same tank. Both have colds. O'Brien, a thin, under-sized, city boy Ssbout 20 went aboard the Balu a few pours before sailing time one day, carrying his dog under his shirt and all his belongings under his cap. He hid down a 20ft hatch, and after a day and a Bight emerged to demand food. He was marched before the skipper. skipper looked him over grimly, and said, "111 work ye 'till your bones rattle, mTioy," and ordered him for'ard. Half-Pint had so little flesh his bones knocked together when he walked, but they deviled a good share of back-break-ing toil out of him. It didn't do him any harm. He weighs 181b more now than when he started. Sea Training. The dog was immediately a favourite. Not so O'Brien. Raised in the New York slums, whittling a" living as a bootblack, crap shooter and horse racing specialist, his better nature had never a chance to shine through. But on the Balu he was taught honesty and pluck in a hard school. The flash of a 7in knife warned him never to deal off the bottom of the deck, and broken teeth, a spread-eagled nose and kick that made his spine jig advised him never to shirk a task. The Balu beat around the Horn, dropped cement at Port Said, cotton at Manila, rope at Honolulu, sugar and rice at the Galapagos Islands, nosed through the Panama Canal, touched at Galveston, Key West and Norfolk, and finally began to lumper up the stretch to New York. ■J There trouble befell. A storm smashed *down on the Atlantic, the Atlantic smashed up to meet it, and in between was the Balu, a staunch craft that had weathered many storms, but none like ;£his. The wind raged at hurricane force, *he Balu had to keep biting into it, and she was taken far out of her course. "I'll Show You!" The storm continued all night and through .the next day, and the captain .never left the,bridge. O'Brien was given sandwiches, for -the skipper. He bucked Ids j w ay toward* the bridge, the dog following close. O'Brien didn't see the dog, or he would have ordered him back. A wave thundered over the deck, caught the pooch abeam and sent him spinning into the sea. O'Brien raced for the bridge. "You've got vto put about," he screamed r to: the skipper. "The dog's overboard." :: The captain looked at Half-Pint sympathetically. "I can't do anything," he said, not. unkindly. "Not in a storm like this." ; . The boy lost his head. He shrieked and cursed. The captain's temper broke. "The mutt c'n go to hell," he roared. ."What ye goin' to do about it?" "Do about it!" O'Brien screamed. "Do about it! I'll show you." He ran to the. rail and leaped after the dog. The Balu had to reverse then. Hands threw Half-Pint a line. He tied it around his waist and clutched the shivering dog firnjly. They were both hauled out. O'Brien won promotion and a bad cold on the straight of his daring. "A kid who'd pull a trick like thati" says the skipper, "has got the makin's of a man." . CAPTAIN HANS KUGENDT. "This," quoted Captain Hans Kugendt, of the Brunnehilde, "is my home, my native land." He did not look at the city clamouring at his back, nor at his. vessel, .nor at the great, wide harbour, but his eyes peered far out .to sea, to the dark, lowering Atlantic. "The East gave me a good send-off," continued the captain. "A mutiny, my first experience of one, and I hope my last. But, of course,.such a thing could never happen on the Atlantic." He spoke of the Atlantic as a seaman speaks of shore leave. It was unusual, but then Kugendt is a very unusual fellow. He is first of all a Bavarian, and Bavarians are as scarce on the sea as wheat fields in a forest. He is 55, a»:d his beard, a luxiuious one, is as black as a coalhold. Ho is short, stump,swarthy.

It seems that Kugendt, free in Shanghai a'short time ago, had suddenly felt a wave of homesickness that amounted almost to nausea, and he jumped at the first command he could get to take him at least part way to the West, a Chinese freighter en route to Singapore.: . The all natives, presented no difficulties for Kugendt, because, added to hia other unusual qualities, he is a remarkable linguist. Besides a working knowledge of many Malay dialects, he can make himself understood in several Varieties of Chinese, and he speaks French and English as well, if not better, than his native German. "Give any man 20 years off the China coast," said the captain, "and what he "will learn will delight both God and the devil." Dropped Unconscious. But where the language knuckled Under to him, the food gave him something to worry about. No amount of chin music could keep the crew contented on that score. They -wanted not fancy wind, but food, not grade A food, but honest food that didn't have a greengrey colour, that didn't taste fuzzy in the mouth from the mould on it. "The food was really terrible. The cook, I think, got sick from looking at St. I really should have inspected the supplies before sailing, but I didn't. I was in such a hurry to get away on the first leg of my journey home." One day out of Shanghai the men quit. The helmsman left the wheel. The stokers came out of the hold. The deckhands dropped their mops. And they all gathered in a little knot in the fo'c'sle arguing heatedly with the first .(and only) officer, a young boy barely, turned eighteen.

Th© boy lost his,head after a while and aimed a blow at one of the men with a mop handle. The blow landed, but a fist landed on the youngster's chin at almost the same time: He screamed wildly and despairingly. Another rap from, the same fist dropped him to the deck unconscious. Kugendt was in his cabin trimming his beard, a labour of love. He heard the scream, suspected trouble, and picked up his revolver, the only gun on board. "In this country," lie said with a smile,

O'BRIEN SHOWS WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.

"such a gun as I owned is called a 'horse pistol,' but really it should be 'elephant pistol/ That gun reached from my hip almost to my knees. I had never fired it once. I was afraid perhaps the backlash would tear my hand off. I kept it for show." The captain walked slowly toward the scene of the excitement. The men were debating their nest move. Some wanted murder, some confab. Before they could reach a decision, Kugendt arrived. He levelled his pistol directly at the men and said coolly: . Sitting on Dynamite. "The.first among you who makes a move will be blown to meet his fathers." It was a calm sea. The ship rolled slightly. The small, stocky captain, feet well apart, pistol cocked, .gazed steadily at his mutinous crew. For minutes not a word was spoken. The silence was immense, fraught with insidious, creeping perils. "I thought my ears would split from the unnatural stillness. Even the water had stopped splashing against the bows. "'Tell me,' I said to them at last, 'what is it that you want?' "A stoker spoke up. TVe want good food. Pigs wouldn't touch what we are served.' " 'You are acting like children,' I said. 'I too want good.food, but here we are in the middle of the sea, where there are no grocery stores. I promise yon that if you work the ship to the first port we will get new supplies.'" The men looked at Kugendt with beady, shifting eyes, looking to right and left for a point of attack. There seemed to be no surrender in them. Suddenly the captain decided to play a bold card. "We are friends," he said, "and I trust you." He took his gun by the muzzle and hurled it into the ocean. "Was the stunt successful ?" I asked. "Man, would I be here if it weren't? Certainly it was successful. And do you know what the first port was ?" "Singapore," I hazarded. He chuckled and poked me playfully in the ribs. "But," he said, "it was like sitting on dynamite to get them there." TROUBLE ALOFT. This seemed to be kids' week on the Atlantic. Ramon Bivero, 18, of the Santa Maxia, proved his mettle in a trying situation. 'Bivero got his first watch as look-out a few days ago in .the same shattering gale that. almost cost O'Brien his life! The look : out is stationed in a crow's nest high above the ship. The way up is a precarious one, especially when the ship is bucking in a gale. When Bivero was almost at the top, the Santa Maria dipped low in "the trough of a wave and came up short against the next one. She went back, back, until it seemed she would turn a somersault, and then pitched forward with sickening, suddenness. At the last pitch Bivero lost his hold and fell to the deck. His choked scream was .lost in the thunder of the sea. No one saw him fall. He shook his head and crawled slowly up again, even though his leg had been broken and the bone stuck out two inches. How Bivero lasted his four-hour watch in the crow's nest no one can tell. But he sung'out his findings in a voice as brave as any. Every tossing must have been agony, but the boy .carried on J grimly, afraid to make a mess of his first man's job. The relief found him unconscious in a pool of his own blood, and carried him below. ; SOAPED LIGHTNING, The Sunugtenko, for New York, was steaming out of San Francisco as Chief Steward Frank Brook, dressed only in shirt, shoes, and trousers, rushed to the end of the pier, stai'ed at the departing ship, and gave vent to his feelings. He had missed his boat, and on it wore his clothes, his money, and his papers. There was only .one way to get back to that ship. The Sunugtenko takes 23 days to reach New York. Brook had to hitch-hike.and beat the boat to port. Panhandling got him his grub. Fast freights and automobiles carried him across the Continent. He had plenty of company—eight tramps, one of whom discussed Nietzsche across GOO miles of prairie. It took Brook 13 days to make the trip, and he beat the Sunugtenko by ten days. THE POWER OF SONG. Some philanthropic society gave a party to a group of sailors a few nights ago, and the women present were much interested in life at sea. They made the grievous error of calling ordinary i seamen common sailors. One sailor, a boy of fifteen, a bit better dressed than the others, was asked to sing a song. A woman • asked, "Is he one- of. the" common sailors?" The boy flushed, and broke into a song written 45 years ago by troubador: — Talking' of men ashore, you never hear them say. . He's common this or he's common that, Be his calling what it may, be he tinker, Toiler, scavenger or sweep, Then why despise us hearty boys Who toil the raging deep? The song went on for aeven verses. At the finisfc the boy chanted:— Then don't call us common sailors any more, any more. Fine things to you we bring Don't call us common men — We're good as any man that's on the snore. ' The applause came mostly from masculine throats. The woman who had made the unfortunate remark apologised.— (N. A.N. A. Copyright. )•