STRANGE COINCIDENCES

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11867, 6 November 1935, Page 4

STRANGE COINCIDENCES

Lord Conway, in his book," Episodes of a Varied Life,” gives several in-' stances of amazing coincidences. He once talked with an, old man who looked after the boathouse of the Trinity College, Dublin, Rowing Club. The boatman described the famous fire that took place on the East Indiaman Kent. As the last man was coming off to the-safety of the rescuing ship a cry was faised: “ The baby has been left behind I ” The mother thought the nurse had it, and the nurse the mother. The man hurried back retrieved the child and threw It to a sailor in the yacht, by whom it was safely caught. “I was that sailor,” he said.

“I was telling this story,” he continued, “from where I stand a few years ago, A man standing by the door, just where you are, was listening to me, and when I had done he said, ‘Yes, and I was the child you caught! ’

The man was John MacGregor, one of the eyarigelical associates of Lord Shaftesbury. ■ ......

THE-ICE-AXE.

Another million-to-one coincidence concerns an ice-axe, which the Swiss guide, Zurbriggen, dropped down a crevasse in the Alps. Four or five years later a Gurkha named Herkbir, who had climbed with Zurbriggen in a Himalayan expedition, paid a visit to Switzerland. Descending a crevasse with General Bruce, the famous Himalayan mountaineer, he trod on something which turned out to be the long-lost axe. In the depth of the Giant glacier it had slowly travelled down a mile or more. Then a crevasse had opened over it and brought it once more to. the light of day for the Gurkha to’ tread on it.