‘Crossing the Equator’

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 18

‘Crossing the Equator’

By

CHRISTINE FERGUSON,

aged 11, of Christchurch

I was crossing the Equator for my second time.

I was coming back from gold mining in Otago in New Zealand. I hadn’t had much luck so I was returning to England where all my relations live.

As we were crossing the Equator on the way back, there was only one person who hadn’t crossed the Equator before. They didn’t seem to know the old custom of playing jokes on the person who hadn’t crossed the Equator before. The other passengers on our ship, including me, were going to play our tricks at night, so thatpeopie could dress up as ghosts.

Those people were going out in a life-boat. Then someone was going to call the person who was Mr Hank, to come and see there were ghosts out at sea.

We had plenty of other tricks up our sleeves. That night after tea we went to the deck to see if the people were ready in the life-boat

When we got there, there was only one person in the life-boat, the others were nowhere to be seen. So we all thought they were hiding in it. Someone went to call Mr Hank. After about 20 minutes they came back and said they couldn’t find Mr Hank anywhere. Just after that the people who were meant to be ghosts came out to say they didn’t have any white sheets so not to worry about that trick.

Then they saw the ghost One of them asked, “Who’s that?” nobody knew.

We decided to see if everybody was there. We didn’t subspect Mr Hank because they thought he was hiding because he knew about Equator crossing for the first time. The life-boat started coming towards us. Everybody began shaking because by now we thought it was a real ghost.

When the life-boat reached us the ghost took off the sheet it was wearing, and to . our surprise it was Mr Hank.

He laughed and said “fooled you.”

Then we pulled up the life-boat. That was the first time I was ever scared by the person we were meant to scare!