Six Days A drift in a Dagout.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 152, 24 December 1903, Page 15

Six Days A drift in a Dagout.

1 1 , To venture into one of thosk primitive > oruft known us dugouts and while idling 1 on tho waters' to be caught by a current and drifted far out to sea; to Bee night shutting in, with tho land fading from view ; to keep panic-stricken vigil 1 throughout the long hours of blackne&s and to sco tho morning dawn with 110 1 reuouur uour ; (hen another night and duy pf terror, loneliness and thirst and yet 11111 other aud auother, und finally to go stark mud from the muity tortures that beset the uanuiwuy — suiih vu'e ttio oxperioncus of a Cubun lad, who was recently brought to port by a *teum«hip which had sighted a tiny bout and mected a rescue of tuo feuiiovor. And none too noun. The ocean waif , wax killing in the bottom of tho bout too wouk to me, nnd a favmg niuuiuc. Chewing a bit of lib scant raimont in uu animal iiiNtinot to extract sustenance ii'om it, he tried weakly to fight olf the; rcHcuoiis, nnd iruth Hying irom his lips j us \uth til(olutoa uuna hu nought \i) push thmn uway. But tho boat's crow quickly got him on board. To him \va« giveu water -in sparing quantities, and u^terwums thoru wua a little gruel him, and tli-oti he was put to bed-r-to rave ' aguiu iv his dulirium of tho long nights und days of horror ho hud bpent in 'that I lonely boat. • Bui(i{£ a Cuban he speaks Spanish only, but «i»u of ihu t,U'oni»hip's urew acted .is uu iuterpreier. To him the lad gave his nume v* Joso Vega», and said he was "about" twelve- years old. lie Was not sui'o of his uge-r-was not sure of anything except tho terrible experience from which ho had emerged. , Ho remembered having gono -with ti voting companion to a' liltlo fishing vil- ■ luge on thu outskirts of Havana, and he recalls how the two had surreptitiously pushed into the water a small dugout which thujr had found neur tli*> bo.ich. ■ In this they sploshed and played a whilo uud then, tired of the sport, oad crawled into the boat j»^d lain themselves flat on , the bottom to rest. < How long the sioKta lasted tho hoy | does not know. Ho remembers how tho two hud looked up to see tho shoic a j hundred yards or so away, and recullu ' I thoir terror when they found that the ' bout hud no' oars, no fumituio of any „ sort »avc the half of a cocOunut shell, which the owner had used lor bailing. They sought to paddle tho craft with thuir hands, but could inako no progress dgainsb the current, which was sweeping them to sea. Becoming more and more alarmed, Vegas'i* companion suddenly ceased paddling, and, guying he was goring to swim ashore, Hung himself oveisuio und struck out for the fast receding beuch. Vegas, who could swim only, a little, was afraid to essay the long journoy and sank buck in the boat, praying to Inn saints to deliver him from the peril he was in. ' Ho does not know whether his companion reached the shore or not. It waa a good half hour* swim to tho land, and boforo that time tuo boat, caught fiilr by the current of the great ocean river, which flows northward through, tjie if'ioridu Straits, waa swept so fat out to sea that tho boy could not see the beach. To the boy, all tho rest is a blurred, hideous nightmaie. He recalls the first night and tho hunger- and thirst that assailed when tho blwtering sun boat down on him the next duy. Luckily for him, the weather held fair, for hi* clumsy oraft, hollowsd out of a tree trunk, would have filled in the first sea. Tho craft is only fourteen feet in length, and measures but three feet iv width. Another day and the maddening thirst drove him to chewing his culico (shirt in in effort to extract gome moisluro frow the cloth. Night came and with it tuo madnesi of despair. Thero is a dim recollection of a black shupo looming suddenly out of the gluom, a glimmer of lights, a swy»h. of waters and a sudden, .bobbing up and down as though in a gwell 01 a pulsing Huumship. All the rest is b-uuk, The men of the steamship tuke mi the title at this point. They say that their vessel was in the latitude- of Jacksonville, and about ono hundred miles off tho coast, when the lookout .described a small object a mile or so away on tht sturboard bow. Tho big ■freighter slowly ewung from her course to point her bow struight for tlje tiny craft. Engines were slowed and 1 slopped, as tho dugout sumo bobbing ! near, and all hands trooped to tho rail to see what it nil about. ' Thoy caw the mad boy, prone- in the boat and half covered with tho water which had washod into it, und the face ho turned to thq vessel was bo ghastly that thsoa who «aw jt remember it yel. A boat was lowered and sent to tho u'hcuo, nnd tho castaway helped on board, to receive every care that was possible. Tho boy does not know how loi;? h» ' wai a castaway. H« prohges hi J > <N to his forehead when nsked, ; 11 gives up the effort to romomber ln.w many days it was. Uut it could nut 1. >>. mca lefs thiui fix day*, nnd might ct.siiv 'Lava been more. Tho distances from Havana to the point off Jacksonville \»heru the boat wns picked up, i«, following tho confluence of the Gulf Stream, about fivo I hundred miles. It in estimated, that tho gulf current drifted the boat ut n (■ U\ of between threo ntul one-hnlf and four knot:) an hour, from which it will bo seen that the boy must havo been at lua-it , tix day 3 aJnft. — New York U^ruld.