HEROES OF A ROCKY ISLAND

Evening Star, Issue 21216, 24 September 1932, Page 5

HEROES OF A ROCKY ISLAND

Stockholm sends us a tale of Swedish bravery which has sent a thrill through all Scandinavia.

A ship’s fireman named Norberg is the hero and a girl steward called Elly Pi blow a is the heroine. We like the tale all the better because the heroine of Charles Kingsley’s. ‘ Water Babies ’ had the same Christian name as the Swedish girl, though she spelled it Ellie.' The small steamer Nibs ffas wrecked off the east coast of Sweden, striking the rocks near the city of Vestervik in a violent snowstorm. Soon the heavy seas would pound the wreck to pieces, thought the sailors. There was a rocky island in the neighbourhood, but they had no means of reaching it. Then two men named Norberg, father and son, volunteered to try to swim to the island with a lifeline. Each wished to risk his life in the icy waves, but finally it was the father who insisted on going, and he did so because he was the better swimmer.

This gallant man in the autumn of his years jumped into the stormy seas and battled his way to the island, where he made the line fast. By that means tfie entire crew was brought ashore, hut Norberg paid for their safety with his life. He died in his son’s arms, a victim to the results of his swim in those bitter cold waters. There would have been other deaths but for Elly. Tho shipwrecked crew were on a desert isle without food, fire, or shelter. A snowstorm was raging and a piercing wind blew. To lie down, as those weary seamen would fain have done, would have been to die. But Elly kept them marching and running round the island for twenty-six hours. They said afterwards that her spirits never failed, and she kept up a constant flow of jokes and chaff, so that they had’to keep laughing instead of grumbling. It was no light task to keep six tired, hungry, and drenched men on the , move and laughing for a. day and a night. The reward came at last. Someone on the mainland saw them, bud pilots rescued them all. They found Elly’s clothes frozen to ice, and they took her, still cheerful, to Vestervik hospital with the men she had saved by her unfailing wit and her dauntless courage. Elly is a nice name, but when we think of her mothering and managing those shipwrecked sea dogs, we cannot help feeling that she ought to have been christened Wendy.