SAVED BY PORPOISE

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1928, Page 10

SAVED BY PORPOISE

DROWNING MAN PUSHED ASHORE Tho Miami (Florida) correspondent of the “New York Times” states that when the steamer Vela was three miles off the United States coast, on her way to Germany, two young,,German stowaways, Gustave Danielzik and Wilhelm Kierserling, jumped overboard, taking with them two lifebuoys, a, gangway, and two oars. The incident having been reported by wireless to tho shore stations border patrol officers began a watch, along the twentylive miles of coast between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. The same afternoon Kidrserling was taken to Fort Lauderdale on board a motor-boat, which had found him drifting in the sea supported by a lifebuoy. At night some fishermen passing along Dania. beach, a few miles south of Port Lauderdale, saw the nude figure of a man sprawled in the surf, making feeble efforts to crawl ashore. It was Danielzik. He was more dead than alive, and was taken to a hospital, where in broken English he said: “I could not swim. I tried fdr hours. The waves kept carrying me farther away. 1 could not. think. I gave up. Then someone push. Ido not care. Again a push and I see. First. 1 was scared. I think walrus. Then I know porpoise. 9’hey do not want to hurt me—just push, like I am in the way. How many of them? I do not know. Before I get there 1 know nothing.” Old fishermen along the lower Florida, coast say that the story is entirely plausible as porpoises will bring in dead bodies in the same manner.