JOKED AT DEATH

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 28 June 1935, Page 13

JOKED AT DEATH

NIGHTMARE EXPERIENCE FISHERMAN’S STORY OF ORDEAL ■ * RESCUERS’ TIMELY ARRIVAL. SYDNEY, .Tune 20. ‘‘When the big wave hit the launch, had just landed the biggest lish, a .... mackerel. I had ever caught in .113’ life. But I’m not going fishing again m a'hurry.” -Thus cheerfully did John Lynch, 33. discuss the nightmare experience ii» shared with. Edward A. thur Parker, i>l, .and John Sanders, 23, when, half an hour after the3* had left Cromdla on Sunday morning on their first deop-sea rishing excursion, a huge sea capsized .heir launch a hundred yards from shore. - ------

After a forty-minutes’ struggle in the tempestuous waters .they had justreached the rocks when an outsize wave" flung Parker arid Sanders on to the ledge a little above sea level, and they then managed to drag Lynch up beside them. ’There they remained until discovered almost three days later, suffering bitterly from exposure and hunger and with waves continually breaking over them. They were sighted from the Clilf-top 250 feet above them, and were hauled up by a rope. BACON AND .EGGS DREAM. Resting in bed at his home in Hardy Street, JParlmgfaurst,. to-day, Mr Lynch said: ’>‘T have just had tho meal I’ve been dreaming about—bacon and eggs, and mushrooms. -‘‘When we were washed up, we had only one pair of trousers between the three of us. In m3' pocket there was a tin of tobacco and a pound note. Wo ate- most of the tobacco. It stimulated and revived us. - ‘'That s all we had, except the bones of a seabiru we chewed, and some grass. ‘‘How we tried to catch that lizard we saw run into his hole! He was a big fellow, about 12 inches long, and looked like roast beef to us. ‘‘We crawled about outsde bis hole, under a rock, wliere we saw him go in, for hours. “Sanders jokingly said to me ‘lf c. man bites a dog, that’s news. If a man bites a lizard, what’s that:” “I said, ‘A feed.’ •‘I’M FATTEST, BUT WAIT.” “I said to Parker and Sanders, ‘l’m the fattest, so \-ou can oat me when I’m gone. “I saw them looking ’at me, and said; ‘Hey, wait till I've passed out' “Unless help had come soon, i in tended to tr3 r to swim two miles to the beach, but I knew I had no chance It would have been better to go iuu way, though, than to starve SIOWI3' to death on the rocks

On a table beside his bed lay tho water-soaked pound note he had had in his pocket. He fished it out from under a pile of telegrams, sents to his wile, expressing sympathy at his death, which had seemed to be estab lishacl.

. ~“I spont this quid in imagination a dozen times over,” continued Mr Lynch. “I thought of ail the food we could buy with it, but what was money worth there? Nothing. I’d have given it' awuy. for a hunk of dry bread. “Sanders, who is a bit of a joker, would say, ‘How would the crackling of' a nice piece of pork go now, or chicken/” “Fused to think of mushrooms, too. “Usually I’m pretty particular about what I eat, but I chewed those bones without a qu aim. • "“Still, it is amazing how a man reverts to his normal habits. When they lowered some bread and cheese down to us, there was - a spot in the bread, and T picked it out and threw it away; “They lowered down four cigarettes, too. We smoked them straight off. I have never known a smoke to taste so good.” ' RESCUERS’ PERIL. Mr Lynch said ha would like to meet “the two chaps whose heads showed over the top of the cliff first.” He could hot pick them out from the crowd of rescuers afterward. “When we saw them on the top of the cliff.” -he said,, we were sitting right out on the edge of the ledge, getting the last of the sun. We only had about two hours of sun a day. “When we looked up and saw their laces wo couldn’t believe our eyes. We just gazed at one another stupidly. “Then I woke up and realised that they were on a thin ledge of rock which might break away any moment and send them hurtling down to their death.

“I managed to scrawl on the rock with a piece of sandstone the warning, “On a thin ledge.’ I wrote this twice, hut they stayed there, and our hearts were in our mouths as they ’lowered the rope down. “When I was fastening the rope around myself to ho hauled up, I tied knot after knot. I was so weak it took me half an hour to tie all the knots. “As I was hauled up, the rope spun me around, so that I was dizzy, and three knots came undone, but there were still twelve to go.”