SCRATCHING FOR SAFETY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 79, 2 April 1908, Page 6

SCRATCHING FOR SAFETY.

AN EXCITING EXPERIENCE

The laugh often comes in the very face of danger. Privations and perils cannot check the response of the comical. An instance of finding fun in the midst of disaster is told by Captain T. C. Morton in the Southern Historical Papers. The Confederate picket-line during the American pivil War was stationed on a sandy bottom near a creek. John Ford, one of the men on duty, was very plucky. He was seated near an uprooted tree, and could be plainly, seen by all his company. Suddenly a large mortar shell fell, undxploded, m the sand, about 4ft from him, the fuse smoking and spluttering. John took in the situation at a glance. He argued to himself that the shell would burst before he could get up and run away, so that/the safest thing he could do would be to get into the ground as fast as possible. With the utmost rapidity he began to work down into the sand with hands, feet, and head. The men watched the proceedings, shouting:

"Scratch, John, scratch. She's going off!"

It was an exciting spectacle. Never was^ a man more in earnest. The sand all about was in commotion, and in the few seconds the fizzing fuse gave him John burrowed like a great gopher, till nothing but the hump on his back was visible as the loose sand settled above him. The explosion Vcame with a tremendous jar, which shook the ground and sent hundreds -of pieces of iron singing throiigh the air. Everyone heM tv breath, expecting to see poor John blown, into atoms. When the smoke and dust -blew away it was seen that Ford's head;was still on his shoulders. He looked' cautiously up, and seeing all was right sang out a hearty "Who-eehH as cheerily as if he had treed a coon instead of having been face to face with death. A cheer and a laugh ran all along the line.1 ,