ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 26, Issue 1337, 10 August 1895, Page 3

ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

Dear dear! When you come to think of it how closely related things are; how, one thing brings, up another. Ideas aTe like a lot of beads on a string, aren't they ? A letter I have just been reading makes me remember what happened to me one winter about twenty years ago. The story is too k>ng to tell here, so I'll merely give you the tail-end of it.- I was-supercargo on a bark bound from London to Rio., A tremendous gale, lasting five days, wrecked us. Foiirtyeight hours after it ceased there were four men and no more left on the vessel. The captain had been killed by a falling spar, three of the crew washed overboard, and the rest of the ship's company (save us four) went away in_ the long boat with the first and second mates. We were taking in water through a leak at the rate of six inches an hour. Working with all our might the four of us could that out in fourty minutes, but we must do it every hour. It was awfu. work. For two days we kept it up, without seep. Then we stopped, took to the quarter boat and shoved off. The sea was quiet—no wind. While we lay to within a mile of her tie ship threw up her nose and went down stern first. We were picked up the next day by a Danish brig. ' ■Now the odd tiling is that the letter which reminded me of that experience has nothing whatever to say about ships. Please help me to find out the association.

The lady who writes the letter says that in July, 1881, she got a bad fright. Exactly what it was she didn't tell. I wish she did. Anyway it so upset her that she didn't get over the effects of it for nine years. After that her appetite fell off ; she lost all real relish for food, and what she did, eat only, made trouble instead of nourishing her. It gave her pain in the pit of the stomach, and (curiously enough) between the shoulders. She says her eyes and skin presently turned yellow as a buttercup. Her face and abdomen swelled, and her feet the same, the latter so much so that she was obliged to have her shoes made larger. " I got little sleep at night," she says," and was in so much pain I had to be propped up with pillows. For we p ks together I could not lie down in bed. I had a dry, hollow cough, and bad night sweats. Then diarrhoea set in. and my bowels became ulcera-ed. I was often in dreadful asrony for fourty-eight hours at a, time. Then I would have a chill at though a bucket of cold water were poured down my back. I got so low I could no longer sew, knit, or do.any housework or look after my children. My sister had to come and help in the house. ; " Everybody said I was in a decline and must die. What I suffered for eight years tongue cannot tell. The doctor could do nothing for me. He said my complaint ..was complicated and bad to deal with. In 18861 went as an outdoor patient to the Shrewsbury Infirmary, but only got transient relief."

The writer is in good health now, bat why did her oase remind me of the shipwreck? Let's settle that first. The association is easy and natural. Just see. The ship sank because we four men hadn't the strength to pump out the water as fast as it came in. Twenty men might have got her into port. It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back ; the last unsupplied need that makes po «ty abject and desperate. 'lhese bodies of ours carry the seeds of disease with them all the time—chiefly the poisons created by imperfect digestion, made worse by careless habits. But as long as nothing extraordinary happens we manage to scrape along in a half-and-half, sort of fashion. Yet we've got in r our blood the stuff that any of a dozen diseases is made of, only waiting for something to set it afire. While the liver, kidneys, lungs, and skin keep us fairly free—that is, don't let the load get too heavy— we say, " Oh, yes,. I'm tolerably well, thank you." Little pains and unpleasant symptoms bother us now and then, but we don't fancy they mean anything. By-and-bye something happens. A cold, too hearty a meal, a night of dissipation, an affliction through death or loss of property, a fright, as in Mrs Bunce's case,, &c. Over we go. The last straw has crashed us. One loose spark has blown up the barrel of powder. The crew is too small to save the ship. The kidneys, liver, skin, arid stomach strike work, and we mnst have help right away or perish. All of which means the explosion of latent indigestion and dyspepsia poisons in the blood.

There ! isn't it plain why I thought of, the ship? Now for the conclusion of the lady's story. She says : "In J 889 I .first heard of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. Half a bottle made me feel better, and by keeping on taking it I was soon strong and well as ever. (Signed), Mrs Ann Bunce, The Park Worthen, near Shrewsbury! February 22nd, 1893."

IE there was only a way to save sinking ships as certain and trustworthy as Mother Seigel's medicine is in the case of sinking human bodies, what a blessing it would be to poor sailors.