HUMAN WOLVES ON LONELY SHORES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2179, 28 November 1895, Page 49

HUMAN WOLVES ON LONELY SHORES.

There was an account quite recently in a Spanish paper of the feullericgs of a young sailor who escaped from a sinking ship near Cape Vares. He declared that the wreckers lined the beach and deliberately burled back into the sea any of the crow who swam ashore from tbe hulk. He himself saw 20 of his comrades done to death like this, and fearing a similar fate he got into the water on the seaward side and let the current carry him a quarter of a mile to leeward before he attempted a landing. For the text three days, he declared, he was hunted like a fox. The wreckers posted a line of sentinels in the bills to prevent any of the shipwrecked seamen escaping their hospitality. The young Spaniard does not doubt that he would have been stuck like a pig had he been seen, and it was pluck alone which carried him through the gorge of the hills and- brought him to Corunna. 1 could tell you a stranger story even than this. Some three jears ago I went to Lisbon with a Frenchman who had once lost a 600-ton iron steamer not far from Yivero. She struck on a shoal, cocking np her stern and buryiDg her nose in the sand, so that her forecastle wa3 washed by tbe sea and her engine rooms were rilled. Of course the wreckers came out to her as soon as it was daylight. Their first pro seeding was to throw overboard every seaman that still walked the decks of the steamer. My friend escaped only by hiding himself under the long boat, and lying there until the men had plundered at their will. He .asserts that no savages could have been more fierce than the cut-throats who then surrounded them. They knew neither fear nor mercy. For 12 hours they worked to get everything valuable out of the hull, and during the whole of that time they listened unmoved to terrible sounds of hammering and occasional cries which came from the forecastle. On tbe morning of the second day tbe ship heeled over to starboard, and then tbe reason of the sounds was manifest. Some poor fellows had been cnt off by the water in the forecabins, but had managed to get a foothold above it, and so soon as the ship listed their faces were seen at one of the ports. It must have been a horrible Bight, but it moved the Spanish rogues to fierce laughter. They would not raise a hand to get the poor beggars out, and thus one by one the honest fellows dropped back and sank to the death below them. They were literally buried alive by the brates whom romance has glorified and popular belief described as,extinct.

Yon can match this sort of thing in the southern sorb when a ship falls amongst black men, bat for fine organisation and coldhearted brutality, the wrecker of Spain has no equal. Finisterre just seems the one spot in all Europe where the game can be played,

and is played, with comparative impunity.— Max Pbmbekton, in Oaasell'a Saturday Journal.