FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1026, 17 July 1930, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN

HE WHISTLED ALONE While many people were searching London for Don Bradman on the evening of his great score, the recordbreaking cricketer sat alone in his bedroom playing a gramophone and whistling an accompaniment. Xo one would blame this batting Don If, after making centuries. He put a shiny topper on Ami painted London red. Instead of that he stayed alone. Reviewed the Test in slippered ease— And whistled, with a gramophone A-playing on his bed. He might have tasted of the joys Of London hospitality By gallivanting with the boys Along the chefery Strand. Instead of that lie planned the night With private informality, And records made of vulcanite Replaced the cricket brand. —M.E. ... THREE TO A YARD K was once said of a mighty trencherman that he employed servants to massage his stomach in order that he might gorge still more heavily. Something of the same sort is going on in Auckland today, with the Rugby Union in the role of masseur, and Eden Park posing as the trencherman. From those who are entrusted with the task of fitting an abnormal crowd into a football ground of normal size, we learn that "three persons to the square yard is considered by the engineers in charge to be quite reasonable.” This naive assumption that onlookers at a test match are to be treated as groups of ninepins, who must place themselves on the spot marked x, and stay put for the remainder of the game, is typical of the engineering mind. It would be interesting. on the day of the match, to hear one of the said engineers explaining his theory of proportional area to a man whose third of a square yard had a frontage consisting mainly of large hats, broad backs, and perhaps umbrellas.

* * * BURGLAR TRAPS

The burglar who was scared away from the premises of the Mount Roskill Road Board the other evening, when the top frame of a window crashed to the floor and shattered, may count himself lucky that he was not among the debris “found lying there in the morning.” Housebreaking is a risky business at the best of times, and if burglars cannot rely on the safety of windows, fire escapes, and similar gadgets, they may be forced to give up work altogether. But criminals have been caught before today by lesser trifles than shaky windows. On one occasion two young New Zealanders found themselves in gaol for about the nth time all because a householder was amusing himself by examining the landscape through a pair of binoculars. While doing this, he found himself looking at a distant, isolated house into which two strangers were busily breaking. There followed an interlude at the telephone, a dash by the local flying squad, alias a constable on a bicycle, and the distant intruders were caught red-handed.

DOWN TO THE SEA: —

“Watihana”: The tragic death of the Tainui’s chief mate recalls to me the savagery of one Atlantic storm. When I signed on with a Federal cargo carrier it was my pious hope to meet such a blow as Frank H. Shaw describes. It is now my fervent prayer that the experience shall pass me by if again I venture upon the main. If man is tempted to boast that he has conquered the forces of Nature let him go to sea. On the occasion I remember the ship had been labouring for an age, buffeted by seas which Virgil calls “craggy mountains of water.” After what I saw no one shall persuade me that the modern sailorman is nothing more than a labourer who can wield soft soap. A STORM’S FURY

The rails had been swept away, steam pipes contorted, ladder ways gone by the board, and here was a knot of men in oilskins moving about under charge of an officer, trying to secure the ship. Every now and then a green hillock, foam-crested, would topple on board, thud sickeningly by, then bear down upon the men in the little group, who seized what they could. Viewing the after effects of the storm I marvelled at the power of water that crumpled steel stanchions as though they were paper, although the resistance they offered must have been comparatively slight. For the passenger a storm at sea may be nothing more than a thrilling experience, but to the man on deck it is a struggle with an unleashed fury.