Only Four to Man the Pumps.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5334, 12 August 1895, Page 4

Only Four to Man the Pumps.

Dfiar, dear ! When you come to think of it how closely related things are ; how one thing brings np another. Ideaa are like a lot of beads on a string, aren't they P A letter I have just been reading makeß me remember what happened to me one winter about twenty years ago. The story ia too long to tell here, so I'll merely give I you the tail end of it. I was supercargo I on a barque bound from London to Bio. A tremendous gale, lasting five daya, wrecked us. Forty-eight hours after it ceased there were four men and no more left on the veßsel. The captain, had been killed by a falling spar, three of the crew washed overboard, and the reat of the j 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 sis inohes an hoar. Working with all our might the four of ua could pump that out in forty minutes, but we must do it every hoar. It was awful work. For two days we kept it up, without sleep. 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 the ship threw up her nose and went down stern first. We were picked up the next day by a Danish brig. Now the odd thing is that the letter which reminded me of that experience has nothing whatever to cay 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 Bhe doesn'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 lcmt 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 bad to be propped up with pillows. For weeks together I could not lie down in bed. 1 had a dry, hollow cough, and bad night sweats. Then diarrhoea set in, and my bowels became ulcerated. I was often in dreadful agony for forty* eight hours at a time. Then I would have a chill, as though a bucket of cold water were poured down my back. I got so low I could no -longer sew, kuib or do any housework or look after my children. My sister had to come and help in the house. " Everybody said I wbb 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. Iv 1886 I went as an outdoor patient to the Shrewsbury Infirmary, but only got transient relief." The writer is in good health now, but why did her case 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 aa fast as it came in. Twenty men men might have got her into port. It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back; the last unaupplied need that makes poverty abject and desperate. These 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 io scrape along in a half-and-half sort of fashion. Yet we've got ia our blood the stuff that any of a dpsen 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 Bay, " 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-by something happens. A cold, too hearty a meal, a night of dissipation, an affliction through death or loss of proparty, a fright, as in Mrs Bunce'a case, &c. Over we go^ The last straw has crushed, us. One loose spark has blown up thebarrel of powder. The ciew is too small to save the Ship. The bidneye, liver, skiaj. and stomach strike< work, and we must have help right away or perish. All of which means the explosion of latent indigestion and dyspepsia poisonß in the blood. There!' i3n't it plain why I thought of the Bhip ? Now for the conclusion ti the lady's Btory. She- says: "In 1889 1 first heard of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. Half a bottle made me feel better, sad by keeping on taking is I was Boon sttong and well as ever. (Signed) Mrs Anu, Bunce, The Park, Worfchen, near Shrewsbury, February 22nd, 1893." If there were only a way to save sinking ahipß as certain and torußt worthy as Mother Seigel's medicine is in the case of sinking human bodies, what a blessing it would h* to utoor sailors.