The Wives Who Met The Adventurers.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19015, 10 March 1930, Page 8

The Wives Who Met The Adventurers.

A Woman’s View.

Stewart Island, our nearest point to the Antarctic, has had its share of adventure and romance. The thrill of the old whaling days still hangs about its quiet shores, where the rata makes a red flame down to the yellow ring of sand beside the bluest waters. To-day it has its part in the Antarctic story. There are two women, Mrs M’Kinley and Mrs Rucker, to whom it must be a happy island, for after seventeen months’ separation they went on a whale chaser to meet their husbands there. What tales they will hear “ of moving accidents by flood and field, of hairbreadth 'scapes.” It is the woman’s lot to bear the anxious waiting. Though the Antarctic expedition sent out its wireless messages to bring them assurance, the brave man does not tell half that he endures. Even after the first joyful homecoming there will be a thousand things to be told, a story to draw the wife again and again from her household gods to her husband’s side. “ But still the house affairs would draw her thence; Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, She’d come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse.” B.E.S.