A ROMANCE OF THE SEA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1215, 20 January 1886, Page 6

A ROMANCE OF THE SEA.

(From the New York "World.") The Superior Court of this city will soon be called upon to listen to a story of the most pronounced Jules Verne order, and when the case of William Doberty against the Pacific Mail Steamship Company is called, the plaintiff will astonish the Court by a wonderful tale of hair-breath escapes after many close chances. The story as told by Doherty in an affidavit already put on the file is that on about May sth of last year, the plaintiff, who was in Panama, asked for and was appointed to the position of assistant engineer on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's steamer Honduras, bound from that , port for various stopping places down the Western South American coast. The crew was a mixed one —Spaniards, Mexicans, and sucb. Among the crew was a Portuguese, known as Bamon, who, as oiler, regarded 1 himself as heir to the position taken by Doberty, and hated the newcomer as an interloper.

The steamer had only been five days 'from port when Doherfcy says he overheard a conversation between Ramon and a Spanish passenger. . in which it was determined that the Northerner 'should be dirked and thrown overboard. iFrom that time Doherty dared not sleep in his berth at night, lest a treacherous -Portuguese should thrust a dagger into his breast. He caught sleep 1 as he could, standing at < his post, and 'several times he "thought he detected his foe crawling upon him in the darkless. He says he was /compelled literally fa -dodge if or his life every time bis enemy or energies came near, for both Ramon and the ' Spanish passenger were watching; him. When he could endure it no longer,* Doherty appealed to Alfred. 3aT4e«y chief erigiaeMr, and was greeted with abound of laughter, ami ! was advised to jump i iatb'the water if 'he ;:did>notca]Eß to' remaid aboard the sHip/ : 1 ji t£ftios eycbiprovisiomfi he.coui4 '

to die fighting. He w*ote several letters tojhis wife and friends,- which he directed and left aboard the ship, only to learn* subsequently that they had been thrown overboard, and then waited,- with Buch fortitude as He could summon, for the attack of the assassins. It came on the night of 21st May, when the ship lay eight miles off the port of San Jose de Guatemala, and Doherty was ou deck watch. The night was dark, and the hunted engineer felt that the occasion was fitted for the bloody work his foe had determined ujon. He says he heard a light tread near him as he stood watching, and then came the rush of the two murderers. Doherty drew his own knife and fought with desperation for life, but the odds were enormously against him, and when he was forced to the vessel's side he suddenly turned and plunged overboard to take a faint flicker of hope by swimming to the shore. The water swarmed with sharks, and the faint engineer was in no condition for such a long swim. What gave him nerve and vigor was the thought of wife and babies away in New York waiting and praying for his return. JEIe slipped out of much of his clothes as he drifted by the vessel's side, and then started shoreward.

All night long he alternately breasted the long swell and floated — resting and panting— on his back. Daylight came, and he was still in the water, but the shore a little over a mile away, gave him encouragement, and he soon was able to stagger, half unconscious, up the sand beach only to drop in a faint above high-water mark. It was not until noon that he awoke and looked for aid. He took employment with a farmer, and when a measure of his strength had returned, he struck out for a long tramp, nearly 200 miles, across the republic to a small seaport named Livingstone, whence he worked his way home. Then, when in March last he reached New York, it was only to find that his wife, relying on the reports that he had jumped overboard, had married again, He asked for some sort of recompense from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, but was confronted with his own death certificate as proof that he had no claim. Broken down in health by his suffering, he listened to the advice of friends, and began a suit for 30,000d01., claiming that when be entered tbe service of the company he was entitled to protection, which, when he applied to the chief engineer, was not given him.