ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXII, Issue 16, 16 August 1895, Page 29

ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

Dbab, dear 1 When yon come to think of it how clostly related things are ; how one thing brings up another. Ideas are like a lot of beads on a string, aren't they ? A letter I have just been reading makes me remember what happened to me one winter about twanty years ago. The story is too long to tell here, so I'll merely give you the tail end of it. I was snpercargo on a bark bound from London to Bio. A tremendous gale, lasting five days, wrecked us. Forty-eight hours after it ceased there were four men and no more left on the vessel. Tbe captain had been killed by a falling spar, three of tbe crew washed over* b >ard, and the rest of the 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 six inches an hour. Working with all our might the four of us could pump that out in forty minutes, but we must do it every hour. 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 tbe 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 say about ships. Please help me to find out tbe association. The lady wbo writes the letter says that in July, 1881, she got a bad fright. Exactly what it was she doesn't tell, I wish she did. Anyway it so up9et her that she didn't get over the effects of it for nine years, After that her appetite tell off ; she lost all real relish for food, and what she did eat only made trouble instead of nourish- ' ing her. It gave her pain in tbe pit of tbe stomach and (curiously enough) between tbe 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 ber shoes made larger. " I got little Bleep at tight," she says, " and was in so much pain I had to be propped up with pillows. For weeks together I could not lie down in bed. I had a dry, hollow cougb, 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, knit, or do any housework or look after my children. My sister had to come and help in the houee. " Everybody sail I was in a decline and must die. What I suffered for eight years tongue cannot tell. Tbe doctor could do nothing for me. Ha said mv complaint was complicated and bad to de»l with, In 1886 I went as an outdoor patient to the Shrewsbury Infirmary, but only got transient relief." Tbe writer is in pood health now, but wby did her caße remind me of tbe shipwreck ? Let's settle that first. The association is easy and natural. Just sc\ Tbe ship sank becauee we four meu hadn't the strength to pump out the water as fast as it came in. Twenty men might have got her into port. It is the last straw that break's the camel's back ; the last unsupplied need that makes poverty abjact aod desperate. These bodies of ours carry the seeds of disease with them all the time — chiefly ihe poisons created by imperfect digestion, made worse by careless habits. But as long as nothing extraordinary happen? we manago to scrapa along in a half-and-half sort of fashion. Yet we've got in our blood tbe stuff that any of a dozen diseases ia 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 say, " 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 property, a fright, as ia Mrs Bunce's case, etc. Over we go. Tbe last straw hag crushed us. One loose spark has blown up tbe barrel of powder. The crew is too Email to save tbe ship. The kidneys, liver, skin, and stomach strike work, and we must have help right away or perish. All of which means tbe explosion of latent indigestion and dyspepsia poisons in the blood, There 1 iin't it plain wby I thought of tbe ship? Now for the conclusion of the lady's story. She says : "In 1889 I first heard of Mother Beimel's Curative Syrup. Half a bottle made me feel better, and by k eping on taking it I was soon strong and well as ever. (Signid) Mrs Ann Bunco, The Park, Worthen, near Shrewsbury. February 22ud, 1893." If there were only a way to save sinking thips as certain and trustworthy as Mother Seigel's medicine is in the case of Binking human bodies, what a blessing it would be to poor sailors.