ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXII, Issue 17, 23 August 1895, Page 29

ONLY FOUR TO MAN THE PUMPS.

Dear, dear 1 When you coma to think of it how olostly 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 twenty years ago. The story is too long to tell here, so I'll merely give you the tail end of. it. I was supercargo 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. The captain had been killtd by a falling spar, three of the crew washed over* board, and the rest of the ship's company (save as 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 minute 5 ), but we nuast 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 the ship threw up her nose and went down stern first. We were picked np 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 ont the association. The lady who writes the letter says that in July, 1881, shs got a bad fright. Exactly what it was she 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 lost all real relish for food, and what she did eat only made trouble instead of nourishing her. It gave ber pain in the pit of the stomach and (curiously enough) between the shoulders. She says her eyes and skin presently tamed 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 night," she Bays, " and was in so much pain I had to bo propptd up with pillows. For weeks together I conld not lie down in bed. I had a dry, hollow cough, and bad night sweats. Then diarrboei 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 bo 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 said I was in a decline and must dit. 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. In 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 ber case remind me of the shipwreck 1 Let's settle that first, The association is easy aud natural. Jußt see. The Bbip sank because we four men hadn't the strength to pump out the water as fast as it came in. Twenty men might bave got her into port. It is tbe last straw that break's tbe camel's back ; the last unsupplied 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 to scrape along in a half-and-half sort of fashion. Yet we've got in our blood tbe stuff that any of a dozen diseases ie made o r , only waiting for something to 6et 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. There ! isn't it plain why I thought of the ship ? Now for the conclusion of the lady's story. She says : "In 1889 I fint heard of Mother Seigel'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. (Signed) Mrs Ann Bunco, The Park, Wortben, near Shrewsbury. February 22nd, 1893." If there were only a way to save sinking ships as certain and trustworthy as Mother Saigel's medicine is in the case of sinking human bodies, what a blessing it would be to poor eailore,