THE EXPERIENCES OF A STOWAWAY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1237, 13 November 1885, Page 3

THE EXPERIENCES OF A STOWAWAY.

The Adelaide correspondent of the ‘ Melbourne Telegraph’ sends the following statement, made by William who was stowed away in a case for eight days in the hold of the s.s. South Australian • -“I will tell you everything but the name of the person who put me on board the ship at Fremantle. When they put me on board the vessel, and I was being lowered into the hold, I fancied I was going to the infernal regions straight away. I was put into the oox at Perth shortly after 11 o’clock on Thrrsday morning, the first of October. I remember the time very well, as a few minutes previously 1 had‘a drink of ale in a hotel ; Horning to a police constable, who was standing close by, the man said, ‘ For goodness sake get me a drink of water; surely water is cheap enough,’ but upon being denied this luxury by the policeman, who told him that it would injure him to drink too much after being without it so long, he again became calm and resumed his story). I had been in the box for two days, when I. thought I would try to got out ; I managed to got the too of my boot between the cover and the cad of the box,

and using it as a lever, I succeeded in m >vj ing two large packages, which had been | stacked on Top o£ my case, and in farcing i the cover up about 18in ; I then sat straight up in the box, and allowed my feet to hang out of the end. Whilst, in this attitude the hatches were taken off, and noma sailors canio into the hold to take out a couple of packages of cargo, and I had to hurry back to my miserable bunk. From this time until I arrived in Pott Adelaide the cover of the box was never lifted. 1 lighted a candle on one occasion to look what time it was hy my watch, and I was nearly stifled by the heat. 1 took of ship’s biscuits with me into the box at Perth, but I found that I could not eat them. They made my tongue cling to the roof of my m >uth, and I suffere 1 fearful agony from thirst. (Anderson again stopped short in his tale, and cried out pitifully for water, upon which be was again told of the danger of drinking too much, and the policeman supplied him with a pannikin of bread and milk. On receiving this he said, • What is the good of this stuff to a man who is dying of thirst.’) He however, eagerly seized the nourish ment, and would have emptied the can at a single gulph had he not been prevented from doing so by the constables in charge. He was told to sip the food in epoonfuls. and he tried every artifice he knew of to to get the policeman to leave his side for a moment, so as to allow him to have a good drink, but all to no purpose. He then continued ; ‘Onoe or twice while in the box I kicked at the corner and sides to let somebody know of my confinement, hat I could not have been heard. The exertion made me very weak. I had means of boring holes in the sides of the box tf 1 found that I required mo-e ventilation. I held the cover down hy a cord attache'! to the under part. 1 was knocked about frightfully in being put into the hold, and I was toppled head over heels several times. I could do a good long drink of water, or any other liquid. A bottle of Colonial ale would be my fancy, and a bucketful of water after it. Why won’t somebody give me some* thing to quench my thirst after being without water for all these days!’ (Seeing a pump at the end of the yard he pleated bard to be allowed to go to it for a minute, hut was properly denied). On being interrogated as to whether he came under the provisions of the new tariff, he said, ‘ They can’t charge me with stowing myself away, as I was shipped as cargo. 1 gave the man who did the job L2 for his trouble. 1 have been in a good many scrapes in my life, but this is the worst of all, anil X think 1 am pretty fortunate in getting out of it so easily. The revolver which 1 brought with me might prove useful in this Colony, as there is a man living here who robbed me once. I used to be a sol der, and I fought in four battles before I was 21) years of age,’*