Only Four to Man the Pumps.

Manawatu Herald, 20 August 1895, Page 3

Only Four to Man the Pumps.

■ ■■' ♦ Dear, dear I When you come lo think of it how closely related thing 3 are ; how obe thing brings up another. Ide s are like a lot of beads.on a stiing, aren't they ? A letter t have jtilst been feaiUtig toafiea me remember what happened to me one winter twenty years ago. The story is too long to tell here, so I'll merely give you the tail end of it. 1 was supercargo on a barque 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 killed 'by a falling spar, three of the crew washed overboard, and the rest of the ship's company (save us four) went away away in the long boat with the first and second mates. We were were taking in water at the rats of six inches an hour. Working with all our might the four of na 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 the quarter boat and shoved off. The sea was quiet-no wind. While we lay to wilhin a mile of her the 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 the association. The lady who writes the letter says that in July, 1881, she got a bad fright. Exactly what it was she doesn't fell. 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 her pain in the pit of the stomach and (curiously enough) between the shoulders. She says her eyes and skin presently turned yellow as a buttercup. Her face and abdomen swelh d, and her feet the same, the latter so much so that she was obliged to have her shoes made larger. " I got little sleep at night," she says, "and was in so much pain I had to propped up with pillows. For weeks together I could iiot lie down in bed. I had a dry, hollow cough, and bad night sweats Then diarrhooa set in, and ray bowels be came ulcerated. 1 was often in dreadful agony for forty eight hours at a time. Then I would have a chill as (hough 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 house. " Everybody said T was in a decline and must die. What I suffered for eight years tongue cannot tell. The doc or could do nothing for me. He said my complaint was complicatrd and bad one to deal with. In 1880 I went a-^ an outdoor patient to the Shrewsbury Infirmary, but only got transient relief." The writer is in good health now, but why did her case remind ma of the shipwreck ? Let's sc' lie that first. The association is easy nnd natural. Just see. Tha ship sank because the four men hadn't tho strength .o pump out the water as fast as it came in. Twenty men might have got her into port. It is the last straw that breaks the camel's ba<k ; 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 indigestion, made worse by careless habits. But at 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 the stuff that any of a dozen diseases is made of, only wailing for something to set it afire. While the liver, kidneys, lungs and skin keep us fairly free— that is, don't j 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 in Mrs. Bunce'a case, <Sc. Over we go. The last straw has crushed us. One loose spark has blown up the barrel of powder. The crew is too small to save the ship. The kidneys, liver, skin, and stomach strike work, and we must have help right away or perish. All of which means the explosion or latent indigestion and dyspepsia poisons in the blood. There ! isn't it plain why I thought of the ship ? Now for the conclusion of the lady's story. She Baya : "In 1889 I first heard of Mother Seigrl's Curative Syrup. Half a bottle made me feel better, and by keeping on taking it I was soon strong and well as ever. (Signed) Mrs. Ann Bunce, The Park, Worthen, near Shrewsbury, February 22nd, 1893." If there were only a way to save sinking ships as certain and trustworthy as Mother Seigel's medicine is in the case of sinking human bodies, what a blessing it would be to poor sailors.