Only Four to Man the Pumps.

Manawatu Herald, 27 August 1895, Page 3

Only Four to Man the Pumps.

Dear, dear ! When you come to think of it how closely 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 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 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 bad 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 I were were taking in water 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 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 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. Ex-

m— m actly what it was" she doesn't tell. I wiih she did. Anyway it so upset her that ape didn't get over the effects of it for lurid years. After that her appetite fell off ; Bhe lost all re«il 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 eyea and okin presently turned yellow as a buttercup. Her face and abdomen swelled, and her feet the same, the tatter 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 1 could not lie down in bed. I had a dry, hollow cough, and bad night sweats I Then diarrhoea set in, and my bowels became ulcerated. 1 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, of do any housework or look after my children, My sister had to come and help in the house. " Everybody said I waa in a decline and ttliist die. What I suffered for eight years tongue cannot tell. The doctor could do nothing for me. He said my complaint was complicated and bad one to deal with. In 1886 I went as an outdoor patient to the Shrewsbury Infirmary, but only_; got transient relief. 1 " The writer is in good health now, but why did her case remind me of the shipwreck ? Let's settle that first. The association is easy and natural. Just see. The ship sank because the four men hadn't the 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 back ; the last Unsupplied need that makes poverty abject and desperate; , Thestf bodies df ours carry the seeds of disease with them all the time — Chiefly the poisons created by imperfect indigestion, 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: I'et We've got in.ottr blood tlie stuff that any. of a dozeu disease's is iHacte 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 pallis and unpleasant .lymptorns bother us now arid then", but we don't fancy they mean anything: iV-aiia-by sdmetning happtinei A cold, too hearty a meal, a night of dissipation, an affliction through death or loss of property, a fright, as in Mrs. Bnnce's case, tfcc; OVer we (in. The last straw has Crushed us ; One loosfe spark has blown up the barrel of powder; The crew is too small to save tlie ship: The kidneys; liver, skirl) ahd stomach strike work, antt we must have help right away or perish. All of which means the explosion or latent in digestion and dyspepsia po'sons in the blood. There ! isn't it plain" why I thotight of the ship ? Now for the conclusion of the lady's story. She says : "In 1889 I first heard of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. Half a bottle made me feel better, and by keeping on taking ie I was soon strong and Well as ever. (Signed) Mrs. Ann Bunce, The Park, Worthen, near Shrewsbury, February 82nd, 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 pinking human bodies, what n blessing it would be to poor sailors. j