FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 929, 24 March 1930, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN." HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF A* flock of geese near Budapest ran amok, quacking raucously, after drinking wine from an overturned lorry.— Cable. The geese of the Capitol cackled with When Rome was attacked by intruders, But for all their exuberance they, I'll engage, "Weren’t half so ecstatic as Buda’s. The geese of the Caesars recited their plaint With the air of most virtuous quackers, And hence it had not the convival taint Conveyed by a session with Bacchus. But virture brings ease and esteem in its train. Excess makes the celebrant sorry. And many a Budapest goose in his pain. This morning is chanting the ancient, refrain : “This time it is final. I’ll never again Drink wine from an overturned lorry.” OVER THE ST. ARNAUDS One more lonely piece of country is to he subjugated by the service car. The Tophouse Road, over which a service is to be operated betweeu Blenheim and Westport, traverses the wind-swept St. Arnaud Range at the head of the Wairau Valley, in which lie Wantwood, Birch Hill, Bankhouse, and others of Marlborough’s most historic sheep stations. What look to be perhaps fly-spots on the map are in fact the homesteads on these properties. The Marlborough squatter in London or elsewhere can take his friends along to a “Times” map and show them just exactly where he lives. Tophouse, where the road touches Its highest elevation, was a wayside stopping place in the old days when traffic from Nelson to the Wairau followed by the overland route. .Bankhouse, on the river at the end of the journey, got its name from the same source. THE AGILE OUTBOARDS For sheer acrobatics the racing outboard motor-boat appears hard to beat. Only a few days ago one of these lively craft took a clean jump over another launch, the amazed occupants of which probably watched it with something approaching the feelings of a motorist who misses a speeding express train at a level crossing by a coat of paint. Then on Saturday an active specimen took a nosedive and pinned itself into the mud. This is the sort of thing that makes outboard motoT-boat drivers a race of men apart, inured to the dangers and vicissitudes of life afloat, and carrying their lives as well as their engines ill their hands. The fact Is probably that the outboard is as safe as anything else. Nobody has yet been killed In any of these acrobatic displays. Sometimes people whose Sundays are disturbed by outboards racing up and down the waterfront could wish charitably that this were not the case.

THE GALLEY SLAVES In the bad old days men were chained to the sweeps of a slave galley, and called it bondage, across their naked shoulders cracked the wicked thong of the taskmaster’s whip. They fed, slept, sweated and wept at their oars. But that was in the bad old days. Today men seat themselves carefully in long, slender racing shells, lowering their posteriors with the utmost care on to a little wooden seat that runs on wheels and looks rather like a slightly missfiapen bicycle saddle. They strap their feet on to foot rests that are called “stretchers,” adjust their oars either in swivels or in little frames called “poppets,” and then grip their oars and wait for orders from a man or boy of slight physique who, though not so ferocious in outward appearance as the slavedriver of old, is just as hard a taskmaster. These are the preliminaries to the gentle art of rowing, demonstrated on the Whau in the interprovincial eights on Saturday. WHERE THEN ARE MEN After a hard race,the modern galley slaves often collapse over their oars, or step out from it into a reeling and spinning world. Rowing is the most exciting of sports, but from the ease of their win it must be assumed that the .Otago men on Saturday felt none of the blackness of fatigue and exhaustion which sometimes overtakes an oarsman at the end of a canvas-to-ean-vas race. It takes a Spartan spirit to convert a young man into a muscular machine, tireless, automatic, and the spirit must flourish in Dunedin. All that the oarsman sees as he swings back and forth in the race Is the sweat trickling down the neck of the man in front. Perhaps he may steal a glance sideways and see the wash of the oars from the other boats in the race, but he is not supposed to. He is like the piston of an engine, delivering every ounce of his energy, and only when the race is over does he become human again, tasting the fruits of a victory that is worthily won, perhaps at greater physical sacrifice than in any other sport. „