THE CABIN-BOY OF ADEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1007, 25 June 1930, Page 16

THE CABIN-BOY OF ADEN

Here is a true story of one terrible day when one lonely lad fought the sea and the sun and sharks. On the deck of the German cargo boat Rheinfels the cabin-boy was standing by the taffrail during the dog watch. The lights of Perim at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden were twinkling In the distance. Through the starlit darkness a little shore-bird came fluttering on to the deck, and the cabin-boy tried to catch it. As he stre* jhed his arm high above him he overbalanced. The bird fiew away. The unhappy cabin-oo.v fell with a splash into the waters of the gulf No one on the steamer noticed. Almost before he rose gasping to the sur face the steamer had left him behind the water boiling in her wake. Soon hat was gone He could no longer see he ship. It was long past midnight, .nd no ship could see him He began o swim toward the shore, or to where ie thought it might be. What else he thought in those first Tightened minutes we shall perhaps tever know, for Cabin-boy Alfred Spitz does not seem to have remembered very well, or at all events not veil enough to talk of them. But ie remembers that he saw the lights >f ships passing during the night. They >assed steaming in security; the boy saddled on without even a lifebelt >r a plank to help him.’ The hours went by, and at last the lawn came. That might have been velcome if the sun had not risen above lim in the Gulf of Aden but there the sun’s rays smite like a sword They ell on this poor waif, and scorched lis head and face till they were black ind blistered He swan on. As the sun rose higher and the salt vater washed his cracked lips his ;hroat dried up and tightened till thirst Decame an agony. He tried to pull his shirt over his head as a protection. 3ut it was too tight. It chafed his arms is he swam till they became raw. But ie swam on.

The big sea-birds sighted this scrap of human flotsam. swooped ever nearer and nearer. There might be something here Cor them. fie declares that fish rubbed against him It was true, and the fish were sharks But they never attacked him. It must have been because they found he was not afraid of them. He floated part of the time, in fact, it must have been for a great deal of it. But when he saw a fin near him ho splashed and began to swim again; and then, he said, the shark sheered off. The oddest thing that happened to this German cabin-boy during those long and awful hours was that a bird kept flying beside him all the time, and now and then perched on his shoulder. God who builds the nest of the blind bird must have sent it. At least it must have brought him comfort. Midday came, and the burning afternoon; and dusk was coming on when before his half-closed eyes a ship appeared. ll© flung up his arms; it was all he could do. and for torturing moments he feared that he had not been seen. Then he saw a boat lowered. The last thought which ran through nis fevered brain was that here was water to drink at last. He knew no more.

When he awoke in a bunk on the Italian ship Llano he murmured “water.” They gave him a Little, and for two days he lay unconscious with heat-stroke. When at last lie came to liis senses he told his story.

Captain Mazzella. who rescued him told his story of it all when the Llane reached Calcutta. It was 5 o’clock in the evening, he said, when the officer on the bridge saw something floating on the water. He turned his glasses on it. It was a man floating, and as the officer made him out he threw up his arms.

The steamer’s engines were stopped, a boat was lowered, and the boy was sinking when the boat reached him. lie was lifted out of the sea. His

face was blackened with the sun They thought it was too late. But he who survived the ordeal of 15 hours in tjie water, and escaped the peril of the Gulf of Aden, which few who had been an hour in these infested waters would ever hope to do. lived to tell his tale. And here it is, as the cabin-boy and the captain have told it. i