DRIVEN TO SEA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 449, 26 February 1890, Page 5

DRIVEN TO SEA.

A WEEK OF AGONY. A man named James Fay, of Normanton, has had a terrible experience at sea. He was rowing in a boat belonging to the steamer Dugong, and when off the shore a squall caught the boat and carried it away to sea. Night came on, and the frail craft was carried further and further away from land. He made frantic efforts to row in, and succeeded in getting within sight of the coast, when the current again caught his cockle-shell and again carried it out to sea. For five days and nights he was tossed about at the mercy of the wind and wave, without food or water, and exposed to the fielce beating rays of the sun in the day time, and a drenched skin by the blinding spray at night-time. Hie sufferings were terrible, and he could have welcomed death as a happy release. Now and then he would rise in the boat and shout hysterically for help, and then sink down in the bottom of the skiff exhausted and almost raving. Towards the end of the sixth day, the boat was drifted in close to Steer Island, on the Queensland coast, and summoning all his energy he managed to reach the beach. He was famished with hunger and feverish for want of water, and the poor fellow now thought he had only escaped one death to die by another no less terrible. Providence came to his aid, however, in the shape of a goat, which he captured, and tore open the throat with trembling hands, holding his mouth to the spurting stream of blood and drinking eagerly. After this he felt considerably revived, and managed to crawl about the island, eventually sighting a fisherman’s cutter, the crew of .which saw him and took him off. He had endured his Bii Bering'very pluckily, and is now slowly recovering,