BARRY'S ROMANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1920, Page 11

BARRY'S ROMANCE.

ZEPPS INJURE CHILD. ■ FIGHT FOE HEALTH. There is no money in sculling, not even if you are a world-champion. There may be a feast to-day, but there is inevitably a famine to-morrow. And there are more to-morrows on the calendar than ito-days. Beach knows it, Searle knew it, Arnst knows it, Barry knows it, Felton knows it. There is a stake won and there is a stake lost. And there is a long time between. So that, the champion sculler, who must be a professional and devote the whole of his time to his avocation, never amasses riches, and is seldom far aiiove the bread-and-butter line. This is why Earnest Barry is in Sydney rowing felton again for the world's championship. Most of his life Barry spent working on and about the tawny Thames. First as a handy hoy, than as a general worker, his daily round taking him to the ugly barges which disfigure the splendid old river. This was his lot until somebody suggested that he should "have a cut, a't rowing," and his ambi-. tion fired, he tried. And since then he has been an oarsman of the first quality. He made his home near Twickenham, down the river. ' THE TERROR BY NIGHT. When the war came on Barry enlisted and served in France. And when the war came the Zeppelins and Gothas came from Germany. Some arrived before Barry crossed the Channel, and the greater number made for London, while he was in the trenches, a,nd his wife and 'family of five young children had to face the terror alone. What that terror was has been left imperishably on record by a lady living alongside the Thames who wrote her impressions exactly five years ago. The Zeppelins had no way of keeping their track across the pathless sky except by following the thin silver streak of the Thames, so that they always made the raids along the same line. "It,-»was a perfect evening, the afterglow seemed loth to quit the darkening sky, and stars had no chance for the time, which was Tathcr tantalising, for was not Mercury coming into unwonted conjunction with Saturn? So our astronomers announced, and some of us welcomed the respite from earth's alarm's if only to live for a few minutes in imagination among the stars. No Zeppelins could live in such a night! "I turned in at the gate, taking one last look heavenward, when there appeared to have formed a little white soft cloud floating gently in the upper currents of the air in the W.N.W.—bo soft and gentle and milky white yet so useful and (if one had been thinking of such a thing) quite large enough to afford a hiding-place of a Zeppelin, for was it not concealing the whole planets of Mercury and Saturn! HORROR AND FEAR. , "Then, appalling in its suddenness, came a hideous terror of palpitating noise. For the fraction of a second, jarred and confused, there flashed through, the brain f lip thought that Mars and Saturn hail nriiV.'.Ml those two and a quarter degrees, anil alter a fearsome collision were falliti/jr, falling to the earth. But, then, one remembered those little cloudlet-heavens.' Where they hiding a hundred Zeppelins? v lt was no time for beacons to be burning, to light them along their path of devilishness. Out went my candle, and Scared, but terribly interested, I peeped through the blind. Terrific propellers' and engines were panting. and working with a uoise that might be caused by the breath and wings of a huge dragon ravening for the blood of a whole countryside." I l "I waited for hours—in reality perhaps two seconds—for hombs to come in at the window, or through the roof, or crashing down the chimney; but, instead there came the Crack! Crack! Crack! of gunfire, now one side of the garden (it seemed,) then zigzagging to the other, now just over the house, then another lower, as the huge airship tanked round. "In that moment of horror and fear there was almpst a sensation of reassurance and comfort in the sound of those attacking guns. Our airmen were worrying the Great Beast, and I felt it would not remaih with its back up against the wall for long, and would soon flee for sanctuary. A little bolder at this thought, and by the fact that the battle was now well outside the garden, at all events—l leaned from the window. Boom! Banglßang! went, the bombs of the Bosches. Lurid light and flame and smoke marked their trail. Dogs barked furiously, policemen's whistled shrilled out, men and women ran to save—and to safety, avid this spring night of quiet beauty was, in a trice, turned into a fiendish pandemonium. Then gradually the bangs and booms were indistinct, the gunfire was indistinguishable, and'the red flame of explosives and burning buildings subsided, and the ma jority of the dogs were satisfied they had done their duty and went kennelwards, and in half an hour all apparently had resumed serenity. NIGTMARE FOR THELMA. "Outside my window the tall acacia stood graceful and composed, its delicate foliage without one tremor. Whereas my own heart was beating but quite unnecessarily, for the garden was still bright with geraniums, with marguerites, yellow laburnum, lilac, -and may, the young birds were sound asleep, and in the near distance came the pleasant normality .of a man's cheerful and unconcerned whistle homeward bound. It may, after all, have been only a fantastic dream." Unhappily it was not. a fantastic dream, hut a ghastly nightmare to Tlielma Barry, the youngest, and before the raids, the brightest and merriest of Barry's children. Whilst the vest of the household frankly exhibited their fear, Tlielma sat quietly without sound or movement through the terrific din, which appeared to hypnotise her. After each passing of the Zeppelin, she awokefrom this state of coma the victim of jangled nerves, until' finally her robust constitution was shattered, and she lost the use of her legs. Barry, returning from the war, found Ilia little daughter a confirmed invalid, whose only chance of recovery lay in command of the highest medical skill and the best, nursing attention. To an ex-private in the English army these were utterly beyond reach. He saw no chance to earn the money with which he conld give the child its rightful chance,! unless he could win the sculling championship again and the stake which would attach to it. Hence his vi<it l<> Australia. Hence upon his skill and endurance hung his hope of being able to give his I'fciM a first-class opportunity of -.•e'iiiin'ii'j the vigour and vitality of which iho •■iinby-kiUei's" robbed her.