A LUCKY ESCAPE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume I, Issue 45, 19 December 1868, Page 5

A LUCKY ESCAPE.

• 'A-«t*ange dtirj^fiiton^er tnanj fiction, as truth sometimes is— came from "Wairoa. After eight days from; the engagement at MotUrba; a missing man has turned up. On Saturday one of the garrison Was out after w^Rn - he saw a man armed and accoutred as tdut r meii . are. JHel cooeyed, Jb^t , the poor half-demented man (as he proved to be), fearful of everything, ran as terror-s^rnck atti^Bpund f) -The other pursued him, andin time overtook thtf mam, and brought hkni back to the redoubt!" lie proved to be a man of the name of Kennedy^of the 6th division. His story was', that he, along with three comrades, ; was leafing- out of the fire Sergeant Kerwln,*pf the 6th division, 1 who was wounded, in the neck ; while so engaged they 7 were discovered by i party of Hauhans and fired upon. .Self-preservation actuated them in each looking for safety. They scattered in in all directions. From that time Kennedy, unhurt, had been lost in the bush, liying , through eight days and nights as he bes,t : could on* fern-root and nikau palm fruit. He knew nothing of the country, and wandered at fault over it. In the course of his journey .he had reached the Moturoa pa, which our forces had so unsuccessfully attacked. He found the place deserted, and, as^far, as he could judge, the whole nativefdrce had withdrawn from the district. He states it as his belief that if, after the a bugle had been sounded or rockets fired, the majority of the mißßing men, nearly all of whom were strangers to the country, would have come in. — " Hawke's Bay Herald."

The Dumb Eestoeed to Speech. — An incideut has just occurred at La Manere of so extraordinary a nature that we should hesitate to publish it if we had not heard it related by the person whom it principally concerns. Some days back five young men of the neighbourhood went to bathe in a pool of small extent, but nearly twenty feet deep, and fed by a mountain torrent. The .first to plunge in, Hippolyte Serre, swam safely across, and was seated on the opposite bank where he sat watching a companion named Coll, who had followed him. The latter, who was deaf and dumb since a very serious illness, brought on five years back by a disappointment in love, had reached the middle of the water, where he was seen to struggle convulsively, and then disappear beneath the surface. Serre plunged in to his ' assistance, and seizing him when he came up, succeeded in bringing him to the brink, where he was helped out by the others. Coll Tiad no sooner recovered his senses 1 than he exclaimed, { Mon Dieu ! Sainte Yierge dv Coral! Hippolyte, you have saved me !' The shock had, in fact, restored to him his speech, of which a '(Commotion had previously deprived him."