A ROMANCE IN THE WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 596, 16 March 1876, Page 3

A ROMANCE IN THE WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND.

The writer of " London Town Talk" in ■ the Melbourne " Argus'' t^lls the follow, ing :—": — " Here is a romance, with love in it, about which all the young ladies in London are talking. On board the illfated Deutschland, which the men of Harwich did nbt rescue as they should have done, was a young couple who had never seen one another before, but who were destined to be a good deal — 'and very close — together ere the voyage was over. The youth was a German, Herr Hermann ; the girl, a Miss Petyold of New York. When tne ship had struck, and the rising tide was submerging her, and drowning the poor women, betook her un with him into the rigging, and there held her throughout that terrible night. Beneath them were death and ruin ; sights and sounds nnspeakably awful. Some good creature in the shrouds !ibove "thorn, handed* down a bottle 1 of whisky, corked'(l tnean 'the'cork was in the bottle, for it was not a time to be fastidious as to the taste of anything). Hermann knocked its head off, and endeavoured to administer the contents. ' You a re pouring it down my neck,' observed he lady quietly. (She seems to have een a miracle of good aense and h

courage.) It must have been difficult, indeod, to drink out of a broken bottle, high in air, and in a snowstorm ; bat at last bhe effected it. Then the brave young fellow \ limbs went dead, and by his direction she stamped upon his feet, and reslored the circulation. There were incidents fnore startling even than that, for the ooor purser, who had bo one to stamp on him, lost hia foothold, and came head'ong past them to his death, striking the g-irl in his fall, and almost carrying her with him. 'I made up my mind there and then,' Bays Hermann, 'that if we were saved this girl should be ray wifes and now fehe shipwreck has been no loso to me, but a gain, for she has promised te marry me.' Here is a theme for a nautical novelist—' The Romance of the Rigging ; ' or what do you think of a 'Chriatmas nnmber, wherein they might tell each other narative9 to beguile the time — ' Stories in fhe"BhroudsP ' '