Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-07-05
NOT 4 DRop TO DRINK.
The Affecting and Almost Fatal Experience
of a Castaway ON Lake Michigan.

AA-S ana tAtltfst Es&tsAL experience
of a Castaway ON Lake Michigan.
When the old sailor looked through
the screenless doors Il South street
saloon auG saw calm conten. expressed
on the faces OF those within, who were
emptying bootleg glasses of beer, he
said to New York san reporter:
Nobody as has never been to sea
knows what It is 10 want drink. and
when sailor man sees another as is
thirsty he be sure to have feelin' o.
sympathy which its onnateral Tor to
take advantage OF.
Did anybody ever take advantage of
you in that wayPn said listener.
"Ihey did. | was Il sailin' on a
lumber hooker outen Chicago over to
the east shore. We made the trip
over in two days. One AFTERNOON, rs
we was beatin agin a light wind
across, and bein' a long way from port,
the mate he sees suthin' as looks like a
evergreen bush dead TO windward.
CROWN outen the water. 1t was mighty
Gurus, and Capt. Lanphere, as was Of a
scientific turn, he says the saplin's been
washed away by the June freshet, and
it's the sile onto the roots of it which
floats it cen up, when ne knowed there
never wasn't no sile in Michigan but
sand. The bush was a driftin' afore
the breeze, and bimeby we sees il was a
stickin up into the bow of a dugout
and the captain he didn't say no more
about the sile onto its roots.
The next tack we fetched it fair on
the weather bow. Long afore we was
anyways near to it the captain he sees
a man lynn onto the bottom of the dug
out, lookin as if he was dead. We
luffed up a bit to oncet, and bein' as
Capt. Lanphere was pretty fair sailor
for fresh-water galoot, we lost head
way with that ere dugout under the lee
forechains.
"'Hist him on deck careful, SAYS the
captain, and we picks him up very ten
der like and lays him in tarpaulin.
His cheeks was that sunken that eff it
hadn't been for the color as was in
his nose we'd never knowed he was
alive. The captain he feels of his heart
and finds it beatin' and then says to
him:
'Shipmate, can you hear me?'
THE man he raises one of his lean,
long fingers bit and shakes his head
and moves his lips as if tryin' to say
suthin' and couldn't make it.
Try it again. shipmate. What is
it?' said the captain, and he bends his
self clusser down and puts his ear to the
mans mouth. The lips they moved
agin, and the captain rose up.
Boys, he says, the mans n dyin'
of thirst. He wants drink. Bring
out that bottle OF rye first to warm him
up
It's one o them blamed idiits from
salt water as thinks the lakes is branches
of the ocean and not fit to drink. said
the mate. He didn't have no regards
for saltwater sailor-men.. All the same
we was all desperity interested in the
unfortunit individual as was driftin'
around without no navigator, and the
cook he brings out quart bottle of re-
markable fine grog. The captain he
tells the man what TO expect, and then
pours swallow into him. The man
works his jaws bit and then up comes
one O. them lank hands O hisin and
clasps the bottle and hists it so as to
make 'er gurgle as the juice poured
down his neck. 1t was astonishin'.
He done it to admiration When he
stopped for breath there weren't nary
gurgle left into that ere bottle and
that ere corpse as was starvin' for
drink was that bilin drunk as made us
all sick with envy.
''The captain he lowed it would be
the death of the man. but after he tried
to dance like bloody heathin and
couldn't, because he was loaded too
heavy; we laid him into the lee soup
pers, got the jibs over to windward,
paid the head off, and stood on our
course, full and by"
"Wellr' said the listener
"Git well? In course he did He
was a bloomin' tramp as had got drunk
in Pentwater as is jest beyant Little
Pint Sauble, the port as we was headin'
for, and some lads as found him asleep
behind lumber pile dumped him into
an Iniun's dugout, stuck up the bush
and showed him into the stream, which
it was boomin' from freshet. He was
jest waited out to lis and into glory
without a effort of his own"