Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1890-06-07
SAVED FROM THE SHARKS.
A Grim Tale Of shipwreck and the Ter
rlble suGerings of "a Castaway.

A remarkable story of the sea ome
from St. Malo, the narrator being an
ancient mariner named Bauche, whose
painful experiences in a small boat on
the ocean ought to be a warrant for the
truth of his tale. Bauche had signed
articles with the captain of a vessel
called the Mathilde. in which he sailed
to Martinique. While in the harbor of
st. Pierre IN a boat with the cabin boy
one day he was driven oceanward by a
gale of wind, and was knocked about
for a week on the waves before he was
rescued by a Norwegian bark.
After the first night at sea Bauche
SAYS that the cabin boy became partly
delirious; water was filling the boat
every instant, and in order to prevent
the dying lad from being drowned in it
the old sailor made pals of the legs of
his p~antaloons, and was thus enabled
to keep the bottom OF the little craft
tolerably dry. He had also to deprive
himself of his shirt, which he utilized
as a flag of distress. On the third day
the cabin boy died, and hardly vas the
breath out of his body before seven or
eight ferocious black sharks began to
circle around the boat, which they
sometimes almost touched. Rather
than deliver up the dead body TO the
monsters of the deep, Bauche kept it
| until it became decomposed.
Being afraid of illness, he at length
threw it overheard, after having said
his prayers over 1t, aud the prey was
| speedily seized by the sharks, who dis
| appeared with it, aud did not show up
| again for tw~euty-four hours or so.
| Bauche now felt so utterly miserable
that he was thinking of throwing him.
| self overheard, when he was dissuaded
from his intention by the reappear-
ance of the sharks, who. after cycling him
| ravenously for sometime. actually be-
gan to gambol before him. as if in an
ticipation of a good feed off his body.
II did not want to be eaten alive"
remarked Bauche, in his narration Of
his perilous adventures, so remained
where / was and awaited assistance"
| On the seventh day the sailor lost con-
seriousness, fell down in the boat and
was rescued in an inseDible condition
| by Captain Paterson. of the vladimir.
In his mouth the Norwegian sailors
found what they first thought was an
old quid of tobacco, but which proved
to be part of the horn handle of his
knife, which Bauche was crunching to
stave of hunger when he became un-
conscious The rescued sailor, after
having been taken to New Orleans. OBJ
tanned a passage home to st. Malo.
| Only the other day he went down to
the port to meet his old shipmates of
| the Mathilde, who had been wrecked
of the coast of Newfoundland. whittier
they had made another voyage since
Bauche disappeared at Martinique,
the crew of the Mathilde had been res
cued off the banks of Labrador by an
English vessel. They had long, OF
course, given up Bauche and the cabin
boy as lost in midocean, and great was
their surprise when they bcheld the
former in the flesh. and hale and hearty
as if he had never been without food
on the deep for full seyen days in an
open boat. and in perilous contiguity
to the teeth of the tigers Of the ocean.
-LosdoE Telegraph.