The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-06-20
A cAILOR'S ADVENTURES.
Wrecked at Sea and Miraculously Saves
from the Sharks.

Wrecked at Sea and MiraculOusly Saved
from the Sharks.
A remarkable story of the sea comes
from st. Malo, the narrator being an
ancient mariner named Bauche, whose
painful experiences in small boat on
the ocean ought to be warrant for the
truth of his tale. Bauche had signed
articles with the captain of vessel
called the Mathilde. 10 which he sailed
to Martinique. While in the harbor OF
st. Pierre in boat with the cabin boy
one day he was driven oceanward by a
gale of wind and was knocked about for
week on the waves before he was res
cued by Norwegian bark.
After the first night at sea Bauche
says that the cabin boy became partly
delirous, water was filling the boat every
instant, and in order to prevent the dy-
ing lad from being drowned in It the old
sailor made pals of the legs of his pant
aloons 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 flag of dis
tress. On the third day the cabin boy
died, and hardly was the breath out Of
his body before seven or eight ferocious
black sharks began to circle round 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 decom-
posed.
Being afraid of illness, he at length
threw it overheard, after having said
his prayers over it, and the prey was
speedily seized by the sharks, who dis
appeared with it, and did not show up
again for about twenty-feur 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 temperance
of the sharks, who, after cycling him
ravenously for some time, 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" re-
marked Bauche, in his narration of his
perilous adventures, $50 I remained
where was and waited assistance" On
the seventh day the sailor lost con-
seriousness, fell down in the boat and
was rescued in an insensible 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 off hunger when he became uncon-
scious. The rescued sailor, after hav-
ing 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 off the
coast of Newfoundland, whittier they
had made another voyage since Banohe
disappeared at Martinique. The crow
of the Mathilde had been rescued 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 beheld the former in the
flesh, and as hale and hearty as if he
had never been without food on the
deep for full seven days in an oper boat,
and in perilous contiguity to the teeth
of the tigers of the ocean.-Paris Letter.