The Pioche weekly record. [volume] (Pioche, Nev.) 1877-1900, 1894-08-30

bered it afterward-the ghostly water
| was playing shoulder high in the dark
| in countless white fountains-we hud
died the women and babies in and slunq
Out-'twas all dim confusion and up
roar, screaming and crying and cursing
and as we in the first boat flung off the
falls and suatched our oars, while yei
those still on board were getting out the
| galley, great sea swept us up for 4
minute, right up the steep slope of it,
foam laced sides, we saw the spectel
ship, black island, slide down into a
great black valley below us and essay
the other slope, and then, with horrible
sickening sound like sigh, she seemed
to fail and to cleave that mighty watery
range-it opened-and right down into
it, right down into the heart of that
black bowling mountain of water the
Golden Verify sailed out of sight of men
forever!
For a day and night we rowed in that
open boat through an interminable will
derness Of spume and darkness, with the
perpetual thunder Of the storm i'll our
ears, death every moment hanging on
the singing crests of foam that lowered
above us On every hand, and no shelter
or food or water for the little ones who
walled and sobbed perpetually, and
crouched with their patient mothers in
an indstingushable heap in the stern.
On the second morning the wind died
down a bit, a thick, sitting sea fog came
rolling out Of the southwark, and Just
/ before it shrouded sea and sky we made
ont on the fringe Of the haze a low, rocky
! shore.
We rowed hard; by noon we came up
under shelter of the beach; we landed,
and i'll the first transport Of our delight
knelt and thanked God for our deliver
mce; haggard and cramped and lean,
with the long agony of the slow death
we had passed through in our faces, and
the light Of hunger in our eyes, we knelt
on the sand, and out Of our parched
thrOats and our salt caked lips thanked
the mysterious for our deliverance; aye,
there was not a man among us dry eyed
as the little ones we had saved-two
tender boys and q sunny haired lass of
tive-knelt among us, and lifting their
cIasped hands to the low gray roof Of
the Sky lisped their gratitude with trem-
bling blue lips and cold, small limbs
that shook like aspen leaves in the wind.
Then came the disappointment on our
new hope. We crawled to the summit
of a grassy hillock and listened every
where was the same dreadful, impen-
etrable veil of sea fog-worse, from
every hand, on every side, came the
booming of surf, and in haste we sent
one of our party to see what manner of
place it was. When, in a few minutes.
he came back-terribly long moments to
us, yet all too short, as proved-we read
IN his face what we dared not ask, and
with one common cry of renewed misery
knew that it was barren island we had
landed upon; we had but changed one
sort of death for another.
Then there was none of us who did
not envy those who had gone down with
the Golden Verify, for we soon found
there was neither food nor water on the
reef The hungry soil had drunk up all
the rain that had fallen on it, aud neither
above nor below, nor in the cracks of
the rocks was there enough to STAY for a
minute the horrible husky thirst that
burned within us. There was no food
save delusive thing or two we found
westral on the beach. No rabbits bur.
rowed in that lonely place, no birds set.
tied on it and so, in grim resignation
too weak to struggle further, we built
! ourselves a shelter out Of the boat sail
down by where we had landed, and there
we huddled hour after hour in patient
hopeless vacancy.
| And overhead the sea mist eddied in
smoky folds and hung like dingy, sod
den curtain d few yards ont at sea, cut
ting us off from even the faint hope of q
passing sail, and the hooking cries OF
the unseen Seafowl that now and again
| Tapped by fell ON our listless, unnerved
ears like the voices of unhappy spirits
| All through the night that followed, and
the next day, and the day after that we
covered III sad, gray huddle under the
| bSft SOM uilNt HtllNNlN Slll1ttl, Will Hull
ger and thirst gnawing at our hearts
and horrible chimeras of plenty and
abundance fitting hectic through oul
drowsy brains.
| we made no more attempts to see the
| confines of our island prison-why
should we? But now and then one OF
us would crawl out and wiring a few
drops of taStelesS moisture from the
mist laden sail stretched between two
stones, or one of those desperate moth
ers would wander away to the beach tC
look for shelltish and to be out of hear
ing for time of the pitiful crying Of
her children. And thus we waited fol-
/ the end.
When we woke in the gray of the
third morning we found young Hay
ward, the steward, sitting among US
quite dead, as we had left him sitting
alive last night, and Trower was deat
that evening, and Ellis and Warner were
ravlng. And now the blessing of sleeI
and forgetfulness went from us one by
one, and all through the dreadful hours
of darkness we sat and listened to the
rattle of each others parched throats
and the mutterings of their delirium
Some time that night remember Elsie
the yellow haired delight of the crew
had begged to be taken outside, and hel
mother and some of us crawled witt
her to where the sinking wind might
blow on her flushed face in the darkness
She lay still minute, then on a sud
den started up and listened and cried il
wild, hysterical way, "Bells-bells
mother!-listen to them ringing!" Their
spun rOund on her moor little feet am