The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-07

timber, and though it kept turning and
turning round in the angry waves locked
my arms around it and held fast. The
wind blew the floating timbers all about
and many pieces struck me. 1 was
stunned and almost dead, but / chung to
the timber and tore my clothes off as best
1 could. They weighed rae down and
made me heavy. felt better when l got
all my clothes off.
Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe it
was an hour-how could one in such a
plight measure time? saw the top of the
pilot house drifting by me. 1 tried to
reach it, but it went past me at too great a
distance, and dared not loose my hold on
the timber because / was too weak to
swim, very far. l had been hit in the
chest and had couple of teeth knocked
out by the flying timbers. 1 saw dead
bodies floating all about me. The body OF
woman foated past me. I put my hand
on it. 1t was stiff and cold as ice.
81 guess it was about o'clock in the
afternoon when 1 managed to reach big
piece of the hurricane deck. climbed up
on it and looked around me, and could see
nothing at all. I thought l was the only
one saved from the wreck.
"But by and by others came floating by
and some of them, clinging to spars and
small pieces of timber were alive. Finally
there were Tom Freeze, Richardson,
Ramos, Loliz and Cedro, all aboard this
raft. 1 don't know now they got on board.
By this time was so weak that l could
give them no assistance. think I must
have tainted for a time. because there is a
o,,I- e :,
spent on the hurricane deck raft.
ooh, yes, l remember the rescue. No one
on that raft will ever forget it. First we
saw some smoke on the horizon far to the
south. We were not quite sure it was
smoke. 1t might have only been a small
black cloud that portended another squall.
But when it grew palmer we saw that it
was truly streak of black smoke, but we
could only hope that it would come near
enough to US to see our signal. Most of
us were naked. l had found a piece OF
cloth hanging to drifting spar and had
tished it up, dried it and put it over my
shoulders. This took off, and we tied it
fast to thin piece of timber and hoisted
it for signal. 1t was heavy piece OF
timber to hold straight up, and we were all
so weak that it took our combined strength
to keep it aloft. When the steamer came
in sight she answered our signal.
Il can't tell you how joyful we were
then. We had all about made up our
minds to die on the water. OF course we
had nothing to eat or drink for nearly
twenty-four hours. We were almost deli
rious with Joy when it was certain that we
were going to be saved. l could have
danced and shouted like a small boy if l
had had the strength to do that. But we
could only look our Joy and mutter few
Thank Godsn to each other.
"The steamer ran up alongside US. The
captain stood on the bridge and called out,
What ship? schooner
1.-The Cohma! the Colimar we all
shouted at the top of our voices. Then a
boat was lowered and we were taken
aboard. They did not treat us so badly on
board the San Juan. They gave us clothes
and cigars, and when we were strong
enough to go about we enjoyed ourselves
on the way up. But of course we lost our
kits-everything we had in the world. The
clothes 1 have on belonged to one of the
sailors on board.