The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1900-01-20
CAST AWAY ON THE PACIFIC.
Mark Twain Rete1ls the Story of II
Amazing Adventure

Mark Twain Retells the Story of an
Amazing Adventure.
The title of Mark TWain's story in the
Century, MY Debut as a Literary Per-
son. gives no idea Of the terrible tragedy
of which it tells In May 1866, mer-
chairman was destroyed by fire at sea.
and the crew and two passengers put
off in three boats. with rations for
ten days. Two of the boats were lost,
but the captains. with fifteen frightfully
emaciated men aboard, reached the Ha-
waiian islands forty-three days later,
after a voyage of four thousand miles
or so. One of the passengers still sur
wives, and has long been a professor in
Trinity college, Hartford. Mark Twain
got the story from the survivors, whom
he accompanied from Honolulu to San
Francisco.
1t is an amazing adventure. There is
nothing Of it's sort in history that sur
passes it in impossibilities made pos
sible. In one extraordinary detail-the
survival of every person in the boat
it. probably stands alone in the history
Of adventures of it's kind. Usually merely
part of a boats company survive
officers, mainly, and other educated and
tenderly-reared men, unused to hardship
and heavy work; the unframed, roughly
reared, hard workers succumb. But in
this case even the rudest and toughest
stood the privations and miseries Of the
voyage almost as well as did the college,
bred young brothers and the captain.
I mean, physically. The minds Of most
of the sailors broke down in the fourth
week and went to temporary ruin, but
physically the endurance exhibited was
astonishing Those men did not sur
,vive by any merit of their own, of course,
but by merit of the character and intelli-
gence of the captain; they lived by tho
mastery of his spirit. Without him they
would have been children without
nurse. They would have exhausted their
provisions within a week, and their pluck
would not have lasted even as long as
the provisions.
The boat came near being wrecked at
the last. AS it approached the shore the
sail was let go, and came down with u
run; then the captain saw that he was
drifting toward an ugly reef and an ef-
fort was made to hoist the sail again; but
it could not be done; the mems strength
was wholly exhausted; they could not
even pull an oar. They were helpless, ana
death imminent. It was then that they
were discovered by two Kanakas, who
achieved the rescue. They swan out and
manned the boat and piloted her through
a narraw and hardly noticeable break In
the reef-the only break in it in stretch
of thirty-five miles! The spot where the
landing was made was the only one in
the stretch where footing could have been
found on the shore; everywhere else prec-
ipices came sheer down into forty faith
oms of water. Also, in all that stretch
this was the only spot where anybody
lived .r
I Within ten days after the landing all
the men but one were up and creeping
about. Properly they ought to have killed
themselves with the food of the last
few days-some of them, at any rate
men who had freighted their stomachs
| with strips Of leather from old boots and
with chips from the butter-eask; a.
frefghtage which they did not get rid OF
by digestion, but by other means. The
captain and the two passengers did not
eat strips and chips, as the sailors did,
but scraped the boot-leather and the
wood and made pulp Of the scrapings
by moistening them with water. The
third mate told me that the boots were
old and full of holes; then added thoughts
fully, ''but the holes digested the best.'r
Speaking of digestion, here is a remark
able thing, and worth noting: During this
strange voyage, and for a while after
ward on shore, the bowels Of some Of the
men virtually ceased from their func-
tons; in some cases there was no action
for twenty and thirty days, and in one
case fer forty-fouri Sleeping also came
to be rare. Yet the men did very welk
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