The Savannah morning news., 1903-12-20

A grizzled. sun-tanned, Manufactured
man, whose face bore the stamp of
hardship and adventure, was sitting I'm
the smoking-room of a New York ho-
tel. He happened to glance at a cal
endar and saw that the day was Dec.
"a.
by Jove!" he exclaimed. 80 to-
morrow is Christmas Day. Unless
something happens before then, It will
be the quietest Christmas I've spent in
! twentY-three years.
I'm all that time 1 have never been
so near my old home in Scotland at
Christmas time as 1 am now. often
I've tried to get home, but somehow
or other Christmas has always found
me in a tight corner in some out-of-
the-way part of the world"
| This mans experience is typical of
that of many globe trotters in this age,
when people are so fond of going to
and fro in the earth and walking up
and down in it," like a certain per-
| sonage in the Book of Job. The queer
est and most adventurous Christmases
nowadays are Spent by globe-trotters,
who almost always have exciting sto-
| ries to tell about what happened to
them in Chinese Tartary or the wilds
of New Guinea.
Christmas Day, 1897, found one
| Englishman facing death by hunger
and thirst on board life raft 800
miles southeast of Madagascar.
His ship had foundered seven days
| before in a hurricane. The boats We're
smashed by the fury Of the waves, and
some of the crew washed overheard.
The rest made a raft out of planks and
| spars, but during the night high seas
! swept over the frail structure and car
| ried away most of the water and pro-
| visions.
! IAN we had left" said the man, who
| went through this terrible experience,
| were a few tins of potted meat, a
| small barrel of biscuit, and the small
est of the water casks That was all
we had to keep life in twenty-five
hungry men.
could, but in four days everything was
gone. Some of the men fell into de-
spair, and talked about throwing
themselves overheard. Perhaps they
| would have done so, but during the
night of the fourth day half a dozen
big sharks swan around the raft in
| circles. The sea was phosphorescent,
and we could see them plainly in the
waves of livid fire which they stirred
| up as they swan around. Even the
| halfcrazed men who had talked about
drowning themselves shrank from
death in a sharks NAV, and stayed
| upon the raft.
Next morning 1 saw by a pocket
dairy which l carried that the day
was Dec %. To keep up the mems
| spirits, told them / had dreamed we
were going to be rescued on Christmas
Day. That appealed to the supersti-
ton inherent, more or less, in all sail
ors, so l kept on telling them a ship
| would come along and pick US up on
that day sure, until l began to be-
lieve it myself. We even discussed
gravely whether the sail would heave
in sight in the morning or the after
| noon, and one man who said he guess
ed it would be toward evening became
quite unpopular.
christmas morning broke with a
dead calm on the oily, blistering sea
| and a blazing sky that aggravated our
thirst tenfold. There was not a ship
in sight all morning-nothing except
that CLASSY sheet of water and that
cruel cloudless sky above us. 1t was
the same in the afternoon, and our
hopes fell as the sun sank slowly to-
ward the western horizon.
"Just as we were beginning to de-
spair, one of the men screamed hys-
terically and pointed to a thin trail
of smoke on the sky line. 1t was a
New Zealand liner headed straight for
our raft. In couple OF hours her
doctor was giving us a Christmas din
ner of Stops and weak brandy and
water"
This same man spent another
Christmas Day off Cape Horn. He
sailed from Valparaiso in a British
"windtammer" expecting to reach his
| In 20
first Christmas there for many years
But calms delayed her for weeks In
the South Pacific Ocean, and when she
got off Cape Horn she ran into q
tearing gale, which brought her mizzer
topmast down on deck and ripped out
all her sails. For days she drifted
helplessly, exposed to the full fury oil
the western gale.
The crew labored industriously al
rigging up spars and bending new
sails. 1t was a task of tremendous
difficulty, for giant combers rolled
over the forecastle head continually
filling the vessel amidships with greer
seas.
Suddenly, in the midst of this toll
an apprentice boy piped out:
II say, fellers, this Is Christmas
Day. Have you all forgotten it?'
They had. In the fury of the tenn.
pest. even the thought Of Christmas
usually 80 religiously observed or
British ships, had slipped their reck-
oning.
Delay your tongue" retorted thee
gruff old mate. There won't be any
Christmas dinner to-day except your
usual whack of lops scouse."
The skipper was experimenting the
work from the poop rail, and heard
the conversation.
Cook" he bawled out. Lay aft
here!"
The cook came out OF his galley
and the captain asked what he could
give them for a Christmas dinner.
"Nothin' but split peas sir, an salt
horse an marmalade. There amt nc
turkeys in my storeroom, sir" he said
sarcastically.
Lets catch one o. them BIRDS" sug-
gested an old tar, pointing to several
albatrosses which were circling about
the wake of the ship. wen stretch
point this day, and be forgiven for
1t, l guess"
After several attempts, an albatross
was captured with big fishhook bait
ed with salt pork, and dragged aboard
triumphantly. Served up nice and
brown, and swimming in gravy, II
looked so much like a real turkey that
it warmed up the mems hearts and
made them think of the Christmases
they had spent at home. But when
they tasted It, the resemblance ceased
II was fishy and tough; the meat was
like knotted rope yarn, and the gravy
suggested tar. However, 1t was a
Christmas dinner, all the same, and II