The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-07-16
PHARAOH'S PLAGUE MERELY A TICKLE
 COMPARED TO THIS
Farmer-Seaman Tells How Host of Red Ants Captured His Good Ship
 Alice

A farmer on the bridge of a ship and actually engaged in it's navigation seems about as reasonable a sailor driving a su1ky plough. But the British tramp steamer Kiora- which sailed yesterday for West Indian stood beside Pilot John Petersen and helped take the vessel to sea.
 Second Mate Jim Ramon in his overans and broad brimmed hat seemed out of place on the bridge of a steamship. Jim Bannon Is a able navigator. With Ramon farm ing is his livelihood, and navigation his hobby. For months and months at a stretch Jim Bannon ti1ls the soil and minds his hocks on his Australian farm, and then suddenly the spirit moves him and he goes to sea.
 My grandfather was seafartng man." said the Second Mate, and my father was a farmer in New South Wales I inherited farming from my father and sailoring from my grandfather. When I was a boy I left the farm and went to sea and after ten hard years I gave it up and went back to the farm.
 ''But the sea is in my blood, and, | resist it as I may, when the call of the water comes I am forced to go."
 Jim Ramon has attained to a mas
 
 l as a mate. At times he remains at sea for a year or more and then he goes back to his farm, where, he says, he ploughs by the compass and sets his hens by lunar observations. And Jim Ramon, the farmer sail or, has seen adventure at sea a plen- ty. That is what calls him from his fertile fields to plough the deep blue sea.
 Diet of Ants for Months on The Sea. Probably the worst experience I l ever had was with red ants," said the | sailornan to the ship news reporter. l T was second mate on a barkentine 1 that loaded at Corrinto on the west coast of Nicaragua with 9 cargo of dye woods for Hamburg.
 We were about two weeks in get ting the cargo aboard, great logs that l had been piled alongshore for months | and months. A few days after we began taking on the logs we began to notice little red ants about the ship. They were coming out of the dyewood logs. As the days passed the ant leg1Ons increased and before we put to sea the insects were everywhere. We hadn't been to sea more than a command of the ship. AS the days passed conditions grew worse. We | found armies of red ants in our hunks 1 in our trunks, in the galley, on the | decks and even in the rigging. Tt was ants, ants every where, and then they began to get into. the food. For days we nearly starved ourselves, hardly daring to make a diet of red l insects But it was eat or starve, land we ate. And the ants multiplied [ by the million.
 | 'Our great hope was that when we 1 destroy the pests. And with this our hope we prayed for stronger winds to bring us to the place of re- | lief. I never quite appreciated the seven plaques of Egypt until that ex- perience. Poor Pharaoh never went l barkentine Alice.
 Red Ants in the Food But They Had | To Eat
 we reached the Horn at last The weather was bitterly cold and we thanked our stars that relief had come at last. It was a false hope. The T cold drove the insect hordes from the rigging and decks to below decks, and they did not show any desire to re- enter the dyewood logs either, but 1 took possession of the fo'c's'1e and the galley.
 Ants paraded over us in Iegions. They treked across the deck and climbed in red streaks up the bulk heads. For days and days we went W1In snort TauOnS ana then we 0eC10- ed to go, through with the affair. We 1 had the ants and we were not going to allow them to stop us from eating, SC we ate-ants or no ants.
 We were 147 days at sea, and dur ing every one of those blessed days we had the ants with us. We were a happy lot of sailors, can tell you when we reached Hamburg, for al last we were to have surcease from sorrow aad-food without zntsl And they had to fTTni nigate-that sIipa;foE s week before they got rid of the ant
 invaders. But was and am none
 the worse for the experience. And
 anyhow. I can always console myself
 when think of those poor chaps ir
 Germany at the Diet of Worms l