The daily Alaskan., 1915-08-12
THE ONE SURVIVOR
Great Disasters In Which a SoIi-
 tary Life Was Spared.
TALES OF NARROW ESCAPES.

Curious Case of St. Pierre Prisoner
 During the Mont Peles Eruption.
 The British Retreat From cabul-A
 Tragedy of the Terrible ManaoIes.
 There are many curious cases on rec ord where death in one of its many dread forms of disaster grips an entire party in its cldmmy embrace and then, while Its icy fingers close upon the rest, lets one solitary member of the band slip away to be the sole survivor of the tragic calamity.
 One hundred and fifty-eight dead. one saved. That was in brief the tale of the wreck of the mail steamer General Chanzy, which struck in the terrible storm of Feb. 10, 1910, on the rocks of northwest Minorca.
 Marcel Bader, the solitary survivor from the wreck of the Chanzy, owed his preservation entirely to the fact that he was a strong and fearless swimmer.
 A few years ago the timber vessel Anna Rebekka, one day out of Memel, was caught in a squall and capsized Most of her crew were swept away and drowned, but three-the skipper, a sailor and the ships boy-clambered on to the keel, where they drifted without food or drink. On the third day the sailor was washed of, but the skipper saved him. Then the boy went mad and died. On the fifth day the sailor was washed off again, and this time the captain had no strength to help him. On the seventh day the capstzed vessel drlfted in sight of land A life boat put out and found the captain still alive.
 The Manacles have seen many sights of horror, but none to excel that Janu- ary night many years ago when two British troopships-the Dispatch and the Primrose-both went ashore on these terrible rocks within a few hours of one another. Seven soldiers strug- gled ashore from the Dispatch through the crashing breakers and reused the village of St Neverne. When the fish ermen gained the beach the Dispatch had vanished. But there was the sec ond ship-the Primrose-on the rocks They pushed out, but the doomed yes. sel was shattered to fragments before they could reach her, and all that tho boat brought back was Q lfteen-yeat- old ships boy, whom they picked up swimming desperately in the trough of the icy waves.
 Perhaps the most terrible disaster in modern British history was the retreat from Cabul in the winter of 1S42 An army of 3,4SO soldiers, with over 12OOO ,amD followers, started southward from the Afghan capital under promise Of safe conduct. On the following Jan. 18 a solitary figure, filthy, unshaven, unkempt, bis mind almost destroyed with the horrors through which he had passed, rode out of the mouth of the Khyber pass. He was Dr. Brydone' the only survivor from all that mighty host. The bodies of the rest, slain by the treacherous Ghllzals, lay scattered for miles along the snowclad floor of the defle.
 It was stupidity, not treachery, which caused the disaster to battalion of a JoDanese regiment in January, 1901 On the 23d of that month a detach- ment of 210 men and officers, under command of a major, left the town Of Awombri for a long route march. It came on to snow very heavily, and soon q regular blizzard was raging with the temperature many degrees be- low freezing point
 They lost their way and wandered on, burning their rifle stocks for fuel By the 25th only seventy-one were left alive. On the afternoon of the 2Ith a corporal alone was picked up by 6 relief party, alive but badly frozen At the end of April, 1902, Mount Pelee, the blunt headed volcano behind St Pierre, began to show signs of ac' tivity. These increased until on May 5 q little before in the morning there was a terrific roar, and huge column of whltehOt sand, burning cin' | ders and poisonous gases came rolling down the mountain side.
 Whatever that cloud consisted of, fl destroyed St Pierre completely. The very stones were cracked with the aw ful heat, and within a few seconds 70, 600 human beings perished Yet dayt afterward, when the ruins were coo enough to explore, a man was found alive. He was a negro prisoner who had been confined in an underground cell and who, though scorched, scared and almost sufTocated, still survived the only living thing in fifty squarE miles.-London Answers.
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