The Press., 1921-04-07
RIDE HAD THRILLS
New ZeaIander Probably Broke
 Many Speed Records.
Fortunate to Live to Write of Mad
 Journey AcroSs PreelpIce, and Night of Terror.

A thrilling adventure in the timber
 lands of New Zealand is related by
 MT. David Blake, who met with it as a
 result of a quarrel with a man named
 Smertz. Do you know the great divide
 on Mount Siberia? asks MT. Blake in
 the Wide World Magazine. I had the
 contract for cutting out and sending
 down the timber from the upper
 slopes. Across the gulch, taut as
 bow-string, a steel cable stretched for eight hundred feet. The kauri logs, slung to an underhung trolley running
 on huge sheaveS, were, sent over the
 wire to the other side A guide rope. hooked to the trolley, served to check
 the run and ease the timber to the
 landing stage below.
 Rod Mckenzie, Duncan and Smertz worked in my gang. It was the end of the day in late autumn. The last log "a monster twenty feet long by thirty In girth-hung ready for launching.
 was on the point of giving the signal, when, fancying noticed a slackness
 in one of the slings, I mounted the log.
 This was Smertz's moment for de ferred vengeance. AS quick as light ming he swung his ax and sprang the hook of the guide rope from the sock ct. On the instant the huge log gath cred headway down the taut wire. Some one screamed, Jump, Dave, jump" But there was no time.
 All this happened in 8 fash. I threw myself face down upon the log and gripped the sling chains with grip of death. Bushes, ground and tree stumps flew backward beneath me in a mad blur of speed, The racing sheaves, in their iron block casing, screamed and shr1lled. Fire flashed from them. Fire ran along the wire. Showers of sparks flew out upon the wind
 Suddenly there was a jar, the grind and shriek of metal on metal. screamed and closed my eyes. There was a jerk that wrenched my arms in their sockets, and the mad rush stopped. The strained wire above sprang, bent again and hummed like a twanged boWstring. The log, hang ing beneath, 1eaped up and down, up and down. was joIted from my hold and, for a horrible minute, with one hand clutched in the chains, hung over the abyss. Slowly, painfully, dragged myself up again. My nerves were in rags, my limbs shook, and my teeth chattered. I took off my belt and, reeving 1t through a chain link, shift ed position; then I rebuckled the strong leather round my waist.
 This is what had happened. The pin ., Tn the lower block had worked loose. The wire had jumped the groove in the sheave wheel, becoming damned between 1t and the iron casing, and the log had braked itself by its own weight.
 A stiff wind had blown during the and with night 1t hardened I into a gale from the southeast. It rOared, sweeping through the defile. Rain and wind-driven hail hissed across the darkness in fierce gusts. Flannel shirt and trousers, which rep resented all my clothing, were little protection against the fierce cold. could not move to ease my position. Ice formed on the chains and on the wood my clothing froze hard and stiff.
 The night was as dark as the mouth of a pit. A single big star broke at intervals through the wrack of flying scud. watched it idly as lay in a sort of trance.
 I awOke in a warm bed. It vas Dick, my close companion, that had come out along the wire in the morn ing after the storm. He had brought with him sort of chair of strong rope running on a pulley; but how he had managed on that swaying, slippery log to get me, helpless and uncon- scious, into the. chair I do not know.
 Smertz? The boss got him away from the boys, locked him inside his office and stood guard over him until The police came. Otherwise they would have killed him.