OCR Text |
Show llHstmdsonfcebergi l Boy Lambertson was discharged from Bellevue Hospital. New York j City, last week, and started at once j for his home in Yarmouth, N". S.. where ; j he will eat his Christmas dinner. Bast Christmas he had no dinner to eat and passed Christmas day on an ieeber;V i Lambertson is a youth of 18 years, but hardship and sickness make him 1 look much older. When the brig Sea Serpent was moved to the Roberts 1 wharf in Brooklyn early in March, ' Lambertson went ashore, and after shaking hands with his shipmates pro-' pro-' ceeded to Bellevue Hospital, where he was treated for gangrene superinduced by frost bites. . "You are a sailor?" said the physician physi-cian who examined him. "Yes, sir, a sort of sailor-fisherman." "Who brought you here?" "I came from the Azores in the Sea Serpent." . "And how did you get to the Azores?" "Part of the way on an iceberg and part of the way in the barkentine Nelly." "Now," said the physician, "tell us how you received your injuries. And mind, I don't want a forecastle yarn or a sea serpent story." This is. in substance, the story told by young Lambertson and corroborated in part by letters from Nova Scotia to the hospital authorities: "Father and I went out fishing on Christmas eve last from Clark's Har-ber. Har-ber. We were after mackerel and were doing well, but had not been long out when a Bay of Fundy fog surrounded us and we concluded to put back. The old man steered and I rowed, as there wasn't a breath of wind to fill the sail. After groping our way east for half an hour we struck against something, or something struck against us, and I was thrown clean overboard. I know now that the keel of our boat collided with the spur of an iceberg. When I rose to the surface I heard the old man shouting, shout-ing, but I couldn't answer him, and it seems to me that the spur got between us in the first place and them we were separated altogether by the entire berg. At all events I haven't seen the r-M man since, though he is alive and well, thank God. I am a pretty good swimmer, swim-mer, and after floundering around some time I managed to get on a ledge of the berg and maintain myself there by I bracing my shoulder against a . slight j projection overhead. Knowing I could not keep this position very long. I I climbed with great difficulty to the top, I though really there is no such thing as j a top toa body which, has no shape I that one can make out. It was like one of those huge rocks you may see taken out of the earth by blasting, and it rolled and tumbled about in all sorts of 1 I ways. When I thought I was on top the berg would keel over until I found j myself on the side, and ;tt one time ir j turned a complete somersault and . threw me once more into the water. I (had a good mind to give up then and ' accept what seemed mv fate, but I thought of the folks at home, and that my father being probably-drowned, the j family would have to depend upon me. j So I made another effort. The berg was j rolling and presented many sharp I points here and there, one of which r seized and by this means lifted myself to the ledge from which I had been thrown. Realizing that I could not maintain myself in that position, t climbed once more to the top and thi.-t time found myself in a saucer-shaped cavity. Whipping out my knife I hacked away for dear life until I had scooped out a still deeper hollow, and after much hard workU collected quit a pile of pebbles and sea weed, on which I rested my feet. Meantime my ! body from the waist up was exposed, j Even at this I was in danger of falling (out. or off, when the berg rolled over, I as it frequently did. I was therefore obliged to be constantly on the alert. From the situation I was now in I j could think and think. Th berg had I evidently come down from Labrador in the warm current and was drifting in a southwesterly direction. The part of ir above water was about twelve feet in altitude, and I had hopes that if r did not succumb to hunger and thirst I might be taken off by a passing ship. Exhausted from my exertions, and though fearing that sleep might mean death. I could not resist the drowsiness that came over me and so fell asleep. When I awoke after a few hours it was night and the stars were in the sky. Though my hands and feet were numbed. I did not feel as cold as one might imagine. It is useless describing my sensations. I thought of the sad Christmas mother and the kids' would pass without me and, perhaps, without the old man, and I prayed to God to save me. I was glad when the rmh-ning came Christmas morning but I suffered suf-fered fearfully from hunger and thirst, especiallly from thirst. Christmas day passed over me like Christmas eve, and at the dawn of the 2fith I gave up hope. But one should never despair, even though hundreds of miles out at sea on an iceberg, for that evening I was taken off the berg by a boat from the barkentine barken-tine Sea Serpent, of Charlottetown, I. E. I., commanded by Captain Ferguson and bound for the Azores. The captain cap-tain treated me well, and after staying cm the Azores a few weeks I came to New York in the Sea Serpent, a Liverpool Liver-pool brigantine. "That is" about all," concluded the young fiisherman from Nova Scotia, "and say, doctor, I don't want to spend no more Christmas days on a berg." |