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Show BRITISH AVIATOR HAS FEARFULEXPERIENCE Comes Down in an East Af-! Af-! rican Jungle and Breaks His Machine. ATTACKED BY BEASTS Finally Picked Up by the j Friendly Natives After ! Many Narrow Escapes. By International News Service. LONDON. Aug. 25. Horrible experi-; experi-; ences of a British aviator who came down in an East African jungle are described by him in a letter just received by a relative rela-tive here. The aviator. Lieutenant G. Garrood, went up to bomb a German ambush on the Ruflii river, but through engine trouble, trou-ble, had to descend in the bush, the machine ma-chine landing with broken propeller in a bog. It took him four days to make his way to a place of safety. He tells how, in the dusk, he was confronted con-fronted with an ugly black animal about four feet high with vicious tusks. He J climbed a tree and prepared to put in the I night there. Later he opened his eyes ! and saw something like two green elec- trie bulbs about thirty feet from the tree, i They moved round in a circle. This con-j con-j tinued for forty-five minutes. Tension Unbearable. He says: "The tension was unbearable. I wanted want-ed to scream, shout and yell all In one, but instead I burst out with "The Admiral's Ad-miral's Broom," and with a full-throated bass I roared out the three verses. No applause, but a reward the leopard slunk away. Why had I not thoght of it before? "I went through my repertoire. I laughed as I finished 'Two Eyes of Grey." It seemed so ridiculous. Then I got on to hymns, remembered four verses of 'O God, Our Help in Ages Past," and sang the 'Amen,' too. The whole thing had its ludicrous side." Next morning while ewimming a river he passed seven yards from a crocodile's mouth, but just reached the bank in time. Without food or arms his only weapon of defense his nail scissors his progress through the awful bush was about 100 yards an hour. His clothing was In ribbons and his flesh exposed to the thorns, sword grass and flies. He swam seven more rivers that day and sank down exhausted against a tree. He could hear a lion roaring about 500 vards away and, somewhat nearer, the grunting of a hippopotamus. Loses Consciousness. He continues: "Being exhausted, I more or less lost consciousness for perhaps half an hour or so. Nothing short of a hippo charging charg-ing could have made me climb a tree. Am afraid life had little to offer about that time." It was while lying here that the lieutenant lieu-tenant had the annoying experience of surveying two large baboons, the size of a small man, quarreling over his trousers, now in threads, and among the tops of forty-foot trees. It was not until he had passed another hdrrible day and equally terrible night in the bush that he at last was picked up by some natives. "Their eyes seldom left me," he adds. "Undoubtedly I was a strange sight my legs bare and bleeding, my short vest sodden, sod-den, dirty and torn, no trousers of course, just a dirty sun helmet, a short stick in my right hand and with four days' growth of beard on my dirty face." |