| Show GLOBE TROTTERS NEW YEARS A grizzled sun tanned hard featured man whose tace bore the stamp of hardship and adventure was sitting in the smoking loom of a new york hotel he 1 ai bened to glance at a calendar and saw that the day was dec 31 by jove he exclaimed so to morrow is ne v year s day unless something happens before then it will be the quietest new year I 1 ve spent in twenty three 5 ears in all that time I 1 have never been near my old home in scotland as I 1 am now often I 1 ve tried to get home but somehow or other new year has always found me in a tight corner in some it of tl e w ay part of the world this roan s experience Is typical of that of many of the globetrotters in this age when people are so fond of going to affa in the earth and walking up fn it like a tain personage in the book of jab new years day 1897 found one englishman facing death from hunger and thirst on board a life raft miles southeast of madagascar his ship foi seven days before in a hurricane the boats were smashed by the fury of the waves and some of the crew washed overboard the rest made a raft out of planks and spars but during the night high seas swept over the frail structure and car ried away most of the water and food all we had left said the man who went through this terrible experience were a few tins of potted meat a small barrel of biscuit aard the small est of the water casks that was all we had to keep life in twenty five hun gry men we made it last as long as we could but in four days everything was gone some of the men fell into de and tall ed about throwing them selves overboard perhaps they would have done so but during the night of the fourth day halt a dozen big sharks swam around ie raft in circles the sea was phosphorescent and we could see them plainly in the waves of livid alre which they stirred up as they swam around even the halt crazed men who had talked about drowning themselves shrank from death in a shark s maw and stayed upon the raft next morning I 1 saw by a pocket diary which I 1 carried that the day was j dec 30 to keep up the men s spirits I 1 told them I 1 had dreamed we were going to be hresc aed on new year a day that appealed to the euper sti tion inherent more or less in all sail ors so I 1 kept on telling them a ship would come along and pick us up on that day sure until I 1 began to believe it myself we even discussed grave ly whether the sail would heave in sight in the morning or the afternoon and one man who said he guessed it would be toward evening became quite unpopular new year s morning broke with a dead calm on the oily blistering sea and a blazing ua that aggravated our thirst tenfold there was not a ship in sight all morning nothing except that glassy sheet of water and that cruel cloudless sky above us it was the same in the afternoon and ir hopes fell as the sun sank slowly toward the western horizon just as we were beginning to de one of the men screamed hyster icalla and pointed to a thin trail of smoke on the sky line it was a new zealand liner headed straight for our raft in a couple of hours her doctor was giving us a hearty dinner and slops and weak brandy and water this same man spent another new year s day off cape horn he sailed from valparaiso in a british wind jammer expecting to reach his scot tish home in time to spend hh first christmas there tor many years but calms delayed her for weeks in the south pacific ocean and when she got off cape horn she ran into a tearing gale which brought her too mast down on deck and ripped out all her sails for days she drifted help essly exposed to the full fury of the western gale the crew labored industriously at ringing up spare and bending new sails it was a task of tremendous difficulty for giant combers rolled over the forecastle head continually fil ing the vessel amidships with green seas suddenly in the midst of this toll an apprentice piped out I 1 say fellers this is new year day have you all forgotten ltv belay your tongue retorted the gruff old mate there won t be any new year dinner to day except your usual whack of lobscouse the skipper was superintending the ft ork from the poop rail and heard the conversation cook he bawled out lay aft here the cook came out of his galley and the captain aked what he could give them for a fancy dinner nathin but split peas sir an salt horse and marmalade there ain t no turkeys in my stole room sir he said let s catch one them birds suggested an old tar pointing to sev eral which were circling about the wake of the ship well stretch a point this day and be for given for it I 1 guess after several attempts an albatross was captured with a big fishhook bait ed with salt pork and dragged aboard triumphantly served up nice and brown and swimming in gravy it looked so much like a real turkey that it warmed up the mens hearts and made them think of the holidays they had spent at home but when they tasted it the resemblance ceased it was fishy and tough the meat was like knotted rope yarn and the gravy suggested tar however it as a new year dinner all the same and it was enjoyed as keenly as the finest feast ashore that day an american traveler who Is well known commercially in the west in dies was mixed up in one of the peren nial revolutions of haftl in hot and foolish youth unhappily he al lied himself with the weaker side and one new year s eve found himself one of a small band of desperadoes de fending the town of mira goane against a government army which outnumbered them to 1 during the night the government soldiers forced their way into the town only about thirty of the defenders eri were left alive stand them up in a line and them commanded gen manigat but they were too weak to stand all of chefa were wounded halt starved and fever stricken so the govern ment troops propped them up in chairs and shot them as they lolled there only the white man was spared in order that his case might be inquired irto when he protested pio tested to gen manigat against the cruelty of shooting help less captives that triumphant warrior merely blew a cloud of cigarette smoke and remarked calmly cost la guerre late on new year s eve said the i american they tried me ly court martial when I 1 woke up on new year a morning I 1 was in the sentenced to be shot at sundown it gasn wasn t very pleasant waiting I 1 was quite glad when a gold laced officer entered the cell toward evening with a paper informing me that his excel lenc the citizen president had been pleased to pardon me in of the request of the american minis ter and of the fact that it was new ears day I 1 believe they had never intended to shoot me but only to frighten me for they hardly dared to touch a white man whose country owned a navy that might bombard their ports anyhow I 1 got out of jail in time to eat my dinner with some american and eng friends on a coffee plantation near MIra goane |
