Show A ca W Ms V adventurers I 1 I 1 I 1 axx club V killer siti ship P by FLOYD GIBBONS F famous amous headline hunter IVE VE told you stories about human hilll kilgors kil lors rs and ive spun you tales about animal killers this is the story of a killer ship carl L told mo me this story it happened to him in 1002 when ho he found himself broke and out of a job in south africa and signed on a windjammer for a trip to south america the windjammer was tho the bark albatross which had just brought a load of corn over from buenos aires airas and was going back to tho the samo sam port in ballast there it would pick up a load of wheat and return to E east ast london capo cape colony that suited carls plans so ho he sailed away one morning nt at daybreak and six weeks later after an uneventful trip tho the albatross Alba trosa entered the plata river and docked at buenos aires so fur faro everything had gone smoothly but they had find no sooner begun loading grain for tho the return trip than it became evident that the albatross wis was nono none too seaworthy a craft I 1 when tho the sand ballast had been out of the ho hold witter water began coining in through llio abe scams that dian didn t bother tho the captain any to speak of lie ho just lot let tho the ship 5 ettle inthe in tho mud and when tho the mud got into tho the scams earn and closed them up ho he began loading again many a sailor would have quit that ship chip then and there but carl wanted to got back to south africa ile he stayed on for the return trip but the ship was hardly out of tho the river flyer again before he began to regret it these stowaways were not pleasant ones tho the weather was fair enough at tho the mor moment nent it was lato late juno june and tho the old tub was wan wallowing along before et a fair breeze but it was the rats that bothered carl swarms of them had come aboard while the ship chip was loading grain and now they were threatening to take over the ship we must have had halt half tho the rats in the argentine with us carl says caya they were everywhere wo we found them in tho the pockets of our clo clothes in our bunks and in short everywhere we looked while wo we were lying asleep we were awakened by the animals crawling across out our faces and we had to lie ile perfectly still while we felt their cold feet and tails tickling our noses many a time I 1 stepped on on one ewhen when I 1 got out of my bunk to go on watch 0 the rats were bad enough but as they neared africa things became worse A heavy gale blow blew up and it quickly increased to hurricane force the seas scan mounted until they seemed to bo be fifty feet high and the old ship with nothing but a storm up was plunging ahead at half again her usual speed for a day the ship withstood the buffeting of the gale but that hight along about eight bells the carpenter sounded tho the bilges and rea heavy gale blew up and quickly increased to a hurricane ported to the captain that there war wac four feet of water in the hold bold the captain ordered all hands to tho the pumps no life preservers they must stay with the ship the crew worked grimly at those pumps because because they knew they were working for their lives four feet of water says carl ls bad in any ship in a storm it was especially bad in this rotten old tub we had no life preservers and the lifeboats were so rotten that they would fall apart if any attempt was mado made to raise them off their cradles tho the men pumped ford for two hours and the car carpenter sounded the bilges again this time there was five feet of water in the bilges in spite of all the men could do it had bad gained a toot foot they kept kepton on pumping but the captain was worried at three in the morning when the crew was so exhausted that hardly a one of them could baand up to tho the pumps he called them all into his cabin wet and hungry they trooped in and the captain told them bluntly that he know what to do and wanted to get the he mens opinions there were two courses they could follow land far distant in the sky they could see the reflection of the cape of good hope light they could keep on pumping and try to make port or they could run the ship on the rocks giving chernen th the ernen men it 0 chance to bo be washed ashore it if they escaped being killed by the wreckage or pulled to their deaths by the undertow mate discovers what the trouble was there a chance of keeping the ship afloat until they reached port tho the men all knew it the chief mate was for piling the boat on the rocks and the men agreed with him the ship was turned about and headed for the shore and we were a silent crew as we worked 1 I says bays carl for we knew that in a few hours we would cra shand then what but suddenly the mate made a discovery before the bark had been turned toward shore she had bad been running on her starboard tack with wih the port side deep down in the water when they came about the wind and the seas were astern and sho she came up on on an even keel and now the mate looking over the port side saw a stream 0 water coming out of a great gap in the hull bull of the ship sit at a point which had been submerged a few moments before it was the cause of all their troubles A piece of floating timber had struck tho ho side of the he ship and rammed a hole in the he rotten planking the whid was dying out by that time the carpenter rigged a scaffold over the side filled the hole with bags of oakum and nailed a heavy canvas over it we hove to says carl and it was with a d different if feeling that we manned those pumps again it was six in the morning now and we pumped until eleven when the pumps began sucking air and we knew she was empty we were wera all tired but we were happy six days after that we entered the harbor of east london where the whole town turned out to view the battered looking wreck as it caro care limping in and thus ended that never to be forgotten voyage of the bark albatross service Servi 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