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Show ADVENTURE' CLUB f O i HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES V sv OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! "River of Triple Doom'- By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter HELLO EVERYBODY: Here comes a real adventurer, boys and girls. She is Mrs. Eleanor de Villareal of Harbor View, Fort Wads-worth, Wads-worth, S. I., N. Y., and she is bringing us a tale of adventure that will blow your hat off. In a way, Eleanor is champion among the adventurer who have had their yarns printed in this column because she parlays her thrills has three of 'em, one right on top of another. It's a brand new way of playing the adventure game and boy, oh boy, what it does to your tieart action. When Eleanor was a little girl her parents built a summer home at Pine Beach, N. J., and Eleanor spent many happy months of her childhood, child-hood, swimming, fishing and boating on the Toms river, the broad, tidewater tide-water inlet that runs past Pine Beach on its way to the ocean. In the summer of 1915 there had been a shark scare all up and down the Jersey coast Dozens of sharks had been seen at the beaches along the ocean, and there were rumors that some of them had come up into Toms river. But no one had ever seen them there, and to Eleanor and the other kids in the neighborhood, it was just a fanciful tale that none of them took much stock in. Good Reason for the Shark Scare. But one day Eleanor found out that the shark scare wasn't so fanciful a tale as she had thought She had gone out crabbing in a rowboat with Marguerite Hottenstein, a little girl younger than herself, and Marguerite's Marguer-ite's two brothers, Edward and David. They were fishing for the crabs along the piers of the drawbridge that crosses the river between Pine Beach and Island Heights, when suddenly the guard on the bridge began yelling at them to get out of the boat and onto the bank. At first the kids couldn't understand what the yelling was all about. Then they saw. Two gray fins were cutting the water in great loops and circles around their boat. Sharks! Those deadly tigers of the deep had come into the river after all. The kids followed one another in a mad scramble to get out of the boat They made it but not a moment too soon. As Eleanor and little Marguerite climbed up the side of the bank toward the bridge, one of Two Gray Fins Were Cutting the Water. those sharks hit the rowboat with a flip of his tail and turned it over in the water. The two boys, older and braver, stayed down at the bottom of the bank, trying to get the boat turned right side up in the water again. But Eleanor and little Marguerite had had enough of boats for one day. They finished their climb to the railroad bridge and started walking back, across the ties, to the other side of the river. It was hard going for the two kids. The ties on which they had to walk seemed awfully few and far between, and through the gaps they could see the river running far below. Even so, it was better, they thought than risking the river in a flimsy boat with sharks swimming all around them. Next a Train Came at Them. But was it better? They had scarcely gone a hundred feet before they found out that it wasn't. From behind them they heard a sudden, shrill blast of a whistle and turned to see a freight train, rounding a curve and starting across the trestle. A few feet ahead of them was a sand-barrel set on a platform beside the track. It was a haven of safety, but there was only room for one. Eleanor grabbed little Marguerite by the arm, hustled her to the platform plat-form and helped her climb into the barrel. Then, with the train almost on her she turned and started to run for the other side of the bridge. But running wasn't so easy on the gaping floor of widely-spaced ties, and the train was moving faster, much faster, than she could. In her haste she missed her footing, stumbled and felL She scrambled to her feet again, and, with the train rumbling behind her, continued her hopeless race for the other end of the bridge. The engine was so close now that she could hear the steam hissing from the exhaust valves. Her knees were shaking, her whole body weak with terror. Again she stumbled and fell, this time over the side of the trestle into the shark-ridden water below. Eleanor's Desperate Swim for Life. She landed with an impact that almost knocked the breath out of her, but the cool water quickly brought her to her senses again, and to 8 sudden realization of her new danger. Somewhere nearby two sharks were swimming, and she was in the water now, without even a flimsy boat between her and those angry monsters' jaws. She began swimming frantically for the shore. It was two hundred feet away, and it seemed at least that many miles. In Eleanor's mind was a picture of those two gray, flashing fins that must surely be following her. Cold terror gripped her heart She redoubled her efforts and swam faster. A hundred feet and still no sign of the sharks. Eleanor began to wonder it after all, she was to get to the other side alive. She swam the other hundred and climbed up on the shore exhausted. It was several minutes before she could get her breath back, and she had gone all the way home before she discovered that she hadn't come out unscathed from her experience, after all. She had ripped her leg open, from the knee down, in her fall from the trestle, but in her terror of the sharks, she hadn't even noticed it 1 Copyright WNU Service. |
