Show tad 0 v V adventurers CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF 1 tie the iron serpent H HELLO ELLO EVERYBODY well sir weve had two or three yarns in this column i j about strong men who have been in danger of being crushed to death by huge ducre snakes twenty or thirty feet long but jim evrard I 1 of brooklyn N Y went up against the great granddaddy of all the reptiles jims snake was three hundred and sixty feet long it was made of solid steel links ten and a half inches long and five inches wide it was the great anchor chain of an ocean going steamer and when you get one of those babies wrapped around your neck worse than any python or boa constrictor that ever lived it was on february 5 1918 on the army cargo transport U S S hatteras that it happened jim evrard had joined the navy as a radio operator in 1917 and here he was on the hatteras somewhere out in the atlantic ocean the hatteras had sailed a week or so before from hampton roads va A few days out of port she had run into a bad storm that had wrecked her steering gear and left her wallowing helplessly in mid ocean the captain had dropped both of the tha three ton anchors they helped very little but beside the point the point is that those anchors were down it if they been jim would have had no adventure hed have won no ten dollar bill and wed have had no story when morning came the storm subsided once the anchors were down they had to stay down until the storm was over while the gale was raging the ship pitched and rolled so violently that it would have been dangerous to try to pull them up but OSE t to our horror the chain was running wild on the morning that the storm subsided the crew rigged an e emergency mer gency gear and began to hoist them aboard where jim evrard comes into the story jim was a radio operator but in a pinch aboard ship everybody turns to io and lends a hand and jim was sent down into the chain lockers with a lad ad named piercy and another lad named white to lay anchor chain I 1 guess that sort of calls tor for a word of explanation the chain lockers on the hatteras were a couple of rooms eight feet square just below deck up at the bow of the ship they were used ot of course to stow the anchor chains in while they were not in use up on the deck a big winch was hauling in the starboard anchor and as the chain came in it was passed through a hole in the deck down into the chain locker well sir if that chain were just allowed to lie in the locker any way it landed it would tangle and snarl next time the anchor was dropped it had to be laid in a neat coil as it came down and what jim and piercy and white were doing down there that fateful february day that old lady adventure had picked out to give three sailors the scare of their lives A choppy sea made footing 1 insecure by that time all three of them were pretty tired the chain with its big ten and a half inch links was heavy the sea was still choppy ma making king their footing none too sure but they worked away at the tha port chain until the coil rose high in the locker finally the chain stopped coming in they could tell by the size of their coil that the anchor was up and out of the water and ready to be heaved on deck the three lads had stopped work and leaning each in a different corner of the cramped locker bracing themselves against the pitching and tossing of the ship we were waiting for orders to go back up on deck says jim but the order was slow in coming imagine our surprise when we saw the anchor chain begin to pay out again it moved slowly at first and then quite rapidly after several seconds of watching it increased its speed we realized to our horror that the chain was running wild and those lads had good reason to be horrified great loops of heavy chain began whipping in long swings striking the sides of the locker faster and faster it went and wider and wider were the loops that lashed out on all sides it was swinging with terrific force says jim if it hit us it would break our bones like cardboard or crush our skulls as if they were egg shells and there we stood not daring to move out of our corners wondering when the flying mesh of steel was going to whip in after us wondering when a chance lurch of the ship was going to throw us off balance out into the path of that whirling mass of metal the noise of the links was like a death knell the din was terrific our prison was small and we could feel the tha wind on our faces as the chain flew by in wider and wider arcs it swung the links as they hit the walls sounded like the beats of a death knell to all of us I 1 wanted to faint but I 1 dare powerless to do anything at all I 1 kept my mind on the one thing that might save me standing right where I 1 was in the scant protection the corner of the room afforded me loop after loop whipped its way around the little locker and spun on up through the hole in the top op only a few more of those loops to go now then all be sate safe jim watched those last few loops go and breathed a prayer of thanksgiving they WERE safe over in their own corners stood white and piercy chalky faced but unhurt then they called to the he officers up on deck who by that time doubted it if any of them were alive the cause of the trouble they had found had been old man alan neptune himself myself A roll of the ship had thrown over the anchor chock and another her roll had caused the engineer to slip and throw the anchor winch out of gear the anchor had to be raised again says jim but we sent down to lay the chain the next three men had better luck than we did copyright service |