Show f fi i I i ADVENTURERS' ADVENTURERS CLUB I HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES LIVES 4 I i OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF I Soft and Deadly By FLOYD GIBBONS 1 Famous Headline Hunter I i THE HE HE trouble with Leo Caron was that he had it too soft in inI I 1 fact so soft it doggone near killed him That's a new sort of I complaint for an adventurer to be making But its it's a fact just justI I the same Leo lives in New York City but in 1916 when he was a kid his home was in New Bedford Mass He was twelve years old then and just a afew afew afew few blocks away from the house he lived in were the Gosnold Cotton mills mills mills-a a collection of great rambling buildings full of all sorts of things that a kid would be interested in All AH the kids in Leos Leo's neighborhood played around those mills mills mills- that is they ther did lid when the mill people didn't catch up with them I Some of the workers didn't mind But if the bosses saw them they were chased out Leo says he lie didn't blame those bosses much We weren't any an Little Lord around our neighbor neighbor- neighborhood hood he says and some of our pranks must have hae cost the mill owners a lot of money There was one place in that mill miU that the kids liked better than all the rest That was a big room that was used to store the cotton in after it was The bales were pulled apart and the cotton blown through tubes into a huge pile in the middle of the storeroom floor It came out of the blower ver all aU fuzzy and soft the soft the softest stuff Leo had ever seen That was the trouble with it it-as it as Leo was to find out later It was so dog dog- doggone doggone gone soft that it almost killed Leo Boys Bo s 's Liked to Dive Into the Cotton There was little work to do in that big room Its only occupant was a big fellow lellow who weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds and his sole duty was to push the cotton down through a great tube when it was needed in the room below But he only had to do that at certain intervals A good part of the time he wasn't there at all And in those intervals kids used to run all over the place The kids had one favorite stunt that that- they did in that room They would sneak through the mill yard run for the big room full of cotton climb up on a partition that divided the room into stalls and jump down onto the edge ede of ot the big soft sort pile of fluffy stuff They always jumped feet first and like as not they'd sink in up to their knees before their feet came to rest on the solid floor That was near the edge where the cotton wasn't very deep They never got near the middle of the pile They had no time for that That big fellow might come back any minute and catch them They always jumped and then ran as fast as they could for the door One day when none of the other kids were around Leo Caron sneaked into the mill alone It was just about half an hour before closing time as ashe ashe ashe he went up the stairs ducked into the store-room store and climbed onto the partition As he was ready to take the jump a thought occurred to him Here was his chance to try tryout out a new trick and show it to the other kids the next time they all came up together Leo Couldn't Get Out Again Leo poised himself on the top of the partition But instead of jumping jump jump- jumping jumping ing he raised his arms and dived head first right into the middle of the pile of cotton That pile was ten or twelve feet high in m the middle I had dived Leo says with my arms together palms touching over my head That wedge like formation of my arms carried me deep into the cotton From where I lay I couldn't see anything but it seemed to me that I had penetrated that mass of fluff until I was buried completely It was hard to breathe under all aU that cotton and the topsy position I was in was most uncomfortable I knew I would suffocate if I 1 stayed there long and I decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to get out of that pile as soon as possible But getting out of that pile wasn't going to be so easy as getting in Leo tried to get out out and and found that he could hardly move a muscle The cotton had packed down tight against him and all aU his wriggling only served to put him deeper into the pile That soft stuff stun was like liI e quicksand quicksand and and slowly but surely it was smothering smothering smothering ering him Says he No uNo one had seen me come in and in-and and it was almost time for the mill to tp shut down for the night I realized that my chances of rescue were small and I became panic In my frantic efforts to free myself I became exhausted and gasped feebly for air which all the time was becoming more and more scarce In my childish horror of death all sorts of ghastly visions arose in my imagination Memories Memo Memo- Memories Memories ries of my youthful past flashed before my mind and I even pictured my four best friends as my pallbearers How He lIe Was Vas Saved by a Rat And now into our story comes comes comes-a a rat Doggone few people ever have a good word to say for lor rats but Leo will give them a boost any old time For it was a rat rat rat-a a great big factory rat that saved his life that day The one man working in the store room the store the big three pound er was er-was was making his last round of the day closing windows and locking the place up for the night As he approached the pile of cotton he espied a rat and began looking around for something to throw at it There was only one solid object in the place a place a black thing that seemed to be lying on the side of ot the pile of ot cotton He De reached over and grabbed it It was a shoe and it seemed to be attached to something The big fellow gave a hearty tug and out of o the pile came a year twelve-year-old boy limp exhausted- exhausted unconscious The big fellow lellow called for lor help They gave Leo artificial respiration and it took a full hall half hour to revive him It was several days before he was completely recovered recovered but but he never would have breathed again if it hadn't been for a for a rat t e Service |