| OCR Text |
Show L : . lai ADVENTURERS' CLUB "Buried or Eaten?" By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter. YOU know, boys and girls, one of the most horrible things that can happen to a person is to be buried alive. For a long time I thought it was absolutely the most horrible, but since I've read the letter I got the other day from Edward V. Meister, I've had to change my mind about that. For Ed Meister was actually In a spot once, back In the winter of 190G-07, that was a lot worse than Just merely being burled alive. As a matter of fact he was buried alive, and his only hope In those terrible moments was that nothing worse would happen to him before It was all over. For If Ed got out of that Improvised tomb of his, in the one way he could Imagine himself escaping, It would only be to get eaten alive. And doggone It, who wouldn't rather be buried than eaten? From the sound of that last paragraph you'd think this adventure happened In Africa or India, where there are plenty of old tombs to be buried In and plenty of lions and tigers to do the eating. You Can Be Eaten Alive in a Civilized Land. But It wasn't that sort of tomb Ed got Into, and It wasn't an animal that was going to do the eating. No Ed's adventure took place right here In this country at Lisbon Falls, Maine, In a pulp and paper mill that was located there. Ed, then a boy of sixteen, had just started working In the chip loft of the pulp mill. His Job was to see that the big hoppers hop-pers full of wood chips were In good working order, and supplying a steady flow of chips to the big "digester" tanks down below. The hoppers that Ed took care of were continually filling continually continu-ally being emptied. Huge conveyor belts brought the chips up from below and threw them Into the tops of the boxes. Trapdoors Were the Mouth of This Cannibal. Great trapdoors in the floor opened at Intervals to let them fall Into the digester big chemical tanks filled with acids, one of which stood directly beneath each of the hoppers. Ed used to have to get down Into the hoppers to shovel the chips this way and that, and there was a bell that rang just before be-fore the hopper trap was opened, to warn him to get back on the solid floor. Ed was kept pretty busy shoveling chips that first night so bisy that, when he shoveled some chips against the warning bell, he didn't notice It. HOPPED A Landslide of Chips Was Falling From the Hopper. The first intimation he had that anything was wrong was when, while standing on a bed of chips, directly over the trap, the door opened without with-out warning. It was a big pile of chips Ed was standing on. That saved him from an immediate plunge into the acid vat below. As it was, he felt the ground fall from under him as a ton or so of finely mashed wood fell from beneath his feet. Before his body went through the trap, though, the door closed. For the moment he was safe from the vat. But in the meantime, a landslide of chips was falling from the sides of the hopper, burying him. Smother or Sizzle It Was Ed's Choice. The rush of chips from the sides of the vat covered him up to his chin. He struggled to work himself free, but he couldn't move a muscle and all the time more chips, pouring In from the conveyor belts, were falling on his unprotected head. Ed screamed for help, but nobody heard him. He cried and shouted again and again as the rising tide of wooden splinters mounted to his nose his eyes. Dust got into his nostrils and choked him, but he couldn't move a muscle to brush those chips away from his face. He began to find it difficult to breathe, and his repeated shouts for help were muffled to a meaningless gurgle. There was only one way Ed could think of to get out of that hopper, and that would send him to a worse fate than was already his. Any minute min-ute now, the trap would be opening for, another bunch of chips, and this time, Ed would go with them down Into a vat full of sulphuric to be eaten alive by the acid's biting sting. Even a Youth Sometimes Loses Hope. And he began to wonder then, which it would be suffocation In the hopper, or a more agonizing death in the big digester tanks 15 feet below the spot where he now rested. The chips were up to the top of his head now Ed was almost completely covered. A kid of sixteen will cling to hope for a long time, and it has to be a mighty tough spot that makes him lose it. But Ed lost hope then, and gave himself up for lost Then, even as he had resigned himself to fate, he heuird a man's voice shouting. It was Wallace Fowler, the foreman, warning the men below not to touch the hopper, and summoning help to the poor kid burled over his head In the chip box: Wallace had come up to the chip loft to see how Ed was getting on, and found him getting on very badly Indeed. It took a lot of hard work to get Ed out of that chip box, but when they'd finally dug him loose, he quit his Job then and there. "Maybe I'd take a chance and face death for my 10 dollars a week," says Ed. "But I'll be darned If I was going to face two deaths again, for any amount of money." WND Service. |
