Evening Star Newspaper, December 31, 1922, Page 37

BY RALPH STOCK. Second of a weries of three articles, cach recounting a lex of the famousd “Crifse of the Dream Ship.” E all have our dreams. Without them we should AR be clods. It is in our #43 dreams that we accomplish ‘he impeseible; the.rich man dumps nis load of responsibility and lives in @dong shack on a mountain top; the poor man becomes rich; the sta at-home travels; the wanderer finds n abiding place. For more years than I like to recall %y dream has been to cruise through the South Sea Islands in my own &hip, and if you had ever been to the South Sea Islands, it would be yours als They are the sole re- maining spot on this earth that is not infested with big-game shooting wexpeditions, gloze-trotters or prof- “ fteers, where the inhabitants know how to live, and where the unfor- tunate from distant and turbulent lands can still find interest, ment and peace. ¢ It is no easy matter to fiml the " counterpart of a dream ship, but in the end I found her paticntly await- ing me in a backwater of glorious Dovon—a Norwegian-built auxiliary cutter of twenty-three tons register, designed as a lifeboat for the North sea fishing fleet, forty-seven feet over all, fifteen feet beam, eight feet draught, built to stand up to any- thing, and ba handled by a crew of thres or less. Such was my Dream Ship in cold print. Having found her, there was the littls matter of paying for her. I Tad no money. I have never had ¥ money, but that is a detail that suld never be allowed to stand in way of a really desirable dream. was necessary to make some. How? conducting a stubborn offensive $0n the Army authorities for my war gratuity. By sitting up to all hours 11 a moth-eaten dressing gown and x microscopic flat writing short storles. By assiduously cultivating maiden aunts. By coercion. By— tut I refuse to say more. " * x x FEE Dream Ship became mine, but what of a crew? Well, I have a sister, and a sister is an un- S enjoy- | as a fact, the keel descended on the | skipper's toe, extracting a shout of anguish from that usually restrain- ed mariner. The skipper, be it sald, repressing his longing to accom- |pany us to the end, had undertaken | to pilot us across the Bay of Biscay to Vigo, Spain. Almost simultaneously, and for no apparent reason, Steve took an in- voluntary seat on the open skylight, which shut with a crash on one of his fingers. * ok x x HE moorings were cast off pre- | 1 maturely, and, getting under way on the wrong tack, we sailed, with the | utmost precision, into a neighboring | fishing smack, nearly breaking our | bowsprit. 1 could imagine the grinning heads of the fisherfolk lining the break- | water wall. “They be goin' ter the South Sea Is- lands, they be! I could almost hear | them saying. and dived below to show them what a motor auxiliary could do. | There were one hundred and ffty | vessels moored in that harbor, and 1 | should not like to say how many we | | fouled during the next half hour. In- | deed. I could not, for throughout the process T was wrestling with the en- | gire, which refused to budge—untii} | we had rounded the breakwater, and | | there was no further use for it. Such | i | | | | [ THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., DECEMBER 31, 1922—PART 4. (A ¢ 0 ! Getting and Equipping the Dream Ship Proves to Be Big Preliminary Task—Departure From England and Course Through Riotous Bay of Biscay Are Eventful Stages of Voyage. Striking Out on the Limitless Expanse of the Ocean—Craft Slips Away From Swimmers in ¢ ¢ a Becalmed Sea—Making the Panama Canal on Way to South Sea Islands. -, Al Y /4 = —— commonly handy thing to have, pro-| vided she is of the right variety. | Mine yelept Peter happens to be, for| &it6 agreed to forego all the delicacics | ©f the season and float with me| on a plece of wood to the S.uth Sea | ¢ ¢islands So also did a recently de- | '7".‘Ivr / m miobilized officer, Steve, who, on Rhearing that these eame islands were g-fl, less than three thousand miles|is the way of these necoessary evils vem the nearest early-morning |aboard a sailing ship. parade, offered his services with al-| Coming on deck, I was confronted most unbecoming alacrit; with a sorry spectacle. Our port A\t long last there came a day |light-board was in splinters. Relics en the shipwright's hammer | of vessels we had caressed in parting ased to resound aboard the Dream | littered the deck. The skipper was &hip, and save for provisions and!in the steerlng well, with the tiller water and 2 snowdrift of unpaid bills, | in one hand and Lis toe in the other, «-a were ready to take leave of the and Peter was administering lodine yards. |and lint to Steve's crushed finger. With an ebb tide and a veteran| “She goes!" I triumphed, tactlessly e skipper, who had taught us some |referring to my herculean labors ©f the rudiments of navigation|Wwith the engfhe. “D'you think it's broken?” demand- ed the skipper, extending an enor- whoard, we dropped down the river, | snd as cleanly as may be on to a; mud bank! I am not golng to say | mous, bootless foot. how it happened, because I do mot| “Flat as a pancake,” muttered know. All we were acutely conscious | Steve. , o at the time was that a yachts-| Which gives a fair idea of the trend of individual thought on occasions. But at last we were off! Off before a seven-knot nor'wester, and with only 12,000 miles to go! What else mat- tered? By the time we had picked up an intermittent pallor on the horizon that was Ushant light at a distance of thirty miles the wind had yuan, in his pretty little six-tonner, wus approaching down the chanuel tnat we should have followed, and @ik not, and that somehow the secret ©* our dream must have reached his | protruding ears, for as he came @breast of us he reared his hideous form out of the cockpit. “Hello,” ho cried, “have you made sour South Sea Islands already?” Wo did not answ There was nothing to be said; but when a tug § was nothing the Dream Ship loved more dearly than half a gale on the quarter. In a serles of exhilarating swodps it flung her down into the Bay of Biscay; but what she did not like was being left there to roll help- lessly In a windless swell. I have to call it a “swell,” just as I have to say we “rolled,” though neither word conveys our subsequent acrobatics in the least. The Bay has an unsavory reputa- tion, anyway, but for sheer unpleas- antness commend me to the mood In which the Dream Ship made its ac- auled us free on the next tide, and | ounding a bend in the river, we! o upon our adversary in precisely » same predicament, we passed him | lence, the most eatistying silence ve ever indulged in. A A JITHOUT a dissentient voice the l\‘ task of choosing and stowing provisiens was relegated to r—-a woman is so much better that. sort of thing.” Steve and I wimitted as much, with touching | Quaintance. nuagnanimity. Literally from beam end to beam It due course a cart backed up to|end we lurched. The engine was use- less. Our propeller was out of the quarter, and under circumstances as much out of the water as in it. In response to our eternal lurch- ings, ominous sounds began to filter up from below. A metallic click- clock, click-clock, a methodical thud- ding, a resounding crash. The first of these proved to be a kerosene tank that had come adrift from its rack fastenings and threatened to fall on the engine. A galvanized iron recep- tacle containing seventy gallons of liquid is not the easiest of things to handle in a seaway, let alone with a crushed finger. My heart went out to Steve, but it was characteristic of the man that never a whimper escaped him. All that we could do was to wedge the tank into place with stout battens clean across the ship, which we did, and turned our attention to the next calamity. The piano had followed the example of the tank, and the wash-hand stand had emu- lated the piano; and rather than ap- pear peculiar, a 200-pound drum of treasured Scotch oatmeal was rolling on the floor, mingling its contents with the brine thjt oozed from a crate of salt pork wedged under.the cabin table. The crash was merely the dethrone. ment of a lighted stove In the fo'c’s’le, ou which Peter h:d Dbeen G- quayside and an active little g1 ocer proceeded to heap the dream: #hip's deck with comestibles—tinned, U‘ sed and jarred. These we passed 'Uirough the skylights before an ad- 2 iri audience of fisherfolk, and ¥ote being ambidextrous, con- trived to stow them in the lockers ‘- th one hand and make a list of Jiem with the other. Behold, then, the crew of the dream #hip ready to sail, with a combined capital of one hundred pounds ster- Ying and & clearance for Brisbane, Australia, as at 6 o'clock the next sorning a small, depressed-looking firamnlon wended its way to the yuay, followed by the sidelong glances and whispered comments of the fish market fraternity. it was the noble army of dream 1. orchants setting forth on its quest. And why depressed? 1 do not know, ¥icept that. personally, on the eve ¢? any problematical undertaking I scol that way, and so, apparently, do ethers. Perhaps it was that the en- lusiasm of ignorance had momen- ta=ily deserted us, and we were awed 1y & rational glimpse of the task that lay ahead. In silence we rowed out to the @ream ship and hoisted sall. I was going to say that in silence we low- ¢;ed the dinghy ea o its chocks, but, strengthened to half a gale, and there | weather prophets concerning West Indian hurricane season: June, too soon. July, stand by. August, if you must. September, remember. October, all over. ! Atlantic. | persisting for the last hour, and in | spite of her own indisposition, in an | attempt to produce something that some one would eat. | On the whole, a healthy lesson in | making all secure before sailing. | In the midst of our agonies be-, ilow a stentorian voice hailed us from the cockpit: “All hands on deck! Lower main- | | sail!” Which was followed almost | immediately by a “crack” like a pis- | tol shot. | | Our boom had snapped clean off | about five feet from the end. H ! Such is “the Bay” In lightsome | | mood. Apparently the only artlcle {aboard unaffected by, it was the | chronometer, ticking placidly in its | gimbals and bed of plush. There was | something enviable about that chro-| nometer, | HE dawn brought with it a faint | but steady breath, and discover- | ing that there was sufficlent boom left to set a double-reefed mainsail, we continued on our way, and a| blessedly even keel, until toward | evening we raised the coast of Spain. | The welcome ! and unmistakable | smell of land came to us over the water, and presently the mouth of the Vigo river opened out, revealing | a maze of leading lights. | The engine behaved itself, and by midnight the Dream Ship had an- | chored off the town, to an accom- | paniment of star.shells and crackers. It pleased us to imagine that these were our welcome, but as a fact the | {nevitable Spanish flesta was in prog- | ress. We had made our first foreign | port. ! Dropping the Skipper there, at the | end of seven day's routine, and| fair but light winds, we experlenced the acute joy. of finding land pre-| cisely where our frenzied calculations | had placed it. As Madelra loomed on | the starboard bow, Steve was seen to | pace the deck with a quiet but new- | born dignity—until hailed below to “OUR BOOM HAD SNAPPED " CLEAN OFF.” help wash dishes. But even this failed to quell the havigator's exuber- ance, and the dish washer exchanged views on the subject with the helms.- man through the skylight. This, then, was the navigation that mas- ter mariners made such a song and dance about! Well, we must be mas- ter mariners, that was all he had to say! We had summoned Madeira, and Madeira had appeared! We were not at all sure that we had not discov- ered Madeira! Next we made the Canary lalands, and then for six mortal weks we waited at Las Palmas, that it might ve fultilled which was spoken by the u The great adventure had now begun | ship's stern, in earnest. Three thousand miles of | as one hypnotized. il il i i Al st oyl : B (V¥ | countless, almost mechanical actions iof a day's civilized existence—but at| e pery rversity of human 3 ! | sea life is composed of such details, | 2 3 natre, the {and one is thankful for them. Mak- the | ing a long-splice or an “eye,” filling | and down trimming the lamps, washing deck, or even washing up i dishes, all serve to keep the mind|g..q from unhealthy conjecture. Sleep was agaln our worst cnemy { at the tiller. Staring into the lighted And on the third of this iast. re-|binnacle with its ewaying compass| “THE DREAM SHIP WAS LEAVING US IN MID-ATLANTIC. ALTERNATELY. WE YELLED AND SWAM.” | assuring month, we eet safl across the | card, or down at the phosphorescent { water swirling and hissing- past the| became | the hel man t seemed that Atlantic ocean lay ahead of us, hold- | he was not of this world, but an atom ing we knew not what of new expe- rience, and for third time since set- ting sail our undertaking imbued us with a certain amount of awe. At night, alone in the cockpit, one began to think. Would the drink-! ing water hold out. -What it the chronometer broke down? Supposing —It is as well not to think too deeply on o on, and the crossing’of the Atlantic In & small boat is one. Some one has sald that It is the routine of life that keeps us sane, and I am inclined to agree, On shore, one is apt to invelgh against *“the hurtling through-space.’ The temp- tation was to surrender himself to the senusous joy of it,"a temptation resisted only by an almost painful effort, and the knowledge that the lives of all aboard -depend on -his keeping his leaden eyelids from clos- ing down." A four-hour watch as helmsman is too long. They do not allow it in the mercantile marine; but what were we to do? Steve confessed to recall- ing all the poetry that he knew, con- sisting of most of Kipling. the whole of Omar Khayyam, 2nd sundry doubt- | them backward. Peter hummed over | ;Séekefs for £ dventure Cross Atlantic Oce_an in 47f-Foot Sloop |to two hundred miles in the twenty-)pay now or at the other end?” four hours, it took us thirty days to done we spent the best part of a day trylng to find the proof of our ac- somplishment in the island of Barba- dos. Faulty navigation again? Yes, but it {s not the easlest thing in life to make & “bow on” landfall of a clod of earth twenty-one miles by twelve after a three-thousand-mile jaunt to it. Also, we suspected our chronometer. | _When Barbados, after the fashion of {Grand Canary, failed to materialize, i we of the dream ship held one of our now familiar board meetings. ‘‘here were two courses open: To emulate | the mariner of old, who knew nothing | of longitude, and crulse along our |1atitude until Barbados appeared; or {to head for Trinidad instead, and so have the coastline of South America !as a buffer if we.falled to make it. | We had decided on the latter course, !and were actually standing away for | Trinidad, when Barbados, a mere | wraith of land that we scarce dured to believe in, beckoned us from the southern horizon. We acceptcd the | invitation. “Look out for the Caribbcan eea | toward December.” was an axiom of |a five-masted schooner captain at | fallible over the passage from Bar: bados to Colon than others he had ad- | vanced concerning the Atiantic. In ifact, I am thinking of in future ask- ! ing advice of weather prophets in or- | der to anticipate the reverse. ? { . A spanking wind on the quarter, with matnsail and squaresall set, and | a mighty following sea that flung the | { Such was my reltef that 1 patd o: cross the-Atlantic, and when it Was | the spot, thereby reducing our united capital to £20—or. at the thern-pre valling rate of exchange, $78. * * % THIS brief interview with official- dom {s typical of Panama canal methods. Speed, silence, efficiency: nothing else “goes” in “the Zone.” Things are done in a few seconds and utter silence here that would take hours and pandemonium elsewherc. The entire miracle of passing a ten- thousand-ton liner from Atlantic to Pacific through seven locks and forty miles of tortuous, ever-threatening !channels has been performed in six and a half hours and with a lack of fuss that is almost uncanuy. But the Dream Ship was twelve tons, und not ten thousand, and for that reason it is probable that she guve more trouble than any craft since the canal was opened. Yet on every hand we recelved the utmost courtesy and kindness. Such treat- ment mad: us feel like pestiferous mosquitoes beiug politely conducted to the door instead of xquashed flut on the spot, as we descrved. At § am the pilot came aboard in his immaculate white drill uni | rin jand we entered Gatun lock in style, The giant gates closed. There w | | | { against . |Las Palmas, but this proved no less | followed by two more liners. an cruption of water, seemingly un- der our stern, that caused the tilier to fy over and extract a groan of arn- gulsh from Steve, as it crushed him the cockpit well; the aft warp snapped and the Dream Ship | commenced to rise, more like an ele- vator than a ghip in a lock, until the | Dream Ship before it in a serles of blank, greasy wall ended and above | exhilarating. swoops, brought u: : within sight of land in seven day: distance of 1,200 miles, land? For a time we were at a 10s8. ! Comparing it with the chart and de. scriptions in “safling directions” re- | vealed nothinsg. | mist-enshrouded, sinister-looking land |und we t appeared a row of grinning faces. “That's that,” said the pilot, and it But what | was. By some miracle the engine carried | us to the next lock, where the same It was a low-lying, | salled along its coast for |« day and = night before we could ' tell whether we had gpassed Colon or Lit the coast to the ¥astward. TUltimately, a lighthouse gave us the clue,-and we found- that owing to a {current that has the- unpleasant | knack of running at anything from | ity miles from our objective, 50 we | headed for sea ard hove to unt!l day- light. All night, as we lay roliing in a !heavy swell steamers passed us by, | floating palaces of light, and with tie dawn we joined the procession of glants making for the Panama canal. We wished to go through the canal? be ready to take the pilot aboard at 3 o'clock the next morning. That, In effect, is what the canal performance was gone through, with such slight variations as the loss of a hat, three fenders and the remalnder of the port covering board. We passed out Into Gatun la fairy place of verdure-clad islets and mist - enshrouded reaches, where cranes flew low over the water and strange wild cries came out of the bush. . It was also the place where our en- half to three knots we were still! 'xine refused its office peremptorily, |irrevocably. I was engineer of the Dream Ship, probably the worst on i earth, but still, the engineer, and for an agonized hour I wrestled with life- ess scrap iron. 1 have made it a ypractice to try Ihnrd for one solid lour, and, fafling to gain u response from the atrocity, Ilea\'e the matter in other and per- i | Very well, a measurer would be sent | iaps more capable hands. I commun!- | off to decide our tonnage and we must | cated this information to the pilot, |and there ana then the man's more | humun side came to the surfuce. It { was raining, as it knows how to rain her repertotre of songs, or thought Authoritles said, and I answered it on the isthmus; he wWas soaked to the 1 out new dishes for her week's cook- ment. | epike handy, and when | threatened used it. 3 * X ¥ ¥ T will be seen that a dream ship is not all dreams. If it were, such 1s | dreamer would probably he tired of ' {it within a month. ! But stark calms are a wearisome i business. Every function of a ship| | has ceased. It is as though she lay | in a stagnant pool, and any | movement of spars or canvas were, | the rattling of her bones. Also, it is/ sect called man, adrift in a breath- s waste of waters, to know that| leagues lie ahead of which he is in-! { capable of covering a yard. H | An auxiliary engine is.useless uni Ger such circumstances. To use it 1§ {like hurrying on to catch a tram that {is bound to overtake one in the long !run. What is a steaming radius of !four hundred miles in a stretch of| | thres thousand? No, all one.can do, | ! after satisfying himself that his ves ! sel 18 “as idle as a painted ship upon |a painted sea” is to pass the time as | pleasantly as may be. We of the, !dream ship turned in and slept, or' | broke the uncanny sflence with tear- | |some noises on clarionet and plano:{ | Also, we fished, though with a lack ! |of success that leads me to belleve | that fish do not bite in midocean. At ! night flying fish struck the mainsall {and fell to the deck with a resound- !ing thwack and a flutter of “wings,” |but for the most part on occasions iwhen we had failed to hang a lan- {tern in the rigging to attract them, | which, as far as I am concerned, ex- | | plodes another fallacy. ! | As day succeeded day, and there| | was no sign of a change in our inert condition, our thoughts turned agaln |in the direction of the drinking | wwater. True, we had two hundred gal- | lons aboard, but what was to prevent | us from being becalmed for & month, | lor being carried hundreds of miles _ out of our course by a gale, according "to the mood of the capriclous ele- | ments? We cut our daily allowance | ifrom a gallon to half o gallon per head for all purposes and, as though {in response to our frugality, a breath {came out of the southeast. | At the moment of its arrival Steve and I happened- to be testing our! sense - of - direction--by -diving over- board and trying to come up through a lifebelt floating -about ten yards | aistant. Steve had just conceived the brilliant idea of moving the belt after the diver had taken the plunge, and I had emerged from a lung-racking effort to locate it, when we realized that. the dream ship had moved, in fact was still moving, with a notice- able .wake in the direction ot the horizon. ‘The tiller was pegged amid- ships,.and there was nothing to stop | her continuing the motion indefinitely | —except Peter, who was below. We prayed in that hour that she was not asleep. i T have often left home—perhaps too } often—but this was the first occasion on which home looked as if it were leaving. me, and in mid-Atlantic at that. Alternately we yelled and ewam, but without gaining a foot until to our infinite relief small, pajamaed figure appeared on deck, threw. up its arms in horror, and brought the dream ship into the wind. An hour later we were bowling along at seven knots, reveling in the blessed motion of air, and planning what we should do when we reached Barbados, &~ mere fifteen hundred miles distant. . * k% T with weather ranging all the way from stark calms to Vi- clous squalls, and@ a_correspondingly little things tha: must be done"—the ; ful limericks; then uttempting to 52y vailed progress of anything from ten toxi |with a smile that I trust was suffi- | hide; his natty uniform resem As for me, I kept a marlin- | clently engaging to hide the fact that nothing more cio. oblivion | I Was not at all sure we had enough | yet he smiled and proceeded to re- { money between us to pay the tolls. It , move his Jack must be an expensive business, this passing from Atlantic to Pacific. I lLiad never thought of that. There was quite a lot I had not thought about. What if the charges weré aitogether beyond us? It would mean Cape Horn! Cape Horn or the abandon ment of the dream! Which w: worse for one who, after sixty below | zero on the Canadlan prairie, four be- wireless, 1t was ! |low zero in France and Belgium and |mon a tug to take us on our wa something far worse In coalless Lon- don, had’ takeh 2 solemn oath never These terrifying reflections wecre cut short by a volce. “I can’'t make it more than tweive “Twelve tons?’ The canal officiul deigned to exhibit surprise by slight elevation of the | eyebrows, then smiled. “The measurer has been aboard.” he told me, “and you are twelve tons et. The tolls will be $15. Will you a 1y than a dish rag, | “Guess we'd better sail,” he said | Behold once more the Dream Ship sailing the Panama canal; ! alternate; before rain | squalls, lving becalmed, making tacks of fifty yurds and less, a passage |surely unique in the annais of “the Zone.” | Becoming becalmed and with no possible to sum- but | finally a monstrous steamer pat 80 ! ciose that it was possible to hail her, an aggravation to the restless In-! oo 5 Jegve the forties of latitude! and a few hours later we were taken !in tow by un apparation of noiseless | engines, shining varnish and glean:- | Ing brass. At last we lay at anchor off Balbox. .on the Pacific ocean. We had come 1 far adown the vista of our dream and | hoped to go a great deal farther. A strange life, my masters, but one | that T would not exchange with any {man on earth. i (Copyright. Al Riglts Reserved.) NY strange reptiles inhabit the deserts of the south- Curious Facts western states, and of these many strange and for the most part mythical stories are told. Naturalists aver that there are in the whole - southwest only three species of really deadly reptiles, of which the most to be dreaded is the rattle- snake, Contrary to popular belief, the cen- tipede, the Gila monster, the taran- tula and the scorpion, though by no means agreeable companions, are not really dangerous. Probably there is no other living creature more feared by the ignorant than the so-called Gila monster, around which - all manner of weird tales center. It even has heen told that the mere breath of this animal 1s sufficient. to cause death to the one upon: whom it falls. Sclentific in- quiry, however, fails to disclose 2 single case in which the breath or even the bite of this creature has re- sulted fatally. The fact that dissec- tion. and microscopic examination do not_reveal any trace of glands for the secretion of venom is sufficlent evidence to Indicate that, this curious member of the lizard family has been glandered. - Some yearg ago an engineer in the southwest undertook to settle once for all the question whether “the monster’ was deadly or not. A fine specimen was captured and confined in a wire inclosure. A chicken was obtained and its feathers were re- moved, in order that the lizard might have- every - opportunity to strike at the breast. The chicken was _then held quite close to the Gila monster, which soon snapped viciously and cured & firm hold on the fowl's breast, retaining this grip for more than ten minutes. When the victim was released it was found that the chicken’s breastbone had been broken. Nevertheless, the fowl quickly recov- ered, the bone knitting and the wound healing, with no symptoms of poison- ing. It is very probable that the reputation. for evil borne by the Gila monster is due simply and solely to its most repulsive appearance, ‘Whether or not the tarantula is venomous has always been disputed. There seems to be no doubt what- ever that the bite of this creature s one of the most painful that can be inflicted by any creature, rep- tilfan or not. People in the south- west will tell one that Indians, who have borne the torture of the sun About Reptiles idance without flinching, have rolled {upon the ground in agony when bit- ten by & tarantula, whose bite leaves |a lvid scar, never quite effaced. | While it is possible that the bite of this creature is really fatal, the fact remains that there is in the annals of science no well authenticated in- stance of the kind. The centipede leaves a little trail of white blisters wherever it crawls over ome, each of these developing into a painful ulcer. A most unpleasant companion of the deserts is the scorpion, whose venomous powers have, however, been greatly cxaggerated. 7here is no authenticated case of a fatai bt on its part. The hog-nosed viper, the resl terror of the southwest, 1= found in soutli- ern New Mexico and in Arizona. No more repulsive creature than this could well be imagined. It derives its name from its turned-up nose, which curiously resembles the snout of the hog. Over its eyes stand two hornlike scales that look something like the goggles worn by chaufteurs. It rarely attains a length exceeding eighteen inches. It hides in the sand, which is precisely of the same color jas its body, a circumstance: that is likely to lead the wanderer to tread upon it accidentally. Many shecp | herders have been fatally bitten by {this reptile. Its fangs are almost like those of the rattler and the venom is {fully as deadly. Eyesight and Markmauship. GOME curlous res arches have been made by Army surgeons to deter- mine the relationship between good eyesight and good target practice. It would appear, at first glance, that the two things must inavariably depend the one upon the other. But the faots lead to a different conclusion. At least, they show that one may bave very defective eyesight and yet be a very accurate marksman. Astigma- tism, myopia and other defects of | Vision may exist in « warked degrec without destroying the ability to aim and shoot straight. In various armies soldiers are permitted to shoot ifrom the right or the left shouider, !according to their own preference, | which ts often gulded by the supe- rlority of one eye over the other. Accuracy of judgment counts for as much as acuteness of vision with the good marksmarn.