Evening Star Newspaper, April 28, 1929, Page 88

WASHINGTON, D. ¢, APRIL 28, 1920—PART 7.° THE SUNDAY. STAR, OFF FINISTERR By Albert Richard Wetjen HERE was no moon. The sky was & somber black veil pressing down upon the world, gray clouds hurried across it by the wind. Rain fell intermittently The sea ran hugely, iron gray. touched with hard white here and there where the foam curled on the crests; evil, ehifting shadows in the troughs, streaked with phosphorescent fires. In spite of the big combers there was not much spray, except where water broke against the Annam Prince. It was a qQuestion how long she would last. The lights were still shining along her tiers of decks and glowing from the long lines of ports in her steerage. Her navigator-lamps siill burned, red to port, green to starboard, white at the foremasthead, pathetic and futile in the doomed ship. the mapkey-bridge, sbove the navigation-bridge, a huge searchlight flooded the water and the thirty-odd ship's lifeboats tossing in a film of oil two cable lengths away. A wild scene, shipwreck and desolation, iron gray water, rain, wind, electric A Thrilling Dr: nest of snakes once in her forepeak Crew of a dozen lascars, with a drunken mate and 2 second mate smoked o~pium and had strange visions. Chief €. ~'neer was a Kanaka The little | Caiz e, . . . Bo long ago. * ok % x 'HERE went another rocket. A red- dish golden streak to the zenith and then wind-driven stars under the scud. . . . Forty years at sea. Not so bad, taking them all round. There'd been that tiny fishing boat first, out of Stavanger for Iceland. Only 12 he had then, and seasick. Running back and forth from the gailey to the helping with the sails. washing down decks, learning the craft between whiles —the craft that led to your own ship and the four bands of gold. Could he blue-eyed, wearing always his rough blue woolen jersey and his great leather boots? A woolen cap with a tassel dan- gling on his shoulder? And his voice, like the boom of the surf, always laugh- lights beating back the darkness. UEER THAT THE END SHOULD OME LIKE THIS, CAPT. HAN. SEN WAS THINKING. . . . THERE U QUEER TO FINISH THIS W ON A 30,000TONNER AY RERAE { i it ..." a baby’ pillow; a diamond bracelet: & fur-lined elipper. ... The promenade decks themselves were scattered with clothing and beyond them, outside the varnished rail, the boat falls swung empty and the blocks above below creaked eerily to each sodden roll the liner ve. Over all were the lights, the deck- bowls of frosted glass; the bulk-| head bowls of pale blue and red; port- able clusters inside their open white | bowls hastily lashed to stanchions to | aid the abandonment. Harsh, cold, | strident, they all seemed, Shining over | rails from each deck and down the marble sea, glittering malev- tly on the leeward foam and reach with the searchlight above as fi the tossing boats. Capt. Lars Han- sen surveyed it all and sighed. H Ul E stood on his bridge, thet long. narrow place that had been hi gold bands shining on his cuff: golden oak leaves round the peak of | his cap with the badge of the line set| above them. He had been called hastily | from the lounge scarce an hour before and he had not thought of putting on | his ollskins. For that matter he was| hardly aware of the wind and the rain. | tired of her, he supposed, though look- | H ‘was well over 50 now, but still straight and broed, There was white | hair at his temples and faint lines were etched in his face. His eyes were not | as good &s formerly—they peered a | little—but the clear biue of them was | undiminished. He stood with his strong | hands the teak rail, facing the | 'lllyr sgainst the hull below him. and stared unseeingly out into the night. | On the boat-deck a foot below and | behind him were other men, the chief stewards, the chief engineer, three; unior engineers, some junior stewards, ; & few older seamen ‘nlf‘l d'mnm - male | passengers, six or seven of the firemen, all ll':ly and dirty in their work| clothes, the second mate and the fourth | boats and lived in that quaint Chinese | v ntional oral school for the deaf. mate. Al volunteers. The previous day's gale had smashed three boats and the Annam Prince had already was not enough room for everybody ‘Women and children first Queer the end should come like this, | thought it all very glorious and thrilling | we try to submerge the student in then, even his sickness, which kept him | Capt. Hansen was thinking There | went another rocket—the second and ! fourth mates were sending them up every three minutes. Queer to finish | this way on & 30000 tonner on & night when the weather would hardly sink & dory. Struck something or other. | rock, derelict. maybe sunken ice. No one knew. There had been only the ! slightest shock, and tearing into the ve ship. Queer, ell right, after years on vessels so much smaller, so, much less seaworthy. in weather in-| finitely worse. Well, a man had to face 1t and it always came unexpectedly There was not much for him to com- plain about personally. He was rea- sonably old and he had been in & way quite successful. Twenty years of com- mand was success, was it not? First the iittle Caradoc, out of Liverpool for the Plate and the wide East, and at last the Annam Prince. 30000 tons, turbine driven, 23 knots, 2,000 passengers and .*. . Bands to play when she @ocked! The mail flag nt "er truck! What was the little Cera<ar? Tweive hundred tons, wee she not? And that engine hod ehways been going wrong, and in Gee worst places. Like that time the zu\p-m caught her in the Plate. nots she'd make in a pinch. seven the current was a following one dirty. Rolled like s hog. Cock- 1ats. , , , They even found & vitals of the B RET | everywhere. | he could remem| ing? little main cabin, cleaning up rooms, | ever forget Capt. Howe, blonde-bearded, | ama of the Sea. strange how suddenly ambitious he had been a hard, wandering life, but he had grown. All he had ever wanted to do 1!de it. The H;”" gfl'?:fl”c had ks - 0 mean so much. He knew ever, up to then had been to have a g00d | of per, could interpret every Creek an0 time, to see the world—the great, wide, movement. He had made money with | sunny, laughing world. What hope was | her, too, wages and a tage for there for a fisher boy out of Stavanger | himself, a good profit for owners. The to wear an officer'’s braid? There had |line had gone into the passenger trade been a girl, of course. He had har-|then and had sold her. To a Pinland bored a good many ideas about her and | company, he had heard, and they sold had learned to read English, had gone | her afterward to a Norwegian line. [to navigation school. He had lost her,| He had hated to leave her. It was but some good had come of it. It like cutting off his right hand. But a ended in his going as third in the Ton- |man would be a fool to throw his |quin, London to the Cape, with a new | career away, and then the line had | ambition inside him. He might be & |offered him the Paladin, and then the master some day. Euripides. Ten thousand tons and 14 ‘Third on the Tonquin, second on the | knots this last. They had looked on | Hefnel, and then mate. And at last, | her as their crack in those days, until after many years, they had given him | they enlarged the line and began to | the Caradoc. He had thought at first | compete with the four-stackers on the | they were doing him an honor, making | fast mail runs. And so eventually he im a captain so young. It was not|had come to the Annam Prince. {until later he found no one else would All big ships, those he had com- have her. She was so rusty and old, a i manded these last years. He had given | hog in a beam sea. Cockroaches! Rats!|them his best, served them, even loved A Lascar crew and a drunken mate.|them in a way. But most of his heart She had almost broken his heart at|was still with the Caradoc, with her first. But he had stuck. And after rats and cockroaches, her rust and her wheezy engine, her dozen Lascars for a crew and her drunken mate—the little, lazy Caradoc and the long, lazy days on half known coasts and in strange harbors. There had never been a thrill like the one when he had first walked |up her gangplank and had later in his | cabin sewed the fourth gold band on his cuff—a boy out of Stavanger. So long ago—the good old times, the good {old times! Forty years at sea, and this was the end. * k% 'HE rain drove down. The srud | L raced across the sky. The wrecked | liner rolled wearily. The rockets flamed lup. The boats tossed and moved in a loose huddle under the blaze of the soarchlight and the light from the tiered decks. He gripped the teak rafl | before him with hands that shook s little. He could feel the sickening lurch of the ship beneath him, and right through his shoe soles came the vague tremor that warned him the end was near. He heard the clock in the wheel- house below strike 7 bells. Only 11:30! At 10:30 they had been steaming quite peacefully, rolling a little to the ter. Well, he had abandoned as soon | a8 he knew there was no hope, and it |was a matter of pride that not one of the women or children had been in- jured or lost. Then men had kept cool. Only the volunteers were left behind |to keep him company. |, What was that? Lighting flares in | the boats. were they? Ghastly the bril- Hant white lights were, and the blue jones. Well, it was wise. The dynamos | would soon stop—the engine room must ibe half full aiready—then the Annam Prince would be plurged in darkness. It was nothing short of a that the sea during the storm the day | before had wrecked the wireless room. He had never heard of anything like | that happening on any other ship, | though it was quite logical. A vessal | taking water, a door opened at | wrong time, an extra heavy roll, and | @ torrent tearing the instrument to | pleces. It was just after that had hap- | pened that disaster would come. | Almost as if one had been prepared | for the other. Life was unreasonable | and very strange. But, if the wireless had becn working, they would un- been able to get help one of the Elder-Dempster's packets. ‘That voyage he would never forget More than a year it was, and they went Marseilles, Naples, Malta, Port Said. Then the shining hot Suez, and then Zanzibar, Mauritius, Bombay. Colombo, Singapore. More ports than row. He could speak English when they returned to London, and he had gone as full seaman on that square-rigger—another rocket. Golden red fire and stars. Was the sea empty that no answer came? That square-rigger—what was her name? emistocles! Three-masted full-rigger bound for 8ydney and the coast. Brave days! He w never forget the shouting nights when they nor the lazy tropic afternoons they might be sprawling along the yards some work, lmflkinf contentedly and rning—always yarning. Yarning the dog-watches: under the break of the is . ) poop before the musters broke up: in | pride. He was in full uniform, the four | the cool dawns, relieving the wheel and | s, the | pausing a while to talk and watch the | sun biaze all crimson and gold. Brave days for a sailor! Ah, the good old times, the good old times . . . He could never quite fathom what was made him jump the Themistocles, desert her in Valparaiso. He had grown ing back it was hard to see how that could have been. Life had been so plezsant aboard her. But then he was 50 young and he had wanted to see the world. She was bound home, and he wanted to stay in the Pacific. He re- membered how he had hidden in the small, stuffly room behind that wine iny 'g;l xfma from the breaking | shop until the ship had gone. The pro- | prehend the “pattern” of speech; prietor took his watch as payment for that. But he had soon got away again, in a Danish barkentine to S8an Fran- cisco, and then the Star of Bengal, an- other full-rigger, English, bound for China, k. was a voyage! Wrecked off the mouth of the Yang Tzse and eight men lost. They had pulled ashore in the village on the sand spit for weeks, un- til the yellow men let them go and the been ; cruised down the coast and had all| short. When destruction came there ' sorts of adventures before a French, boat from Saigon picked them up and took them to Viadivestok. He had in_hospi ‘Wel that. all, tal the best part of that Winter. there had been man: ips after He never could remember them heir names, their captains, their Porty years was a long time. Bome voyages stood out as memorabi like that one on the Elder-Dempster boat and that one on the Themistocles = then a slow grinding , Whiie others just faded from the mem- | ory. That was queer, too-——rockets still Those | going up. Lances of curving fire, streams | of sparks. Stars under the sky. Was there no ship of all the ships he had known to stand by him tonight? *x o % ‘\,’Zl.l«. he had found himself in Lon- | don again, and he had gone into steam for good. South America first in | the Pride of Hull; Buenos Aires. Monte- video, Bantos. A fever hole then was Santos. | the steam: ! deserted, their crews dead and gone. ! Like a thick, miasmical mist vellow jack | swept the decks. The Pride of Hull had sailed five men short. All that coast s a death trap then—they'd drained The wind-jammers and even ers lay thick in the harbor, e swamps since—vellow jack, biack i water, malaris. Bad as Africa How many men had died in Lagos that time cn the old Marravene? The Marravene? She was after the Pride of Hull, and it was when he paid |off trom her he had gone up for his sccond mates examination, I was that there had been that| ‘wise. | where no other ship would go. He had found an English boat there, . { by this time, or at ieast had other they had gone up and down the world | ships heading for them. Not that he | together, tremping for odds and ends | particularly cared for himself. A mas- of cargo Into the Plate, the Congo, th> Hoogli. | down with her, if need be. But Into all sorts of tiny ports besides, | others, the volunteers. Many of them BY C. MORAN., TELEPHONIC system that en- ables the deaf to “hear” speech with their fingers, by feeling the vibrations of the voice of the speaker on a telephone re- ceiver, has been developed by scientists of the Carnegie Institution of Wash- ington. he subjects simultaneously feel the voice vibrations and watch the lips of the speaker, a combination which is re- | | ported to enable the deaf to understand | speech from 30 to 100 per cent more accurately and completely than by un- aided lip readin, There is a practical possibility of ex- tending the system on a large scale to enable the deaf and partially deaf to | hear the modern motion picture | | “talkies” by providing receivers which | | may be plugged into theater seats. | | The teletactor system for “feeling”| speech was exhibited recently at the | Carnegle Institution. It consists of a | { receiver connected through an ampli- | | fier and battery with a microphone at | the mouth of the speaker. The voice| of the speaker causes the diaphragm | of the receiver to vibrate under the| thumb of the “listener.” The transmit- ‘er may be held against the cheek or| ker #o thet the | DEAF PUPILS BEING TAUG SUPPLEMENT 's 1ips. An important advantage of the sys- tem, according to Dr. Robert H. Gault, professor of psychology, in charge of the Vibro-Tactile Rescarch Laboratory, is that an entire classroom of deaf st drnts may be taught simultaneously in- | stead of by the more laborious method | of individual instruction in lip reading. The system enables the listener to w‘:n; tha speech, and thus continually drive into her the pattern of speech and establish its kinesthetic correlate. Prom this ‘oundation, she will acquire ‘remote cues’ to guide her in speech, exactly as_hearing people acquire cues.” Early attempts at developing a sys- {tem of “feeltng” speech were made by Dr. Gault several years in the Iis, accent, emphasie, rhythm, phrasing, | pevcnslogical labor: vest- | pitch and varying tempo or speed. rrn Unficmty. A‘?;ey-kol( %L'L“?' i A six-yeatr-old, congenitally deaf| extended through two walls, the r child, who had never been in school | celving end of the tube being placed in { prior to her coming to the laboratory,|a double-walled, well pukld.b%x ‘The Gault says, “acquired in the first| hearer thrust his arm through an | term more than half the vocabulary by | aperture in the box with the palm of | means of touch-lip reading, in one-| his hand held tight over the end of the {ceventh the time required in & con-|tube. He could then feel the experi- She “ menter’s voice from the adjoining ropm, words in | 05> sentences | words in the course of a f*w months, I has learncd to read all her prinis_when they compos and when they are isolated. She can | practicing a half hour daily. print and compose sentences. Printing | This rude apparatus was superseded and reading are not atiempted in a | by the use of an acousticon connected | conventional school at 50 early an age. by wires with a transmitter. The suc- | cess of experiments in hearing through the skin then led to the development of the nresent type of teletactor, the latest | form of which employs a “sound filter” 50 that any one of a group of vibration | rates above 2,000 a second is directed to the little finger of the “listener”; any ong of a group of frequencies up | 1o 250 a second is directed to the thumb; frequencies of intermediate groups—250 ts 500, 500 to 1.000, and 1.000 to 2.000 a second—are carried to the remaining fingers. By the use of this instrument the sense of touch can detect vibrations of sufficient amplitude when their fre- auency {5 as high as 2,700 a second. The energy of speech is carried by fre- quencies much lower than this figure. The students become so proficient at “feeling” speech that they can inter- pret it even though the speaker is out of sight. Of additional importance is the fact that the students learn more quickly and accurately to speak. | “The sounds of speech can be instru- mentally communicated to the fingers,” Dr. Gauit says, “so that s group of psople at one time can feel them. learn | to distinguish them and thus come to grasp the meaning of what is being | spoken, By the same token, fingers | may take the place of ears in relation to | improving the speech of those who can- not hear. This all indicates a sensi- tivity of the ans of touch beyond what has bren hitharto sporeciated, | Dit. ROBERT H.. GAULT, RE. SEARCH ASSOCIATE, CARNEGIE INSTITUTION, WHO 1S TEACH- ING DEAF CHILDREN TO “HEAR" WITH THEIR FINGERS. high sea, but never dreaming of disas-| he had grown to love hcr.| ter had to see his ship through, or go | It had | were young, had mothers, sisters, sweet- | and Jearned to distinguish 38 different | | | IT WAS NOTHING SHORT OF A TRAGEDY THAT THE SEA, DURING THE STORM THE DAY BEFORE, HAD WRECKED THE WIRELESS ROOM. | hearts, perhaps sons waiting for them. | sponge wipes slate; sent & swirl of | They might have been saved had the | marble water onto the bridge so that | wireless survived. There would have | the captain had perforce to brace him- | been no certainty about it, of course.|self against the suck of the backwash. | Other ships had been lost with all| That subsided and there were sobbing | hands, and no from them: | noises, and roaring noises, and vague | had been picked out of the air. The | tricklings and rushings as the water | sea was a mystery. It might open up | dropped back in torrents to the mother |and swallow any time, swaliow you | sea. The Annam Prince rolled, tiyed and your ship. Look at the Waratah. | as a dying man. After tense moments, Vanished over night—on the South | the captain turned his head and called. African coast between ports it was— | There was no answer. Perhaps the passengers and all, leaving no wreck- | wind beat the words into his throat. age, no bodies, no trace. Yes, 8 mys- | “ % %% tery; life and the sea . They must Hg walked unsteadily to the after- keep the rockets going. Some vessel | rail on the lee side and looked | down on the boat-deck, empty, wet, might see them and come to pick up the boats. The glass was dropping | slanting in the shadows the ghastly | hard fiares cast from the skeleton-like again and another storm brewing. Un- less the boats were picked up before morning, it might be they would never be_found. The Annam Prince was seftling fast. | like solid matter. All gone! searc] L ‘water | funnel-stays, the creaking blocks, the reached the dynamos. Now all the | water noises. Only the shadows and light there was came from the ghastly | the glinting reflections, the mutter of biue and white flares burning from the | another sea rising out there to wind- tossing | ward. All gone! Why had he not been ship shuddered in blackness; save| with them? All gone! Swept clean where the flare light played on her | away into the froth to leeward! Brave gray hull and sent shadows dodging | ! Were those arms and faces lift- mysteriously back and forth along her | ing to the flarelight from the water promenades and through her empty | below? Gone, without a sound! cabins. At intervals the golden red| One moment grouped together there, streams of sparks curved up from her | trying to smoke and laugh, wals boat-deck to shatter into stars be-|the end. And now nothing, nothing the clouds. That was all the | save the shadows the wet deck. there was the leviathan was not| Another sea! Hang on. completely deserted. He had not realized he was 5o col foredeck dipped under. There | stiff and weak . . . as an ominous sliding movement and | the ship was, she was bridge in|so big that time. Nothing ‘down the captain’s | spray over the boat deck. set. features, dngpmr: from the golden | rockets had stopped. oak Jeaves on his cap. He made no He stumbled and ¢ his way into outery, did not move. A great sea | the chartroom, where everything was lifted out of the blackness to wind- | still strangely dry and warm, where the ward and roared clean across the ship. | mutter and roar of the elements was It licked the boat-deck clean, as s only & whisper. He found the spare |triple smokestacks. the massive venti- lators. Shadows that shifted and s | the m'fi::n of their own speech, they carry swing of it over to the printed page that t are reading silently. They read, thus, about 20 per cent more rapidly than others who are not so trained. “Pamiliarity with the swing of speech gained through the sense of and reading. Subjects develop prefer- ences for the feel of certain voices, certain pros» selections and certain verses more than others. “‘How does the water Come down at Lodure Prom its sources that well In the tam by the fell.” “This, with its predominating long and broad vowels, is the sort of thing | that they particularly enjoy as they | teel it. | “Preliminary experiments on the re- | ception of singing are very enwurzglnf. | Bubjects after appropriate training fol- low fairly well the variations in the pitch of the llngin, voice and they | develop preferences for one song over other | 6-year-old child, who had barely | begun use her voice, discovered one | day in the course of laboratory exer- cises that when she made a vocal noise at the transmitter she could feel something going on in the receiver I in her hand. At the same time she | “It is common knowledge that, with- | discovered that, at the other side of out hearing, normal speech does not | the room, her mother, holding another come into being—certainly not without | receiver, felt something going on also. very particular attention and technique. | Having found that her voice can do Indeed, T may safely assert that no |such things, she is now, as her mother person who has been deaf from birth | says, playing with her voice ‘10 times as much as ever before.’ ‘ “Ediphone records of the voices of semi-mutes, made before and after | training, indicate a great improvement i in volume of voice as well as in enunci- HT TO “FF LIP READIN( |or from early childhood has ever at- | tained normal ability to speak. This | situation creates a particularly inter- | esting problem because of its scientific |and its human weifare bearings alone. “We have seen armless people writ- ing with their toes; adjusting their n caps with their toes: picking out | bits ;:! change fnr‘ the _:_thme clerk; r;an ! combing their hair! e war-wound- | 'ed present many illustrations of n-e‘%I:-?fn':“n‘“,_;':"e‘;glm“fle ::‘ capacity of the human organism to | jorll oA y make one function do the work of an- | PCIgiy % Iecdeir o0 euny N other that has been lost. | desk and a transmitter at the teacher’s ‘We have only begun to scratch the | desk or suspended from her neck, surface of the possibilities that le in | puplls can have the feel of her voice | the direction of human learning. To | as a supplement to the visions of her one who has the faith bullt upon obser- | face. The combination makes it pos- vation of concrete cases of organic ad- | sible to speed up instruction very justments a vision of fingers substitut- | greatly and leaves the subject a better ing for ears is & long way from the | lip.reader than he was at the outset.” vaporings of & madhouse. Dr. Gault makes the following sum- | mary of accomplishments of the Vibro- | Ti arch Laboratory: ‘The two congenitally deaf subjects | who have spent the #-eatest aggregate | number of hours in systematic train- | ing in the laboratory (280 and 200 | hours, respectively, distributed over | two years) became so skillful at picking up speech through their fingers upcn the teletactor that they could under- stand a whole story in that manner without seeing the speaker. “All subjects (numbering 25) who | have been trained in the laboratory during an aggregate of 60 or 70 hours, and who are allowed simultaneously | to see peaker's face while he is speaking and to feel his voice can | understand his speech from 30 | cent to more than 100 per cent better than they can do by lip-reading alone. | “Subjects who have been practiced | in the feel of sentences and continued | discourse are improved thereby in the' control of their own speech. Two, in a relatively short time, improved in this regard 38 per cent, because by practice the pattern of speech had got ‘into their bones.’ “By getting this pattern ‘Into their bones’ subjects have improved in silent ading; this W!r, Baving tmvaronuad ation and movement or lilt. The sense of touch can detect vibrations in our | Instrument that are going as rapidly |ms 2,700 tithes a second. The highest rate hitherto known is 1,600 a second. 1 A SINGLE UNIT RECEIVER OF THE TELETACTOR SYSTEM OF “FEELING SPEECH.” | davits and hanging blocks, from the | ting for | {touch enhances enjoyment of speech | | | out of Stavanger. The tin firing-socket was still lashed to the davit, where the second mate and the fourth had been standing only papered igniting_substance that toolk of touch-paper in these rockets. His own body sheltered it from the ... Whoosh! . . . Golden red up!—far up—to the very scud, ed, before the stars wind-diiven and scattered f E E B i minutes, that was bitterly cold. . . . old Themistocles. The shouting aloft with the feel of cap with the tassel on his shoulder? Had he another cabin boy now? Some forth to the galley, to wash decks. to help with the sails? So long ago! And brave days all of them. Brave days! But bravest of all‘those days en the little Caradoc tramping up and down the lonely coast, into the great rivers. from tiny port to tiny port. His very first ship. First ship for the boy ‘Where was she Tramping somewhere still? would keep her tramping until she fell to pleces. Ah, the good oid times, the good old times. Whoosh! It was hard to_protect them from the o The Annam Prince now, si fast. Thirty thousand tons and turbine- driven. No rats. No . No yellow Lascars and drunksn mates. And sinking, sinking! It was a long way from Stavanger to west of Pinisterre end a saflor’s grave. He would go out | as others had gone. Brandon lost with his Empress of Rome in the St. awrence. Robins with his Cisterian in the Bight of Benin. Fire, collision and wreck took most of them in time. Shipmates and masters. ~ And, if you had the four gold bands, you had to see it through. . . . * ok ok K A NOTHER sea swept the boat-deck and flung the man against ¥ Uncer one arm he clutched the thin rocket-box, the other he flung tight round one of the companion steps. The water swept over him, buffeted him. He hung on grimly, half drowned, but afire within, and sad with memories. And through them. beating them down. beating off the aching d to let go. rose the insisten more rockets! Somewhere in all that wide sea there e other ships, there were lookouts. | Bdme one far off might sight the break- | ing stars high in the dark, in the scud, above the rim of the world. The boats must be picked up before dawn. The glass was down, down. A gale brewing. He was responsible. Captain! He rocked up, coughing, t salt from his mouth. The water swpet him down as it poured back off the slanting deck. He stumbled to the davit, hung solitary muttering | bridge-companion. nt{e to relax, | 58 ; H 1 H fafii i 5 ¥ i ; i : 1 rrle 51 EE i i 2 gigis it Fof Eggg : i?ga ! I He roused himself and jerked clear the sandpapered cap, sheltering the igniting substance with his hands and body. He inarticulate as he struck once, and twice, and once again, before the dampencd stuff would catch. So close he cupped his hands to keep off the spray that | the sudden spurt of fire scorched both { his though he did not feel it. | He was only aware that another stream flashed upward by gi | roar. Even then he did not completely lose consciousness. There was a furious impotent feeling astir inside him as ‘he was carried irresistibly Th one to come to him at this hour? boy out of Stavanger. This was the end ‘Thirty tons, tur- bine-driven, sent under as easy as an Iceland schooner . . . Ah, the good old the good old times . . . Annam Prince shook weakly under the charge of the seas. It was | the rigor of death. The good old days . . . The good old @ * % % % “TALK about luck” said the mate of the Annam Prince, making his the consul at Lisbon some “It was that last rocket | A 1 luck, about half-crazy and to one | of the empty ife-beit m% must have broken clear from the \boat-deck. | He'll be all right, after a week or so |in the hospital. You can’t kill those reheads! A little old tramp packet us up. Dirty, filled with cock. roaches and rats and rolled like & hog. Name of Wilhelmina, though, I under- stand, she used to be called the Cara idoc. In the eastern trade, I guess (Copyright. 1920.) THE strange sight of milk boiling so violently that it jumps a foot or more in the air while the temperature is only 135 degrees fahrenheit is & mat- ter of daily routine to the “pan opera- tor” of a condensed milk plant. The secret, of course, lies in the fact that a partial vacuum is maintained in the huge copper retort in which the milk is condensed. ‘The process of condensing the 1ailk seems 55:\ Al ple on the face of it, but many anxious moments arise before each batch is safely put away in the storage tanks awaiting the call of the filling room. After the milk has been tested by the chemist of the plant and standardized. that is, with skim milk or cream as may be necessary to produce a con- densed prodiuct of 8 per cent or more butterfat, and after the proper propor- tion of sugar has been m&m to make up 43 or 44 per cent of the solids of the final product, the pan operator begins his trying duties. The milk, before it is drawn into the condensing pan, as the huge retort is called, is pre-heated in hot wells in which live steam is introduced into the milk through a brass pipe. Great care is needed in controlling the temperature at this point, for milk is so exacting that a difference of two degrees will make a detided difference in the “body” or viscosity of the finished product. The temperatures vary from 185 degrees up to 205, depending upon the time of ye‘alr and the results of the tests of the milk. After it has been pre-heated it is drawn into the pan, the bottom of which is a steam jacket. Part way up the sides of the pan are coils of steam pipes, 4 and 5 inches in diameter, used to heat the milk while the condensin is going on. A huge vacuum pump, thumping away in the basement, reduces the air | pressure in the pan almost to a perfect Vi cuum, and when this point is reached |a valve is opened and the milk comes in with a rush. After enough has been drawn into the pan to cover the jacket the steam is turned on and the milk starts to rise as it does in a pan on *ha kitchen stove, This is the crucial — - SEMI-VACUUM t from the pan operator’s point of mAbeelllmfleflov.tumflk come 8 complete somewhere down in sewer beyond the vacuum pump. To guard this contingency im the finished product. Once having gotten the milk to boil- ing along pr ly, the pan operator continues to draw from the hot wells until 20,000 or 30,000 pounds of m‘nr!k of pipes, steam is turned into them to keep the milk boiling rapidly. After the milk is all in the pan the condensing is continued a while longer and then the tests are made to deter- if sufficlent water has been re- a hydrometer is placed in ti~= milk to determine the density. Old, experienced pan tors some- um..n.mmzn ly by the taste her the final will show the milk to consist of 73.50 per total solids, the usual amount, and they can make their guesses within .25 of {hour after hour patiently peering into the condensing pan through a peep- {hole glass rests the turning out 10 to 15 tons of first-class quality. When he declares the batch finished and strikes it, most of the worry is off the minds of the management. From him the goes through the purely mechanical ?‘roeeexdl of being cooled, agitated and nned.