Evening Star Newspaper, October 26, 1930, Page 95

ON, D: C, OCTOBER 26, 1930. f a Hoodooed Ship%_— By J. Allan Dunn ed in miniature maelstroms and cross-seas, rose blindly and struck at ‘them as they tossed, the men sought to keep stroke. OST of the crew were sick of heart and body, overestimating the danger through ignorance. There was little for th:m to do after battening down hatches and rigging life lines, for the seas came crashing on her decks until the stout planking bowed with the weight and force of them, thundering over the fo'c’s’le, seething about the galley and the cabin hous- ing, deluging the reinforced skylights with sonorous cataracts; surging waist deep about binnacle and wheel. Rain began to fall, in slanting lines, in spouts, ‘The air was charged with salt spray and fresh water that worked through oilskins and down already squelching scaboots. At eight bells, four hours after midnight when the watch was changed, Holliday believed there was a slight cessation of the storm. He fancied they had passed through a skirt of th2 flying hurri- cane, unexposed to its full force. Daylight slowly filtered in, mordant, dissolving the utter blackness. Dzauntless, but sorely buffeted, the Ocean Queen fought on to win her way. They dared not set more sail. Holliday followed the sec= ond mate below. Both changed into dry clothes, to turn in fully dressed, save for their boots, ready to rush on deck in case of emergency. The steward brought them scalding cups of coffee. i “Through the worst of it, mister,” said the captain to Brookes. *“A good ship.” “Non: better. Might blow out before night?” Holliday nodded. His face showed the stress of fatigue and lack eof sleep, but it had lost its hardness. “Wouldn't wonder. We'll make up for what we've lost. We'll drive her.” “Come through fine, considerin’ the swabs .we had to work her.” The barometer was creeping up toward nor- mal, infinitesimally, but rising. A voice halled from the companionway, that of the first mate. “Captain Holliday, there’s a red flare on the port bow.” The skipper and Brookes hurried on deck, forward to where the lookout pointed to a red light, wan in‘the quarter light of the veiled false dawn. As they gazed it faltered and died out. They could barely make out a smudge through the rain, lifting on one of the enor- mous s:as. “Masts gone by the board,” said Holliday. “She’ll have been in the thick of it.” The three officers gathered aft, the skipper frcwn- ing, issuing orders. “All hands, Mr. Sullivan,” was his first, and the watch b:low, barely in their bunks, tumbled up unwillingly. Orders came in quick succes- sion. Drums of oil were broken out, lashings thrown off the boats, and lines coiled handy. The light, seeping through the murk as they lunged on, showed them a dismasted hull, rid- ing to a sea anchor, soggy as a saturated log, dangerously low in the water that broke over her continuously. Little by little things be- came more distinct: the litter on deck, the figures—intermittently—at the pumps, the stream of water they contrived a mockery against the tons that went cascading down her deck. The men pumped like automatons whose machinery was running down. “She’ll go inside of an hour or two, Mr. Sullivan,” said Holliday. “We'll run down to loo’ard for observation.” Presently Holliday read the name in white lettering on her stern. “Santa Maria. Bark—Portygee. Leakin’ like a sieve.” The ghost of a shout came to them as they put about to work up to windward of the bark after laying an oil slick in her path. An officer was trying to megaphone to them. Holliday had his own in his hand. His face was grim, as were those of Sullivan and Brookes. Rescue was imperative at the earliest moment, but the fearful seas that swept be- tween them made any att>mpt to tackle it as yet extremely dangerous. Nitrate. THE Ocean Queen’s crew were busy seeping oakum in oil, bundling it in canvas, piercing that, easing the falls. The Portuguese captain made despairing gestures as if he thought him= self abandoned while the Ocean Queen tacked and drew ahead. “Confound the fool!” said Holliday. “Doesn’t he know we've got to head him first?” As the Ocean Queen was working well ahead of the doomed bark, Holliday looked at. his crew doubtfully. How many of them could actually handle oars? He called them aft. “We've got to get them off, men,” he said brusquely. “It's a risky job. I'll ask for volunteers.” Wilson stepped out promptly, old Andrews close beside him. Then, to - Holliday's sur- prise the rest lurched forward. “The whole lot of us, Cap'n.” said Harris, the larrikin, grinning. “Tyke your ch'ice.” ‘The skipper surveyed them keenly. “Pick your men, Brookes,” he said. “You can have Wilson and the Negro.” The six men picked by Brookes took their seats, fending clear as they were lowered, casting off, pulling hard as,a wave raced along and bore them away. Holliday watched’ their progress with somber eyes. Here his fine seamanship counted. Short- handed though he was, he succeeded in work- ing the Ocean Queen without mishap: he took her clear of the Santa Maria and hove to. Meanwhile the rescuers were desperately try- ing to preserve themselves as the storm toyed with them. Up =nd over the crest, down into th: troubled trough where the jobbling water cddied in miniature maelstroms and cross-seas rose blindly and struck at them as they struggled up the next wave, without the protection of the ship's lee, whirled and tossed, the men sought to keep stroke. The Santa Maria rode more and more shuggishly, her crew standing by th: rail with hands that gripped it with despairing strength. “She’s going,” gasped Holliday. The Santa Maria gave a Jurch as a head sea submerged her. They thought she was gone, but she rode through. Th= Ocean Qucen’s lifeboat zoon reached the Santa Mazria. In taking her round the bark Brookes, the old whaler, made no mistakes. To avoid the pounding wreckage he had to ex- ercise extrem= caution, but contact was estab- lished with the bark. The wild-eyed Portuguese Jjumped aboard. Brookes had perfect confidence in two capa- ble aids—Jamaica Joe knew ships and boats and he knew the sea; Wilson had sailed on craft of nearly every type—but he had no such confidence in the rest, and now, with a boatload, he was less sure of himself. He made known his troubles—in pantomine at first, but found that the Portuguese captain knew enough English to understand; two of the less exhausted sailors of the bark took their places at the oars. As it turned out, the substitution was unfortunate. Up and down the hills and valleys of the sea 'hey swept toward the waiting Ocean Queen. As they were about to come alongside, the parent ship rolled heavily, and her plunging port counter frowned threateningly The Portuguese were on the s'arboard siie of the boat, and mistaking Brookes’' orders, made an extra effort to kecep clear, backing frantically. It was a bad blunder—it swung the boat’s stern under the ship’s coun'er. Brookes jumped in time and ths rest man- aged to hang onto the rapidly filling boat and eventually were pulled aboard safe though half drowned. But Wilson was knocked over- board in the smash of con‘act and sank. Jamaica Joe dived after him, but his gallant effort 'was useless. Wilson was gone. An arm might have been broxen, ribs crushed. His body must have been caught under the roll of the ship. Eleven jabbering survivors, blue from ex- posure, their skins wrinkled over the shrunken flesh, were given liquor, broth, dry clothes, packed into bunks. * Long before that, the bark went down. AL noon there wassthe hint of a watery sun, rents in the wrack of cloud. At sunset the sky was clear of all save cumuli of trade clouds. There were no chanteys that night, though the ship went sweetly. The log showed a terse record of the meeting with the bare fact of rescue, and the death of Wilsen. It was not entirely superstition that left Wilson’s bunk unoccupied, though there were ‘ncne to spare. The picture tacked to it re- mained there. His ditty bag was stowed in it. The Ocean Queen sailed on northward. The fluky winds about the Line were kind. Holli- day's face cleared. He had removed the hoodoo from the ship, and h: had a record that would stand—thece deys. I’l‘ was while they hung off the Farallones awaiting a pilot that a delegation came aft to “speak to the captain.” Old Andrews seemed to. be the spokesman, but his spezch failed him, and Harris, the larrikin, made celivery as Holli- day, insinctively suspicious of any “commit- tee,” looked at them with hard eyes. % “It's this w'y, sir,” said Harris. “Wilson, ‘e 'as 2 wife an’ a new baby—new to 'im. There’s some more kids. They'll be waitin’ for ’'im. 'E was goin’ to quit th> sca an’ go farmin'.” “Well"—Andrews had sct down 2 thin packet, wrapped in canvas—“what’s this?” Holliday opened it and looked at the face of the woman who would come to the wharf in vain, to meect scrrow instead of love. “We'd like it,” Harris went on, “if yowd tyke a matier of a couple of quid apizze out of wat’s comin’ to us-all-'ands. If you pay us off, we're like as not to split up, an ’cash melts fast after the first drink. “It won't am>unt to much, mebbe, to ‘er, but it'll ’elp with the kids. Ten dollars apiece, sir. An, there ain’t no nczd to s’y where it comes from. She likely knew ‘e 'ad some savin’s.” Holliday cleared his throat. “All right, men,” he said, and they went aft, shufiling awkwardly. When the subseription list was audited it bore no names. But the amount included $20 apiece from the mates and $50 from Holliday. It was evening before he was free to visit certain cronies. o “An able ship and a fairly fast trip,” m:ald. “Lost one man. One out of the only two in the crew.” . * “They don't make sailors nowadays,” com- mented one of his firiends. “I'll bet you picked up a ro'ten bunch at Sydney.” “I was lucky with the mates,” said Capt. Holliday. “As for the rest, they were just scum—scum of the sea!" (Copyright, 1930.) Proving the Nero Story a Mere Myth. Continued from Eleventh Page the distracted people without guards or com- ‘panions and showing himself everywhere in the smoke-darkened daytime or in the flame-lit night in complete contempt of danger. The loss of Rome’s ancient treasures and particularly the destruction of nearly every- thing he loved in his own palace must have very nearly broken his heart, and he worked in rage and despair. STANDING one night on the roof of his pavilion beside his garden-theater, across the Tiber, where he had established his head- quariers, Nero was so moved by the distant spectacle of the burning city that, in the man- ner of a professional mourner at a funeral, or one of the pards of old, he took his harp and began (o sing a sort of dirge, a lament for Rome, likening the disaster to the burning of Troy. His powerful voice, carried by the wind, came to the ears of the frenzied refugees gathered on the outskirts of the gardens, who soon spread the story that the emperor, thrilled by the beauty of the conflagration, had dressed himself up as a professional musician and was callously singing songs in his theater. The tale took hold of the unbalanced minds of the people and on all sides the question was asked whether Nero himself had fired the city in order to provide a dramatic setting for singing his own poem on the siege of Troy. Recalling the behavior of the thieves who had set fire to houses, as has been recorded above, for the purposes of robbery, people de- clared they must have bzen Nero's agents, and the fact that the wise measures taken against the spread of the fire had involved the ap- parently ruthless destruction of undamaged buildings gave color to the ridiculous tale that the conflagration had been deliberately planned. OME said that Nero wished to destroy the city so it might be built again on a more elegant plan, others that he just wanted a big thrill, but whatever might have been his sup- posed reason the belief that he was the cause of the disaster gained ground. Curses were heaped upon him, or, rather, upon those who were thought to have set the city on fire at his orders, for, as Dio says, the actual name of the emperor was pot cursed, and the result, Tacitus tells us, was that all his exertions and all his deeds of bravery were overlooked. £ Today, however, the rpicture of Nere as author of the disaster, standing upon the roof of his palace and “fiddling while Rome burnt,” is impressed upon the popular imagination and will hardly be obliterated by the facts that he strove desperately to extinguish the blaze which was destroying all that he most valued, that his palace was in flames, and that his dirge was sung, elsewhere, to the accompaniment of a harp, not a fiddle. It is hard to overthrow even an ugly idol. Dion Chrysostom, writing nearly a century later, says: “'Still even at this time all men yearn for Nero to be alive,” and in the fourth centruy A.D. St. Augustine tells us that people were even then thinking of him as a legendary hero and savior of his country who would come back to sing to them and to restore that benign rule which the Emperor Trajan used to sa was the best Rome had ever known. ” Use of Voting Machines. 'HE voting machine, an instrument of curi- osity only so far as Washington’s voteless citizens are ccncerned, is one of the greatest advances in registering the voice of the people in an election. The machines are so arranged that the tabu- lation of the vote is a mere matter of opening the back of the machine at the close of the balloting and reading off the totals. Each machine is a voting booth in itself, with a curtain running around the three open sides, the machine itself constituting the fourth side of the booth. When a voter enters the booth he throws a lever closing the curtains and at the same time unlocking the machine. Should he desire to vote a straight ticket, he throws down one lever under his party's name and emblem. This automatically registers a vote for each candi- date on the ticket. If, however, the ticket is to be split, a small lever is thrown down fyr each person to be voted for. The mechanism is such that it is impossible to vote for rzor: than one persen for each office. With the vote all set on th2 machine, with the levers all down, the voter throws the cur- tain lever in the opposite direction, opening the curtain and throwing all the voting levers on the machine back to neutral. This registers the vote as desired by the voter. No vote is tabulated until the lever opening the booth is thrown, making it impossible for any person to register more than wne vote. The totals are kept constantly up to date in the back of the machine and when the polis clese a rear plate is taken off, disclosing the totals. In one small city, to illustrate the speed in tabulation made possible by the ma- chines, there are 14 voting precincts, all within a mile of the City Hall. When the totals are read a runner and two judges copy the figures on prepared slips. After the totals are all made a runner dashes by whatever means he can to the City Hall, where his slips are totaled on an adding machine along with those from the other precincts and the entire vote of the eity for every candidate Is known within five or shx minuies.