The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 4, 1898, Page 19

HE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, EPTEMBER 4, 1898. 19 Wfost HAmazing 8x;)erzbnoe.7 a Wfan Gver Lived to Oell, onderful HAdventures UWhich Befell Louds de y?ozlyemom‘ Dur- ng Zc/'zl'r{y Years in the South Seaa. thirty years of the most adventures through ever passed and lved M. Louis de Rougemont \d sound in London, ple with his remarka- thrilling th ble story is safe and nd in London, thrilling le with his remarkable story. . Fre nchman is the hero of he hour, and people look at him in wonder whenever he appears on the streets. No work of fiction ever told > wonderful adventures that 1 to the Crusoe lot of M. Rougemont. done, and the “Swiss Family Robi n” is nowhere. During the thirty-five vears of his exile from civilization Rougemont was sailor, pearl diver, castaway and can nibal kin, All of the time his life was in danger of being cut short at any nt. Perils were ever around him, e escaped them all and lives to A8 t's story has been investi- gated of the most noted scientists and geographers in England, among tlrem being Dr. Scott Keltie, Dr. Hugh H and Sir ( pent hours sorge N with charts s Newnes gemont that an expedition and solate sandspit in the Pa- s of great price are nt will accompany the When Rougemont first in 2 1 nobody believed his tale. He hed at and even called crazy. ted until his words reach- ople. Now skepticism and that great and British Association, de Rougemont to read in the geographical nthropological fon. proached by Mme. Tus- ho will have a figure of -xhibition in of people ugemont in ary to re now being all parts of the as in France, and telegram, asking yok rights of the astounding geographical are nly a entire - to the advance of practically certain that will ever again g through has under- According to Rougemont’s s left his home in Switzerland n go and sta to see his fortune in the French po: jons of the Far East. But luck was not with and he had all he could do to earn y ugh to buy food and clothes. en able to have don. > gone back to Swiize and taken up his old life on the farm. But this he could not do and despair F ed him was knocked about from one place and finally reached Singa- st “broke.” Here his fortunes - he met a Captain Jensen, r of a small schoon:v called @ = lland, that had just come out from Holland. The two became auite you come with me on a pearl fishing expedition?” da w asked Jensen one as the two were walking along the rf. “Certainly,” answered quickly, “on what terms “A share in the venture if you like, or I will pay vou regular wages when we get back,” answered Jensen. Liking the idea of adventure and the sibilities of a_ fortune, Rougemont agreed to go on shares. Jensen then explained that he had in mind a certain portion of the South Rougemont, Seas that was said to be fabulous in its alth of pearls. No European had or been there. This was in the early 60's. “If we succeed. my young friend, he said, “you are rich. If we fall we both go broke.” Rougemont had no idea of the part of the world he was going to. But that did not deter him. The Veielland sailed from Singapore early in the summer, and by autumn was on the p 1 fishing grounds. Here they met their first adventures, and it rapidly became apparent that they would have to ficht as well as fish. One morning while all were at work off the shore of what they thought an uninhabited island, a fleet of Papuan war canoes made an assault on them. But Captain Jensen was prepared, and instantly sent a charge of grape shot into them from a small cannon he had mounted forward. This created havoc in the canoes, and those savages not lled rapidly paddled away. Another load of shot prevented an attack for some time and the fishers worked away successfully. But they were always in constant fear of an attack, and if it had not been for the cannon the pearl fishers would have been compelled to fly for their lives, for the bloodthirsty savages could be counted by the thou- sand The pearl-fishing expedition was a most successful one and the small schooner was rapidly being filled with a fortune. White and pink pearls of large size were found by the dczens. But one morning Rougement found a shell with three pearls in it—and they were black. A fortune in themselves. They were of enormous size and any one of them would have rendered the whole party independent for life. “Now let's go home and enjoy the results of our good luck,” sald Rouge- mont. “Let's stay and find more,” said Cap- tain Jensen. Then he got the pearl fever very badly. He went almost crazy at sight of the three black pearls, each wonth a fortune. He rashly determined to de- lay the departure of the schooner In order to hunt for more. ““The monsoon will scon blow and our lives will be in danger,” sald Rouge- mont. But protests had no effect on the avarice of the captain. He delayed the expedition and disaster came. First a school of sharks surrounded the fishing party and the divers had to *go out with knives and kill the mon- sters. On cne or two occasions the diver was not successful and there was one man less to work. The greatest enemy the divers had to fear In thése waters was the dreaded octopus, whose presence occasioned far greater panic than the appearance of a mere shark. These loathsome monsters would sometimes come and throw their horri- ble tentacles over the side of the frail craft from which the divers were work- ing, and actually fasten on to the men themselves, dragging them out into the vater. At ather times octopuses at- tack the divers down below, and hold them relentlessly under water until life was extinct. One of our own men had a terribly narrow escape from one of these fearful creatures. Each evening, when the divers returned from pearl fishing, they roped all their little skiffs together and let them lie astern of the schooner. One night the wind rose and rain fell heavily, with the result that next morning all the little boats were found more or less waterlogged. ‘While baling them out the man saw a mysterious looking black object in the sea, which so attracted his curiosity that he dived overboard to find out what it was. He had barely reached the water, however, when an immense octopus rose into view, and at once made for him. He instantly saw his danger, and with great presence of 3 by a very hot bath, the water being at such a temperature as actually to blis- ter his skin. It is most remarkable that the man was not altogether drowned, as he had been held under water by the tentacles of the octopus for rather more than two minutes. But, like all the others of the party, he car- ried a knife, which he used to very good purpose on the monster’s body when first it dragged him under the water. These repeated stabs caused the creature to keep rolling about on the surface. He was in this way en- abled to get an occasional breath of air, otherwise he must infallibly have been drowned. And now came the fatal day that made Rougemont an outcast from civ- {lization for so many weary years. Early one morning Jensen went off as usual with the wheole of his crew of Malay divers, leaving Rougemont and a dog in charge of the schooner. He watched the fleet of little boats FINDING THE FAMOUS “THREE BLACK PEARLS' By midday it was blowing so hard that Rougemont positively could not stand upright, but had to crawl about on his hands and knees. He attached to himself a long rope and fastened the other end to one of the masts, so that in the event of being washed into the raging sea he could pull himself on board again. The storm developed into a hurricane, then into a typhoon. One gust carried away the sails. The wind was screaming and moan- ing around the bare poles of the sturdy little vessel, which rose on veritabla mountains of water and crashed as sud- denly into seething abysses. But the schooner weathered the storm and Rougemont was none the worse off for it, except that he was alone and knew very little about handling the vessel. He had enough to eat and drink and gave the schooner her freedom. For fifteen days he was battered about and then land came in sight. never describe the horror of the agon- izing months as the.y crawled by. . . “ ‘My island’ was nothing but a little sand spit, with here and there a few tufts of grass struggling through its parched surface. “Think of it, ye who have envied the fate of a castaway on a gorgeous and fertile tropical island miles in extent! It was barely 100 yards in length. ten yards wide, and only eight feet above the sea level at high water! There was no sign of animal life upon it, but birds were plentiful enough, par- ticularly pelicans. My tour of the is- land occupied perhaps ten minutes, and you may perhaps form some concep- tion of my utter dismay on falling to come across any trace of fresh water.” Shortly after the storm abated, and Rougemont was able to go to the wreck and take from it blankets, food and whatever else he was able to lay his bands on. These he loaded on a raft <{HiS PEARL DIVER KILLING SHARKS N Jur/)ass J{nyf/zz}z_y Chal Gver Befell j?oé:hson Cruzoe or HAny of the P Jamous €, O Jotion, great was my agony of mind that I had to leave the spot and interest my- self in other things; but some time afterward, when I had got over my nervousness, I renewed my digging op- erations, and in an hour or so had un- earthed no fewer than sixteen complete skeletons — fourteen adults and . two younger people, possibly women. “That morning 1 made my breakfast off raw sea gulls’ eggs, but was unable to get anything to drink. Between 9 and 10 o'clock, as the tide was then low, I made my may back to the schooner without much difficulty and collected as many things as I possibly could to transfer ashore. I had to take dangerous headers into the cabin, as the whole ship’s interfor was full of water, but all I could manage to se- cure were a tomahawk and my bow and arrows. De Rougemont told of building, In a laroon, a boat 12 feet long by 4 wide, only to find when it was completed that it was too heavy for him to drag over the rocks into the open water, and that the tide did not lift it high enough. “But for my dog—my almost human Bruno—I think I must have died. I used to talk to him just as though he were a human being. = We were abso- lutely inseparable. I preached long sermons to him from gospel texts. I told him in a loud voice all about my early life and school days at Mon- treaux; I recounted to him my adven- tures from the fatal meeting with poor Peter Jensen in Singapore; I sang lit- tle chansons to him, and among these he had his favorites, as well as those he disliked cordially. If he did not care for a song he would set up a piti- ful howl. I feel convinced that this constant communing aloud with my dog saved my reason. Bruno seemed to be in such good spirits that I never dreamed of anything happening to him, and his quiet, sympathetic companion- ship was one of the greatest blessings I knew throughout many weird and terrible years. As I talked to him he would sit at my feet, looking so intelli- gently at me that I fancied he under- stood every word of what I was say- ing. When the religious mania was upon me I talked over all sorts of the- ological subjects with my Bruno, and it seemed to relieve me, even although I never received any enlightenment from him upon the knotty point that was puzzling me at that particular time. What delighted him most of all was for me to tell him that I loved him very dearly and that he was even more valuable to me than the rfamous dogs of St. Bernard were to benighted trav- elers in the snow. “Seven weary months had passed away, when one morning on scanning the horizon I leaped into the air and screamed: ‘My God! A sail! A sail!” I nearly became delirious with excite- ment, but, alas! the ship was too far out at seat to notice my frantic sig- nals. My island lay very low, and all that I could make out of the vessel in th> distance was her sails. She must have been fully five miles away, yet in my excitement I ran up and down the beach, shouting in a frenzy and wav- ing my arms in the hope of attracting the attention of some one on board, but it was all in vain. The ship, which I concluded was a pearler, kept steadily on her way, and eventually disappeared below the horizon. Never can I hope to describe the gnawing pain at my heart as, hoarse and half mad, I sank exhausted on the sand, watching the last vestige of the ship disappearing. Altogether I saw five ships pass In this way during my so- journ on the island, but they were al- ways too far out at sea to notice my signals. One of these I knew to be a man-o’-war flying the British ensign. “I never feared a lack of fresh water, for when in the dry season the ship's stock and my reserve from the wet sea- = mind promptly turned and scrambled back into the boat. The terrible creature was after him, however, and to the horror of the on- Jookers it extended its great flexible tantacles, enveloped the entire boat, man and all, and then dragged the whole down under the crystal sea. The diver's horrified comrades rushed to his assistance and an attempr was wade to kill the octopus with a har- poon, but without success. Several of his more resourceful companions then’ dived into the water with a big net made of rope, which they took right underneath the octopus, entangling the creature and its still living prey, The next step was to drag up botg men and octopus into the whale boat, where he was at Jength seized by his legs and following in the wake of the captain's whalebdat until they were some three miles distant from the schooner, when they stopped for preparations to be made for the work of diving. A cool, refreshing breeze had been blowing up at this time, but the wind now developed a sudden violence, and }he eea was lashed into huge waves that quickly swamped nearly every one of the little canoes. Fortunately they could not sink, and as Rougemont watched he saw that the Malays who were thus thrown into the water clung to the sides of the little boats and made the best of their way to the big craft in churge of Captain Jensen. But the boats receded farther and farther from view, until Rougemont lost sight of them altogether. They had started out soon after sunrise. It then occurred to him that he ought to put the khip Into some sort of condition to weather the storm, which was in- creasing instead of abating, This was g:nf‘[ed by sheer force out of thesnot the first storm he had experienced g tful embrace, wore dead than ellve. However, he was soon revived on board the Vefelland, Dn}t’ well what to do. so he knew It turned out to be only.a coral reef, on which the schooner dashed. Hereshe was battered so as to become uninhab- itable in a day or so,~and Roug.gmon_t' had to swim ashore. This “land turned out to be only a tiny spit of sand measuring about 100 yards in length, ten yards in width and eight feet above high water mark. In this ghastly and appalling prison he spent two and a half years, with only the dog for company. ‘While telling some friends in Lon- don of his awful experiences on the is- land, Rougemont said: : “At length I found myself on my legs upon the beach, though hardly able to move from exhgustion of mind and body. When at length I had recov- ered sufficiently to walk about I made a hasty survey of the little island or sandbank upon which I found myself. Thank God, I did not realize at that moment - that I should have to spend a soul-killing two and a half years on it. It was an appalling, dreary look- ing spot, without one single tre¢ or bush growing upon it to relieve the ter- rible monotony. I tell you words can which he had hurriedly constructed and returned to the shore. “When I regained the island,” De Rougemont says, “I made another sur- vey of it to find the most suitable spot, for pitching my camp, and in the course of my wanderings I made a dis- covery that filled me with horror and the anguish of blackest despair. My curiosity was first attracted by a hu- man skull that lay near a large circu- lar hole In the sand about two feet deep. Upon closer examination I came to the conclusion that the hole must have been dug by civilized beings with spades, and I commenced scratching up the sand with my fingers on one side. { had only gone a few inches down ° when I came upon a quantity of hu- man remalns. “The sight struck terror to my heart and filled me with the most dismal forebodings. ‘My own bones,’ I thought, ‘will soon be added to the pile,’ So L %g 3 | FINDING THE TWO ENGLISH GIRLS) AMONG THE. CANNIBALS Feroes of son were exhausted, I busied myself with the condensing of sea water in my kettle, adding to my store literally drop by drop. “Two interminable years had passed away, when one day the weather sud= denly changed and a terrible gale com- menced to blow, which threatened asw- most to wreck my little hut. One morning a few days later, when the storm had abated somewhat, I heard Bruno barking wildly on the beach. A few seconds afterward he came rush- ing into the hut, and would not rest until I prepared to follow him outside: Before doing so, however, I picked up an oar—I knew not why. I then fol- lowed my dog down to the beach, won- dering what could possibly have caused him to make such a fuss. The -sea was somewhat agitated, and as it was not yet very light, I could not clearly distinguish things in the distance. “On peering seaward for the third or fourth time, however, I fancied I could make out a long, black object, which I concluded must be some kind of a° boat, tossing up and down on the bil- lows. Then I must confess I began to share Bruno’s excitement, particular- ly when a few minutes later I dis- cerned a well-made catamaran with several- human figures lying prostrate upon it.” With Rougemont and Bruno's as- sistance the men were landed. There were flve of them, all negroes, who could not speak a word of Rougemont's language. They were almost starved. Heg gave them food and they were ready to worship him. They readily fell under the leadership of the white man. With their assistance Louis de Rougemont was enabled to haul his boat over the intervening coral reef. In this boat they made their escape from the little island, leaving the price- less treasure of pearls there, and they safely made their.way to the Austraiian coast. From this time commenced a Series of adventures more weird, more hor- rible, more appalling and more as- tounding than any ever conceived in the wildest flights of the novelist's imagination. For nearly thirty years M. de Rougemont was a cannibal chief, ruling his people with the wisdom of the serpent and maintaining his au- thority over them in ways that are an astounding revelation of human inge- nuity. Rougemont had only the slightest idea of what part of the world he was in. He did not know whether he was really in Australia or on an island. It has since been shown that he was on the northwest coast of Australia and the people with whom he had been thrown in contact the wildest and most warlike of all the Polynesian races. The savages had never seen a white man, and thought he was a god. They made him their chief. He had to per- form marriage ceremonies. He had to affiliate at cannibal feasts and do many other things to refuse which would have meant death to him. By shrewdness he made several at- tempts to escape without gaining the enmity of the savages. He told them he would come back. His first attempt was overland, but he nearly perished of thirst in the aw- ful sands of the Australian desert and had to return. This raised him still higher in the estimation of the people, and he could do as he pleased. He tried to escape by sea, but spent 18 months in a frail canoe and suffered the tortures of the inferno orly to re- turn to his starting place. History does not record such another trip made in a small open boat. It covered over 1500 miles. The devices to which Rougemont re- sorted to rule his people seem beyond belief. But he succeeded, all the while making futile attempts to escape. On one of his journeys into the interior he discovered two English girls iving con- tentedly as the wives of a cannibal chief. He also met the lost explorer Gibson, but could give him no advica as to how he should go to get out of the horrible country. Many other adven- tures did Rougemont have, all remark- able, weird and thrilling, covering the appalling period of twenty-eight years in the interfor of Australia, and all be- cause he found three fatal black pearls. € A% Ly i o ‘