Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1911 — METTLE OF FILIPINO [ARTICLE]

METTLE OF FILIPINO

Tossed About on Open Sea for Forty-Eight Hours. He Had Been Maddened by Fear of Sharks and by the Lost Chances of Rescue —He Had Done Best He Could. Manila, P. I. —When the ship Poisat went down off Malabon, Phillipine islands, . recently Alejandro Lorenzo jumped clear of the wreck. After an hour’s swimming he found a hatch cover on which he rested. Then he started toward San Nicholas, pushing the hatch cover ahead of him. He was nearly successful and was just reaching shallow water when the tide carried him out to sea again. As night came the wind Increased and the waves tossed him and his hatch cover back and forth until he thought it would be impossible for him to hold his support, but toward midnight he found that he was being washed toward the Cavite shore. Just as his hope was strong the tide wind carried him to sea again. He struggled against them, but was swept out Something brushed against his leg. He thought it a shark and screamed in fear. “It did not touch me again or I should have gone mad.” The water was cold, the night dark and the rain beat down on him. He heard a cry in the darkness and pushed his hatch cover in the direction from which it sounded. Toward morning he found a Filipino boy, another survivor of the wreck, clinging to an oil box. They drifted together. When daylight came they could see boats and they shouted until they were exhausted, but could not make themselves heard or seen. They were tortured by thirst Salt water got into their mouths. They drifted all day. Night came again and shortly after dark they saw the lights of a breakwater, and with new hope noted that they grew larger and more distinct. They were being washed in again. The boy was taken with cramps, lost his

hold on the oil box and went down. The man was washed toward the middle of the bay and drifted during the night. At dawn he was almost ready to give up, but the wind and waves headed him for the east Bhore and he took heart. Then he saw boats and used his last strength in trying to reach them. The boatmen saw him, and were able to get him in time, and picked him out of the water. There was not much of the man left, and he was shriSkiqg for water as he collapsed in the boat. He had been 48 hours on a rough sea in a bad storm with a hatch cover for support. He had been maddened by fear of sharks and by lost chances of rescue. As he lay on a pallet after he found himself able to talk again, his rescuers spoke"of his wonderful endurance. He said, of course, he had done the best he could. He wanted to live, he said.