Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1913 — LAD SWEPT TO SEA BY GALE [ARTICLE]

LAD SWEPT TO SEA BY GALE

Drinks Milk of Cocoanuts on Branches Until Picked Up by a Passing Steamer and Brought to N. Y. New York.—“ There’s a cocoanut tree drifting ahead off the port bow. I do believe there’s a human body on it!” In the track of the recent West In-' dian hurricane, while the steamer Foxton Hall was passing debris of the storm sixty miles off the Jamaican coast, the vessel’s first officer made this discovery, and was so sure of it that he sent a lifeboat to the tree. Half, an, hour later the boat crew was lifting a half-conscious pickaninny from its branches. The lad called himself “Willie Gee.” He was a beachcomber at Port Antonio. When the hurricane came he sought refuge in a deserted hut, but, with it, he was blown to sea. He swam to the cocoa tree, where he drank milk from its nuts and, finally exhausted, fell asleep in its branches. He believed he floated for two days. The steamer carried him back to his home amopg the beachcombers. A button on his ragged shirt when he was found was one an American had given him. “Kiss me,” it read, “because I'm sterilised.**