Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 9, Number 47, DeMotte, Jasper County, 12 October 1939 — Floyd Gibbons' [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Floyd Gibbons'

ADVENTURERS’ CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELFI

“Ten Terrible Seconds" Hello, everybody: , This is a yarn about a couple of ropes. The yarn—well—it’s told by Herman R. Wallin of Brooklyn, N. Y. Herman is supposed to be the adventurer and principal character in it, but somehow or other the ropes managed to take over the story. One of those ropes chisels into this story solely on the strength of the fact that it —well—that it just w r asn’t. If we mentioned it here, it’s only to post it as A. W. O. L. at a time when it w’as needed for guard duty. The other rope comes in at the crucial point in our story. Like the hero of the old ten-twenty-thirty melodrama it shows up in the nick of time to right'the wrong the other rope has done and prove to the world that though some ropes may be low down and onery, there are good ropes as well as bad. And now that I’ve told you the plot of today’s little drama, let’s bring in Herman Wallin—and on with the show. Today, Herman is a radio operator on the S. S. Birkenhead, but this adventure happened in July, 1926, when Herman was occupying the radio shack of the S. S. Cornelia plying between New York and the West Indies. The Cornelia was almost at the end of her “out” trip—just two or three hours run from the first of the tropical island ports at which she was due to call. Herman's Radio Shack Located on After Part of Boat Deck. It was a dark night, and Herman was on the lower deck, making his way up to the boat deck where his room was located. And—well—before we go any farther with this yarn we'll have to tell you something about the way the S. S. Cornelia was constructed. Suppose we let Herman do that himself. “My radio shack,’’ Herman says, “was, on the after part of the boat deck—the only quarters located on this part of the ship. A few’ feet away from my room, on either side of the shack were davits for two lifebodts which had been removed. Since the members of the t rew

seldorri came up on this deck, and then in the daytime only, no ropes had been stretched across the openings between the davits.’’ And there you have not only the layout of Herman’s sea-going penthouse but also the lowdown on that rope that just wasn’t there. That missing rope was quite a problem. You know they don’t have any open lights on the top deck of a ship because they interfere with the vision of the officer on watch up on the bridge. On nights when there wasn’t any moon, Herman used to have to watch his step pretty carefully. Usually he would start walking from the ladder in a straight line, counting out the number of steps it required to get to his door. But on this particular night he paused half way in his course and looked back. Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for stopping and looking back. Herman just sort of lost his bearings, but that was almost as bad. When he started out again he was going the wrong way in the dark. He was still counting steps when, all of a sudden he went through an open space between two boat davits—and walked overboard And Then Came the Ten Terrible Seconds. And then came those ten terrible seconds—the worst moments in Herman’s life. It felt as if time had been slowed down like one of those slow-motion movies—seemed as though that dive „ from the top deck was taking a year. Herman can still count over every one of those seconds—can still remember how’ the lights of the lower deck went crawling past him as he fell. One of his arms grazed the rail of the lower deck as he went by, and through his mind flashed the thought that that rail was the last thing he could possibly have caught hold of. Below him now were only the smooth steel plates of the ship’s side, straight down to the water line Herman thought of the propeller, threshing the water at the ship’s stern and remembered hearing that anyone falling overboard close to the side inevitably gets sucked into the voriex of the churning water and chopped to mincemeat. The coming up at him now. He could see it gleaming dully beneath him and he braced himself for the shock of hitting it. Then, suddenly, his left arm hit something—hit it with a sharp, stinging blow that bent it double and almost took Herman’s breath away. Herman didn’t know what it was, but instinctively he made a grab for it. He caught it—and his hand skidded several yards along a wet, slimy surface before he realized what it w’as. A rope! A missing rope had gotten him into this spot in the first place. Another one—a rope that was very much present—seemed to be helping him out of it. His Feet Were Dragging in the Water When He Stopped. Herman clutched at that rope until he thought his arm would come off “My feet were dragging in the water as I came to a stop,’’ he says, “and ,the tug of the water added to the strain on my hands. I heard faint shouts above me. The engineroom telegraph rang and I could feel the side of the ship shuddering as though it had hit some obstruction m the water. Then I could see heads thrust out over the deck rail and several voices were calling to me to hang on. A couple of men sitting on the lower deck had seen me flash by and had shouted to the officer oin watch to stop the ship.’’ A rope ladder came over the side and a deckhand came down to help Herman back aboard. “When I reached the deck,” he says, “I was so weak with fright that I couldn’t stand up. They took me to a stateroom and put me in a bunk. Outside of a few bruises and a pair of skinned hands, I was as good as ever in a few hours, but I saw to it next day that a couple of lines were stretched between those empty boat davits.” And in case you're wondering what that other rope was doing hanging over the side of the ship, here’s Herman with, the answer. “It was what is known as the guest line,” he says. “It’s a heavy rope put over the side near the water s edge and used to tie small boats and launches near the gang-way. The ship was approaching the first of our tropical ports and this line had been put out only a few hours before.” -Released by Western Newspaper Union.)

He went through an open space between the two boat davits—and walked overboard.