Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1879 — Five Days Without Food. [ARTICLE]

Five Days Without Food.

News of another remarkable escape after shipwreck reaches us by telegraph from New Orleans. The American brigantine Sally left Pensacola for Havana on the 25th of October. It isveiy clear that the Sally should not have left Pensacola at all. She was not seaworthy, and she set sail in a gale of ■wind. Such at least are the facts as set forth in the telegraphic report, or as are at least directly Inferable from it. From the hour the Sally left Pensacola her crew were at the pumps. On Sunday, the 26th of October, sne was laboring in a tremendous sea, and the wind was blowing a hurricane. At eight o’clock on Monday morning the vessel was thrown on her beam ends, and, half full of water as she was, it proved impossible to right her. This happened at a point about a hundred miles southeast of South Pass Light. At the moment the Sally went over the following things occurred: The mainmast, which the crow had probably been trying to cut away, went by the board. As it fell it killed the steward. The Captain had managed with three of the crew to scramble into the longboat. and at the same instant they pushed clear of the wreck. Antonio Diaz, a Spaniard, was knocked insensible and washed overboard, but being entangled in the dying rigging, was hauled in 6ome mysterious way hack to the ship again. Gustav Michel, a German, who was at the wheel, had lashed himself there, and so remained safely in his place. The remaining two of the eight men constituting the crew were simultaneously swallowed up by the waves.

Ten minutes after these events the long-boat was no more to be seen. The sea was vciy high, and Michel thinks the boat must soon have foundered. He helped his surviving comrade out of his didiculties, and for the next five days the two men clung to the wreck. Their situation was desperate and all but hopeless. They were entirely without food or drink. The Sally* bein£ nearly water-logged scarcely showed above the level of the sea. Only one miserable resource in the wav of sustenance was left to them. This consisted of a hapless cat which had escaped in the rush of waters and remained with them in the vessel. The men killed the poor creature and drank her blood. On Friday, the fifth day, the storm-tossed mariners nearly gave up in despair. The wreck rolled heavily in the trough of the sea, and their strength was almost exhausted. On Thursday afternoon they had seen a baric gliding along the horizon and had made every possible signal to attract her attention. But she aid not or would not see them, and with the sunset her topgallant sails sank in the sea and all hope sank with them. On Friday morning the two men drank what was left of the blood of the cat, and then made a mournful agreement. They resolved if help did not come by another sunset to abandon the ship and drop into the water. They were suffering terribly, and to die. they reasoned, would be better than to endure their agonies longer. Toward noon on Friday Michel went mad, and a wretched struggle ensued between the two men, Diaz, weakened as he was, straining eveiy nerve to save his shipmate’s fife by keeping him from leaping overboard. In this he was successful, and by afternoon Michel partly recovered. But the sun went down, and down, and still there was no sign of succor. To Diaz the situation now must have been peculiarly appalling. The delirium of Michel uas likely to ‘ return in the night. There was no longer an atom of the loathsome substitute for food and drink they had consumed before. Another night, in a word, must have seemed to Diaz, to be the sure witness of inevitable and cruel death. Darkness came creeping over the sea, and the mariners fell into the stupor of despair. Suddenly through the gloom there arose the null of a huge steamship. She was hearing straight down upon them —so straight that she was sure to see signals that the deflection of a point in her course half an hour before would have rendered invisible. She was the Spanish steamship Enrique, from Mantanzas,' and bound for New 'Orleans. In five minutes she stopped her engines close by the battered and prostrate wreck of tne Sally; and in five minutes more the poor fellows who were the sole survivors of her crew were in comfort and safety. Michel, the German, says that during the twenty-nine years he has passed at saa he has known no storm so terrific as that in which the Sally was capsized, and is amazed and grateful for his providential deliverance. The men were treated with profuse generosity by the Captain of the Enrique, who—for Diaz and Michel had lost every thing they had in the world—supplied all their wants with an unstinted hand. Of their comrades nothing is known, and nothing probably ever will he known, for the Sally’s papers have gone to the bottom with her, and even the names of these unfortunates cannot be repeated by the survivors.— N. T. Evening Post.

—While going to his daily duties about 7:30 o'clock this morning, Mr. John Shaw, who lives on Dearborn street near the city limits, noticed two little children, a girl aged eight years and a boy only three years old, playing on the Fort Wayne Railway track near the Thirty-seventh street crossing. The children, unconscious of an approaching train, were playing jack-stones with the pebbles they found between the tracks, and were so much'engaged that they did not hear the approaching train. Mr. Shaw called to them, and the girl saw her peril at once, and jumped from in front of the engine, leaving her little brother to his late. Mr. Shaw reached the boy just as the engine was within three feet of him, caught the boy in his arms and jumpfed to save his life, but unfortunately the cow-catfcher struck his left leg and crushed it terribly.- -Chicago Telegraph. —Boston has a Phisoognoscosphocraphv Society. The motto of the Thiscognoscosphocraphickers is ‘ ‘ Brevity is the soul of wit,” and Fhiscognoscosphocraphy is a specimen of it. If the Phiscognoscosphocraphicites were to start a paper called the Phiscognoscosphocrapher, the editor would doubtless call his brief paragraphs “ Phiscognoscosphocraphicalities. ’ ’ — Exchange. —The iposquitoes must quit us,