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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1949-11-30, Page 3The Upture Hy Richard Hill Wilkinson S [11',RlEJ' SOL ROCK cautiously approached the cabin and knocked three times. A.holt slid back into its socket, The door swung open and a voice caun• out into the night. "That you, Sol?" Sol sighed in relief. "Helly, Nally," be said, stepping inside, "What luck?" "None." Sol he rd Belly fishing for a match, and he said, "Wait a In[uule, Baldy. 1 gut a scheme I want to work out." "They've seed are,," Sol went on. "Joe and Slim. They've been trail- ing me all day. ( just kept far enough to avoid trouble." "Avoid trouble: Von?" Baldy', voice sounded incredulous. And Sol chuclded, "Listen, Baldy, we've been chasing these two had men for more than a week now. I'm sick of it. And now that we've found theta, I don't aim -to 151 'eat get away." "So that's why you ran away from them?" sarcastically, "Don't be a fool. 1 wanted 'em to follow ate. They'll be along any, time now, l made sure they saw me "ride down in here by silhouetting myself against the skyline 15 min. Utes ago. Now here's the point: They don't know about you, yet, They think there's only me to con- tend with. And unless 1 miss my guess, they aim to get me out of the 'say tonight," "Unless I stop 'em," said Baldy. "Right, Now get this: I'm !cav- ing you here alone, see? Cover the windows and then light up. They'll think it's me inside here, al] unsus- pecting." "Reach toward the sky, boys: .Drop Tose gun, and we *round!" ".Eine," said Baldy. "But what's wrong with me being on the outside and you on the inside..?" Sol laughed shortly. "A lot, you little squirt, Now pipe down and obey orders. I'm going." Instantly he grew tense. Every muscle and nerve and fibre became alert. He half crouched, half stood in his hiding place. And as he watched the cabin, a dins figure took shape and became a ratan. Another appeared beside the first, They lingered only a moment, then began stealthily to approach the door. Sol stepped silently from his hiding place. At the very instant that one of the figures crouched to thrust his weight against the door, he spoke out of the darkness. "Reach toward the sicy, boys! Drop those guns and turn around, the jig's up. We got the drop on you I" GL QUL. C DINED his footsteps, S In the darkness he stumbled, re- gained his feet and came on. At the moment he went down an orange lance of flame streamed out of the blackness near the cabin, it was followed by another. But before the two 'bandits could shoot again, the two sin -guns in Sol's hands thundered, Answering shots came front the cabin, Sol felt a searing pain in his left shoulder. !lis senses began to reel, And suddenly he realized that the renegades had accomplished what he had been unahle to do be- cause of his stumble. They had fired at the flash from his guns -high - honing for a kill. This was Sol's last thought. When Sol returned to conscious - nes: he found himself lying on a bunk in the cabin. Baldy, grinning broadly, was standing over hint. "What the hell did you blow out that light for?" Sol wanted to know. "It spoiled nn• aim, made me stmt. bhe and nearly got me killed." "'i'hnnphl it would." Baldy griuued. "\Wanted it to, Toil didn't think 1 was going to he fool enough to open the door and stand in the light so those birds ronld take pot 511012 a1 11he?" "F\'c•I1, wlat happened, anyway?" For an answer Baldy pointed across the room. Sol hooked and saw w0 Wren flying there, both holm(' securely, "Wing -ens I" Sol asked. "Winged nothing, 1 whacked 'ern over the head from the doorway while they were shooting at you. By the \ray, you almost hit nue with your own wild shooting." "Wish f had," Sol grinned, "Say. squirt, yon ain't 110 dumb as you look!" "And 1 sinl so much of a squirt, either•" Baldy replied indgnantly. "Net is. 1 blew out that light just oris f mold show you what a irie teller 1 was." Set Off For Pole In Balloon, Fate A Mystery Fur 33 Years August of. 1940 ... and the sealer. Hea'tvaag is nosing through the ice of Splealae gen, On a routine seal hunt', 'ler' crew little dream they are about, to uncover one of the great mysteries of polar explora- tion. "Seals off White Island 1" It t5 the lookout's cry, echoing over the ice, that startles them into making their great discovery, Soon the shouts of the sealers are mingling with the roar of wal- rus, Within an hour, the nlell are busy, skinning, One of the sealers, seeking water to wash the gory pelts, sees a bright object—an aluminum lid -- glinting on the ice. That is the be- ginning. in a few moments, he has discovered an upturned boat. Now he is scuffing up the snow, excitedly ... a boat hook .. , part of a n,1u's sleeve, tie 0. on the verge of uncovering a tragic chap- ter in the annals of polar explora- tion, "I've found Audri'el" The hoarse shout jerks from his throat and starts the sealers scrambling over the ice towards him. Sure enough, on the boat (took he now brandishes above his head are the tell-tale markings: Andree Pol. Exp. 18'!7 Grim Fragments Soot the ice is yielding up more and more grim fragments. A Swed- ish flag, clothing and human bones• rifles, a sledge, cameras and a diary until the whole pitiful story of Salamon Andree's ill-fated expedi- tion—vividly described by Frank Illingworth in his book, "Men Against the Arctic"—can he slowly pieced together. Salomon Andree's plan to bal loon across the North Pole cap- tured the invagination of the world —it was a world without airplanes —of 1897, Oen July 10 of that year, the Swede climbed into the gondola of his balloon, the Eagle, followed by his two countrymen, Nils Fraenkal and Kurt Striugborg, The stun shone brilliantly above the Spitz. bergen beach, The wind blew gently towards the North Pole, 550 miles away. A cheer went up from the men grouped about the Eagle as she rose majestically and drifted across the ice of Virgo Bay. Yet she was hardly a black speck on the horizon before doubts were nagging at their minds. Should they have sub scribed to such a venture? Bearer of Good News At Spitsbergen they continued to 'wait anxiously. Until one morn- ing a welcome speck appeared in the Arctic sky, Growing steadily, it fluttered into their outstretched hands, A carrier pigeon—bearer of good news! Once more, a clheer went up from the waiting scientists and newspapermen. They little knew then that the exhausted pigeon was to be their last living contact with the Eagle, although over the years, with ruth- less irony, the Arctic Ocean has continued to deliver up buoys con- taining "progress messages" drop- ped on to the pack ice by Andree in his drifting balloon. The last scall pathetic reminder of the explorers was tossed by the sea on to the Norwegian coast in 1938. Andree had planned to pilot his balloon with the aid of drag -chains, These he hoped would act as rud • ders, but the chains fell off within a mile of their starting point. From that moment, the Eagle was at the mercy of the wind on the most hazardous adventure ever undertaken by balloon. For several days, the wind held in the right direction, 13y day the sun beat down and the balloonists perspired beneath the shimmering envelope. At night, the tempera- ture fell sharply; gas in the balloon contracted and the Eagle dropped slowly until the three men could make out the ragged edges of the floes. ' Then they met Wow. Andree turned his head to where the wind whipped through the shroud litres and lois expression grew blank, un- comprehending, "It's tont" kle flung a head 09.• wards the 'envelope. The triangular rent flapped el- ciously, widening as they stared. Where an hour before they had been confident of success, now they faced disaster. Soon the gondola was thudding on to the ice and bhe three 0150 were scrambling out for dear life, The Eagle was finished; and the explorers' plight was desperate. Their boat was undamaged , , , but what were the chances of sailing it through the ice floes of the Polar Ocean? With as touch food and equip• mems as they could carry, they paddled, hunching their shoulders against the wind. Before they had travelled a mile, the ice closed in. Nothing for it now but to walk, dragging the boat with them, Nearing Exhaustion A month went by, and they 12ateller! their rations dwindle. One day: "Wove enough food for a acelc," Andree told them. They were nearing exhaustion when Fraenkal saw the seal. Slowly ire wriggle,[ towards it, aimed and fired. Within 0111111 s, they were cut- ting away the steaming red meat and cramming it greedily into thei, mouths. Their strength and hope were renewed even if winter 'was upon them. Yet secretly, they had given up any real hope of winning through—although each kept his fears to himself. "We'll have a long Walk nest spring, that's all," Fraenkal joked. But Andree knew that long be- fore spring returned to the ice pack, the eurent would bear them towards the Pole, beyond the point where the Eagle lay shattered. He knew that—saving a miracle—there would be no spring for them. • Propped against the side of the upturned bogt, sick with cold and fatigue, he wrote in his diary: "We have eaten the seal's brain, its flesh, liver, kidneys, heart, blood and in- testines." Soon they were chewing the contents of the intestines, half- digested fish. And then . . Andree's miracle almost happened. Striugborg was first to notice the change in the Wiild. "It's veered north-west!" he shouted. It was blowing the ice towards Spitzhergen 1 Still the days dragged on , but now there was hope again! The wind stayed in Its new quarter. The moving ice drew ever nearer land. End Of A Diary One day Andree called joyfully: to his companions, Veal . , . it was a distant coastline. Before very long, their frozen boots were stum- bling forward over rock, Solid rock. But land was not enough. It was the end of their desperate advent- ure. Too weak to go farther, they crawled beneath the shelter of their boat, All they needed now was an- other miracle! In November, 1897, nearly five months after Ile had cast off in tate Eagle, Salomon Andree took up his diary for the last time. The pencil ntoved'painfully in bis stiffened fingers. He wrote: "Our position is not especially good." Thirty-three years later, an aluminum lid glinted on the ice of White Island and the mystery of his end was solved. Diet and Teeth Dr. Gutterm Toverud, professor at the Dental School of Oslo, Nor- way, recently reported that dental decay in Norwegian children de- creased 60 per cent to 80 per cent during World War II, tiartly be- cause the wartime diet contained little refitted carbohydrates, espe- cially sugar and the sugar products. Norwegians also ate more fish, salted herring, potatoes and carrots —foods high ht calcium, phosphor- ous, iron and vitamins A, B, C. and D. In 1949 dental decay in pre- school children has increased 30 per cent to 40 per cent, Ponderous Porker—There's 500 pounds of sausage --nearly a third of a mile of talcs ---wrapped up in this high hog brought to market by Robert I:lawle.y, The four-year-old baron boar is foto' feet high. six feet long and weighs 1080 pounds. Packet's paid Hawley $.12'1,20 for the !tog and sharpened up ?'heir sausage grinders. The normal-size 1 famm:hire hog in fr,:'-eg•rrtnnd points _._ up the monster's size. Might Be A Good Idea To Copy! — A group of some 30 fathers tool: pre -Christmas lessons in how to stuff a stock- ing, how to trim a tree, how to smoke a pipe without setting fire to false whiskers and other Santa Claus techniques, Some of the class are pictured above on "graduation Day." Paul Bunyanski And The Atomski There is going -to be bottomless discomfiture and chagrin in the Am- erican West when readers in that section have absorbed the words of Andrei 1. Vishinslcy, Soviet For- eign Minister, about Russian pm- gt•ess in the mysteries of atomic saps a Writer in The Christian Science Monitor. Said Mr. Vishinsky at Lake Suc- cess: "Right now we are utilizing atomic energy for our economic needs in our own economic inter - we are irrigating deserts; we are cutting through the jungle and the tundra; we are spreading life, hap- piness, prosperity, and welfare in places where the human footstep has not been seen for a thousand years." A Russian -licensed newspaper in Berlin says atonic explosions were used to,cut a canal through the Tur- gai Mountains as part of a mam- moth water diversion project which would eventually* involve a chan- nel 580 miles long, part of which in the Aral Sea would be deep enough' for seagoing vessels and twice as wide as the English Channel, Dwellers in Michigan, Wiscon- • sin, and the Pacific Northwest, pro- bably have thought they had a monopoly on this sort of thing 01 the doings of their regional hero, the legendary boss lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, Babe, Paul and Babe it was who dug the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and Puget Sound, according to timber -camp account—and what a timber camp! The chow tables were three miles long, and the whole top of the stove was used for a hot -cake griddle, with boys skating around of sides of bacon to keep it greased, If one wishes nowadays to get an impression of the size of the big blue ox, he must turn to the Ameri; can South-west, to some such un- impeachable source as the booklet covers that: "If all the steers in Texas were one big steer, he could stand with Iris front feet in the Gulf of Mexico, itis hind feet 111 T'Iudson Bay, and punch a hole in' the 1110011 with his horns while he brushed the Hist off the Aurora 13orealis with his tail." But now, alas, the spinners of folklore apparently 01051 give way to the pre-eminence of the Slay. Not only c10 are find the Russians built the first airplane, the first submarine, the first electric light, and the first radio, but we are al- most impelled to bow to their super- iority in the art of the tall story. why praise the man Who keeps both feet on the vomit!? 1Te isn't getting anywhere! ARCHJE t-101, IN! I'M GOING OUT TO HOW LOOK OVER ABOUT A VAN SNEWT CO-PILOT?FINISHING SCHOOL! DADDY WANTS .... TO GO THERE ^ ! WHEN 1 P `GRADLIATEI 'Eli tg i rrt .11111 Key To Treasure Flung From Gallows Whet the 18th century lrrencit pirate, Olivier le Vasseur (nick- named La Beuze), stood on the gallows, he is said to have flung to the crowd a faded chart show- ing where he had buried treasure worth $450,000,000 - at dlaye, Sey- chelles Islands. "Find it who can,' was the challenge he hurled as he went to his death, Today, three Kenya treasure hunters are reported to have locat- ed a cavern where, according to the chart which was placed itt French archives, the treasure lies. They say their divining instruments have indicated the presence of gold and precious stones. But instruments have also shown that poisonous gases lie under the ground, These may be the reputed "hidden guardian" of the pirate's loot. Engineers have started to drill through rock to release the gases. The treasure 'seekers will enter the cave in gas masks through a concealed entrance known only to themselves, TIIHAIZN FRONT J0612uss-e11 I imagine that moat poultrymen know that they should give each hen three to four square feet 01 floor space in the laying house, and that heavy breeds need more tlran lighter ones. x t: But do you know the rest of the space requirements that will get the most eggs out of your flock? Here they are, as agreed upon by poultry experts of 47 agricultural colleges: M 4, Feeders -32 feet of hopper spare per 100 birds, or 3 4-5 inches per bird. 1f the birds can eat from both sides of the hopper, each foot of length is equal to two feet of space w 21 Roosts -6 to 7 inches per bird. Heavy breeds need more space—no to 9 inches per hen in warm cli- mates. Waterers—One eight -gallon wat erer or its equivalent per 100 birds. + s: w Nests -20 box nests per 100 . birds. • * 4, Ail of these figures are mini- mums. Give your birds more if yon want—but no less. If deep litter won't work for you, there is a reason. Maybe sev- eral. Deep litter saves lots of time and cuts litter cost if handled properly. Yet deep litter is "out of the window" for some. And I mean the whole idea—not just the litter. t. r: Deep litter works best !n insu- lated houses. Insulated houses are better because they are warmer. Warm air dries the litter. So, tine warmer the house, the easier it is to keep deep litter dry and fluffy. 5 You have to get the most out of your insulation, too. One flock own- er thought he should ventilate his house more when the litter got damp in cold weather. So he kept the south door of the laying house open nearly all day. His litter stayed damp. He was putting too much trust in sunshine and not enough in temperature. So he kept the south door of the lying house open nearly all day. His litter stayed damp, He was putting too muoh trust in sunshine and not enough in temperature. 1' Many owners of single-wall houses also are getting good re- sults. They are cleaning the house only once or twice a year—and that's the test., The reason is that they're still getting warns tempera- ture. But, instead of coating from insulation, it's corning from ler mentation, which occurs in the litter with just the right tempera ture and moisture level. is 4, „ Tiflis is shown by a demonstra- tion flock owner's experience. Site used deep litter in one end of her 60 -foot house, and 0 worked fine alt winter. Site put it in the other end later in the fall and the litter was ,set all winter. m c: 'rims of starting probably made a difference in fermentation. Litter used for the old hen flock wag started in early September, that for' the pullets in late October. Many flock owners find a little stirring of deep litter helps in areas that get damp. Also, adding new litter occasionally, until the litter is at least six inches deep, often helps. Y 4, * Lime spread over the litter aids in keeping litter front sticking to gether or matting. It is recom- • mended for periods of unusual dampness. The Winnah! — Phillip Get- man, aged S, holds Buster, the prize alley oat that nipped top honors in a cat parade and con- test in Greenwich Village. Bus- ter won the title "Homeliest Cat." ®an Sea is o w Ukh�"As "ATOMGRADS"—Soviet MA Atonic anergy Developments ® Sesrtes of Fissionable Material K. NDE i Nu.7uv4 Gorodok Lake 8orkak ONGOLIA '411SYRL_- "IR 2i ply Where Russia Gets Atomic Material—The recent admission by Czechoslovakian pi cutter 7,a- potocky that Czech uranium, mined mostly at Joachimsthal, is going into Russian at.nnje energy plants, spotlights Russia's supply of fissionable tnaterials. Map shows USSR's princi- pal known sources. None of them is very big, but their total yield, mined by machine and hard - driven laborers, is enough to produce atomic bombs. D!s- 1'M GOING INSIDE ISN'T HE AND WOK AROUNDGUTE! A ')North HAVE TO WAIT HERE, ai ARCHIE! HASN'T HE ADORABLE HAIR ? by Montana OH, I CAN HARDLY V YEAH! WAIT TO COME TO I'M GOING VAN SNEWT! WILL TO VISIT YOU MI58 ME, YOU ARCHIE? EVERY DAY!