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SABLE ISLAND Green single barbette-tower freighter, number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level Q P. as Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat. Watched to water and pithed by Postal Packet, Dec. 14th. No wreckage recovered. Messages and wills of crew at all A. B. C. offices.
Traversing the entire length of the deck past the houses of the sheep and pigs; past the great life-boats; past the half-closed door of the testing-room, where the operators maintained their unceasing watch in a flood of light; past the captain's cabin, a species of land-mark or half-way house; past a group of cows and goats lying on the deck chewing the cud peacefully, and past offices and deck-cabins too numerous to mention, he came at last to the fore-tank, which was so full of cable that the hands ready to act, and standing on the upper coil, had to stoop to save their heads from the deck above.
One of the greatest dangers in paying-out consists in changing from tank to tank when one is emptied, and a full one has to be commenced. This was always an occasion of great interest and anxiety. About midnight of the 19th the change to the fore-tank was made, and nearly every soul in the ship turned out to see it.
At last the operation was successfully accomplished and the danger past, and the cable was soon running out from the fore-tank as smoothly as it had run out of the other.
When the bow of the air-ship dipped, the man at the pump could transfer some of the water from the fore-tank to the after-tank, and the ship would right itself. The water could similarly be transferred from the after-tank to the fore-tank when the stern of the craft pointed downwards.
It is difficult to describe the almost tender solicitude with which all this was done. The cable was passed carefully so carefully through all the huge staples that were to direct its course from the fore-tank to the wheel at the stern.
Captain Purnall overlooks all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing. The stranger leaks pungently. "We ought to blow into St. John's with luck. We're trying to plug the fore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away," her captain wails. "She's sinking like a log," says Captain Purnall in an undertone. "Call up the Banks Mark Boat, George."
In the fore-tank eight men guided each coil to prevent entanglement, and on deck men were stationed a few feet apart all along to the stern, to watch every foot as it passed out. Three hours completed the transfer. Then the barge went slowly shoreward, dropping the cable into the sea as she went. It was quite a solemn procession!
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