Community Corner
John Frazier's Further Adventures at Sea ...
When we last left off, our hero, who was applying for a permit to sail to San Francisco from New Zealand, had been thrown into jail for a misunderstanding ...
"After a while [sic] he was allowed to go out and work in the comandant's [sic] garden, and through the influence of that officer's wife was finally liberated. He has had many very thrilling adventures. Once, when in the region of the Behring [sic] strait, the sailors discovered that the birds had built nests on the side of a cliff, about 2500 feet high and were questioning how they could obtain some of the eggs, when our hero offered to get the eggs, if they would lower him down from the top of the cliff.
"They accordingly procured a thousand feet of whale line and lowered him down to its full length, but the birds attacked him with such vigor that he gave the signal to hoist him up, but the weight of the rope added to his weight, made such a heavy load that they could not raise him. The rope began to stretch and he was horror stricken as the thought that it might break, came to him, here he was suspended at the end of a thousand feet of rope and 1500 feet above the almost fathomless depths of water below. He began to feel faint but had the presence of mind to tie himself to the swing in which he sat. In lowering him the rope cut into the loose dirt at the top of the cliff and pieces began to crumble of [sic] and drop down by him, and when it once got started larger pieces began to fall and in a short time, rocks weighing half a ton were falling so close to him that he could feel the wind of [sic] them. He would look up and see those huge rocks coming down and his eyes would almost start from their sockets as he thought that the next one must surely strike him. He could not possibly dodge. All he could do was to sit there and wait till one of them should strike him and end his suspense ..."
Will Mr. Frazier be struck by a boulder from above and dashed down to the ocean below? Can his shipmates save him before the whale line snaps? How much more can one man possibly endure?! Stay tuned for the final chapter in our chronicle of the apparently death-defying man who discovered a mineral well in what would become our little village by the sea, John Frazier!
