WEIRD TRAVEL TALES-1

 A Chat with the Skipper Concerning Clairvoyance 

By BOB DAVIS

North German Lloyd, S.S. Columbus
Off Newfoundland Banks.—1931.

IT IS the habit of sea captains to stroll over the ship, weather permitting, from ten to twelve A.M. In this tour of inspection, which is usually attended with a mild display of ceremony, the old sea dogs are not averse to brief conversations with such passengers as are up and about. The day was fair and Captain Ahrens was in good humor.

"What time tomorrow morning," asked a traveler, "should we pick up the Nantucket Lightship?"

"About nine," answered the sailor, cocking his meteorological eye skyward, "and, weather permitting, that means the dock at eight P.M."

I asked the skipper if he had ever heard the story of the soldier who, returning from the front on a troopship after the armistice, bet his bunkie five dollars that he would never again see the Nantucket Lightship. No? "Well, the wager was made about midnight, in the dark, and won at daybreak."

"I suppose the winner was clairvoyant, or thought he was," guessed the skipper. "I've known such cases at sea."

"Not this time," I told him. "Our soldier wasn't dealing in second sight. An hour before he made the wager he was stricken with blindness. He had put his money on a sure thing. Ironic, but true."

"Umph," grunted the man of the sea. "That reminds me of a woman passenger, who sailed with us from New York. Though perfectly well, she took all meals in her cabin, declining to enter the dining-room or come on deck. 'It is perfectly useless,' said she, 'for me to leave my stateroom. The ship will not reach port. As this is to be my last voyage I have decided to meet the end here. Do not attempt to dissuade me. This vessel is doomed.'

"The news of her strange decision spread through the ship, creating no little consternation. My suggestion that she appear on deck and dissipate the harm she had done, met with her amazing and insistent declaration that she was clairvoyant."

"And was she?"

"Well, the lady disembarked at Southhampton and the ship continued to cross and recross the Atlantic without eventualities of any sort. In fact, we are standing on her deck—now. Clairvoyance on the Columbus seems to be out of place."

THERE was no reason why so entertaining a person as Captain Adolph Ahrens should be permitted to stop there. "Have you ever known in your experiences at sea or elsewhere of an authentic case of clairvoyance?" I asked.

"Yes, and quite a remarkable instance it was. Romantic, in a way." He smiled at the recollection. "In my twenty-second year I was second mate on the steel bark Amazon, a wool carrier running between London and Australia, At the time of which I speak we were taking on a cargo at Melbourne, where during a fortnight's stay I had fallen in love with an Australian girl by the name of Mildred Crawford. She was a sister of Graham Crawford, one of the leading journalists of Australia. The affair reached the proportions of a genuine courtship and I seriously contemplated deserting the Amazon for a home on shore. My sweetheart, then sixteen, thought that reasonable delay would be wiser than haste, and I decided that she was right.

"ON THE following Friday night, we sat in the park repeating our farewells and talking of the future. The Amazon, all loaded but for a few bales that were to be taken aboard Saturday morning, when we would leave the dock and anchor in the stream, was making ready to sail at high tide Sunday morning. Suddenly my intended turned to me exclaiming: 'Don't go aboard. The Amazon will not leave tomorrow.' I laughed at the idea, but she persisted. 'Why do you say that?' I asked. 'Because I see the Amazon submerged to her gunwales, and still tied to the pier,' said she. 'Nonsense,' I replied and thereupon bade her goodby. Her last act was to press into my hand a locket bestowed with her blessing.

"The next day, Saturday, we completed our preparations and were getting ready to cast oft and move out into the roadstead when a collier from Newcastle, coming to berth astern of us, swung with the tide. and smashed into our port plates. Almost instantly the Amazon began to flood through her open seams, and in half an hour we were lying on the mud. with the cargo saturated. We were hung up in Melbourne for nearly a month, making repairs and taking on a shipment of dry in place of the wet wool. Mildred didn't even say, 'I told you so,' but the incident increased my respect for her clairvoyant powers.

"In 1902 I was given a ship that took me into Chinese waters, and from that time onward was advanced until I joined the North German Lloyd, attaining in 1928 command of the Columbus. On three different occasions after the Amazon affair I returned to Melbourne and each time saw my first sweetheart, who, like a sensible girl, had married an Australian and was raising a family. I was a welcome guest at her home and look back upon those days as delightful memories. It is a curious thing, but whenever my ship headed for Melbourne, Mildred Crawford knew a week in advance of my coming that the German boy would soon arrive in Australian waters, Her clairvoyant powers never failed her. No, I can't say where she is now, but I wish her the best of fortune."

"Would you mind telling me," I asked, "what was in the locket Mildred gave you that night in the Melbourne park?"

"A slip of paper," said the skipper, removing his cap respectiuly, "upon which were written three lines:

"If oceans wide between us flow
And distance is our lot—
Dear 'Dolph, forget me not."

Nor shall I forget her, any more than I shall forget the girl I afterward married, the mother of my children.

"She's not a clairvoyant; just a German girl."