The Sailor's Story

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 3, 1882

The Sailor's Story.

I'VE been fourteen years a sailor, and I've found in all parts of the world I could get along just as well without alcoholic liquors, as with them, and better too.

Some years ago, when we lay in Jamaica, several of us were sick with the fever, and among the rest, the second mate. The doctor had given him brandy to keep him up, but I thought it was a queer kind of "keeping up." Why, you see, it stands to reason, that if you heap fuel on the fire, it will burn the faster, and putting the brandy to a fever is just the same kind of a thing. Brandy is more than half alcohol, you know.

Well, the doctor gave him up, and I was set to watch with him. No medicine was left, for it was of no use. Nothing would help him, and I had my directions what to do with the body when he was dead. Towards midnight he asked for water. I got him the coolest I could find, and gave him all he wanted, and if you'll believe me, in less than three hours he drank three gallons.

The sweat rolled off from him like rain. Then he sank off and I thought sure he was gone; but he was sleeping, and as quietly as a child. In the morning, when the doctor came, he asked what time the mate died.

"Won't you go in and look at him?" said I. He went in and took the mate's hand. "Why," said he, "the man is not dead! He's alive and doing well! What have you been giving him?"

"Water, simply water, and all he wanted of it!" said I.

I don't know that the doctor learned anything from that, but I did, and now no doctor puts alcoholics down me, or any of my folks for a fever, I can tell you! I am a plain, unlettered man, but I know too much to let any doctor burn me up with alcohol.—Sel.