KILLED BY A FLYING FISH.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1093, 29 May 1882, Page 3

KILLED BY A FLYING FISH.

The following anecdote was related to a newspaper reporter by an old salt : « it's been my experience that it is the small things !u life that do the most damage. Some few years ago I had a second mate that had sailed with me when we were both boys, and off and on ever sine*. He might have been a master years ago, but he would drink. What that man went through was a regular good caution. He was cast away half a dozen times, and twice he had to eat human flesh to save himself. Once he fell from the mizen royal yard when the ship was lying-to in a gale of wind, but we picked him up, and lost two hands in doing it In fact, he seemed to bear a charmed life if anyone ever did, but he was finally killed by a fish six inches long. You may laugh, but come aboard my vessel tonight and I'll show up the log. We were bound for Bermuda with a load of coal for the Government. We were blowing along one afternoon with a ten knot breeze, and as it was smooth we had the main hatch open to cool the ship. My mate stood by the combing of the ' hatch when all at once tea or fifteen flying fish came aboard; not these soft kind with long wings, but what they call gurnards, with heads as hard as a rock. To make a long story short, one of them struck him on the forehead such a blow that I heard it at the wheel. He staggered a minute, threw up his arms and fell backward into the hold and broke his neck."