Sport: Double Whiskey

Early one morning last week a fishing smack trailed by a rowboat —routine indications of a channel swimmer—appeared in St. Margaret’s Bay, England. As they crept toward shore a little Frenchman, perhaps the swimmer’s trainer, was seen gesticulating in the bow of the rowboat. He seemed afraid that his aspirant would fail in the last 200 yards and kept shouting, “Think of your mother. Think of your father. Think of your wife.” The man in the water, who was thinking of a double whisky, swam sturdily on.

Pale-skinned and obviously overweight, a huge mealy fellow whose labored breathing spoke of too many days spent at an indoor occupation and whose coated ribs hinted at a diet that contained too many starches, Georges Michel, Paris baker, staggered onto the beach having beaten the world’s record for channel swimming with a time of eleven hours five minutes. Stalking into a tiny bar in St. Margaret’s he had his double whisky and talked about the trip. Champagne, he said, had helped him. He had felt a little seasick but that had passed. Then a cramp took hold of his belly but he rubbed it away. He ate some lumps of sugar dipped in brandy. Once a wave swept him off into the darkness (he left Gris-Nez, France, at 8:27 P. M.) and he did not sight the smack again for 15 minutes. As he reached shallow water (at 7:30) two Frenchmen, capering with joy, rushed into the surf with all their clothes on. A woman thrust a white rose into his hand. He was going back, he said, to the bakery business.