Sedgwick High School - Comet Yearbook (Sedgwick, ME)

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THE COMET 13 One year ago I had occasion to take passage on a steamer over the same route that the ill-fated Oircon had taken in 1835. The trip was purely a business one, and I had no thought of meeting wilh the supernatural. lVe had barely cleared port when storm warnings were reported. Fifty miles from port the storm hit us in all its fury. The worst gale in forty years, the captain said. We were driven into the coast in spite of all that could be done. Our wireless sent out distress calls but to no avail. lVhen we were only five miles from shore, the captain said that the Devil's Ledge light was out of order. This meant that we could only trust to luck to avoid the ledge. The mention of Devil's Ledge seemed to stir some recollection in my memory, but I could not remem- ber where I had heard it before. The period of ten years had partially erased the old Irishman's story from my brain or memory. . There was only one hope left, there was a narrow channbl through the ledge through which the ship might be driven to the shore. If she hit the ledge, there was no hope. We were only two miles from shore when the long departed came to our aid. The lookout, who was straining his eyes into jthe darkness, gave a most terrifying yell. Following his pointed finger, we saw three ghostly figures sharply outlined in the rain and fog. Recollections came flooding upon me. The three clergymen of Devil's Ledge. Here they were, in person! The specters beckoned us on, now to the right, 11ow to the left. The helmsman obeyed the commands au-- tomatically. We were so petrified with astonishment and fear that our surroundings went unnoticed. All at o11ce the bow of the ship struck the shore, and we were thrown down by the impact. lVe arose to find the ap- paritions gone a11d the steamer beached high and dry on the shore. Our lives had been saved by the clergymen of Devil's Ledge. Never again will I doubt the stories of old legends. AN ADVENTURE OF THE YEAR. 3132 Hey! J immie, called his em- ployer, Hcome over here a second. Jimmie walked across the large of- lice of his boss and confronted him. How would you like to take your vacation with me this year, J immie? Jimmie started at the unusual ques- tion, and then a huge grin appeared on his clean-cut face, for his employer was none other than Hugh Mawson, president of the Solar Navagation Lines. A vacation with him could only mean one thing-a trip to Mars or Venus. There is nothing I would like bet- er, sir, said Jimmie Blair, respect- fully. I have never been outside the Earth, but I have longed to ever si11ce I can remember. When do we start and where are we going? Well, I am going to Mars to look over our interests there at Keribut, said Mawson, And we will start next Monday, if everything is all right. You know, Blair, you are al- most as badly off as the man who had never seen a television broadcast in 2000. Interplanetary travel has been possible now for one hundred years,

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12 THE COMET and the driver spoke to his compan- ion. See anybody coming, Al? he asked. Naw, guess we ran away from them, or else they haven't found them guys we croakedf' lVe better clear out of these parts, whatever they are doing, said the driver grimly, and proceeded to speed up the Buick still more. Back i11 Denver a bank had just been robbed and two employees had been murdered. After learning of the murder and robbery, the police had immediately given chase. But the ba11k bandits had so great a start that the police never obtained a glimpse of them. The description of the two men was flashed all over the state and surrounding country. The Buick automobile was found on the outskirts of the town of Birkley, fif- ty miles from Denver, but of the bandits, there was no trace. One day, a week after fthe bank robbery, a message was received from Yuma, Arizona, to the effect that two men answering to the description of the murderers had been seen in town. Before word had been given to have them arrested, they had dis- appeared. Where they had gone, no one knew. Some said that probably the killers had gone into the desert until the trouble blew over. Three months after their disap- pearance, when the police had given up the search, an old desert prospec-- tor came into Yuma with a strange story. In his travels through desert sands he had come upon the bodies of two men, half buried in the sand. About them were scattered bills and coins of all denominations. The vultures had partly defaced the bodies, but enough was left to posi- tively identify them as the bank bandits of Denver. The murderers had escaped the law, but it takes more than a murderer to escape desert justice. THE APPAn1'r1oN or nnvnrs LEDGE Along the coasts of England there are many legends which have been handed down from the ancient sea- faring folk to the present day sailors. One of these has to do with the three ghosts of Devil's Ledge. Ten years ago, I was told this old legend by an Irish sea captain. In 1835, -.so the story ran, the Gir- con, a sailing vessel bound .from Liverpool to Paris, had sunk on Devil's Ledge. There had been a terrible storm which had driven the vessel on the rocks, and she had gone down immediately. The entire crew and passengers had been lost. Among the passengers had been three eminent clergymen of the time. These three had come back from the unknown to warn and protect future mariners. Whenever a great storm came out of the Atlantic and a vessel was in peril at Devil's Ledge, the three wraiths of the departed minis- ters of God would appear to direct the ship away from danger. ,In later years a lighthouse had been built, and as the services of the ghostly trio had no longer been needed, they had gradually been for- gotten. Such was the story of Devil's Ledge. Of course, I did not accept the story as anything but a wild tale. Later, I was to acknowledge its truth by my own eyes.

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14 B THE coivnazfr and you have never seen the wonders of space. I've never had the chance yet, sir, replied Blair, but 11ow that I have, I'll enjoy it all the more. Monday morning appeared and the two men rode down the moving ways to the gigantic space dock on Long Island, N. Y. They boarded the president's special space ship, the Vela. This ship was small compared with the huge liners, but at that she was large in comparison with the ships of a few years back, and she had a speed of twenty miles per second between atmospheres. The automatically sealed doors? closed a11d the interplanetary ship took off. Her propellers carried her out of the atmosphere of the Earth into the black void as hundred miles up. Here the propellers were hauled in and the liquid fuel exploded in the rocket tubes and set her going at a tremendous rate. Jimmie Blair sat in the observation room and got his first eyeful of the wonders of black, airless space. The sun, planets, and stars shone in all their undimmed glory in the black, frigid sky, and to Jimmie it was a weird, beautiful sight. After ten days from port, the plan- ets began to grow slightly larger and the Earth, which was something like a million and a half miles away, had become very small. It was at about this time that something Went wrong with the generators of the repellent rays used to ward off asteroids from striking the ship. VVe were in deadly danger and knew it. The mechanics worked feverishly, but to no avail. Everyone wore his space suit in case of a col- lision. On the fifteenth day it happened. Mawson and Jimmie were together in the observation room when they saw approaching, at a terrific speed, a huge grey mass. The Vela maneu- vered crazily to escape it but could not get out of its way. It smashed into the space flier and crumbled the pointed metal nose of the craft like paper. The whole ship burst apart, due to the compressed air rushing into space and the shock of collision, and the human cargo was spewed out into frigid space. They had only their vacuum suits and ten days' sup- ply of oxygen. Mawson 'and Blair had grabbed each other when the smash came, and now they were slowly drifting around the remains of the space flier with the rest of the crew, some of whom were dead, and small parts of the Vela. The S. O. S. sent out just before the crash reached the Andromeda, of the United Space Liners, just outside of Venus. She at once put on all speed and hurried to the rescue. In seven days the Andromeda came upon the wreckage in space and picked up the men. Those who were not dead were nearly frozen by the terrible cold, in spite of their suits. The Andromeda then set out for Mars. Two weeks later, with Mars nearly reached, Mawson and Jimmie were wholly recovered from the terri- ble experience. I What do you think of interplanet- ary travel now, Jimmie, my boy? asked Mawson with a twinkle in his eye. Gosh! That was the most exciting