By the Beautiful Sea

The fog had come in the night, one of those chowder-thick, chill wet shrouds from the sea that Maine men,, call "dungeon fogs." Casco Bay sailors stayed indoors. As Paul Thurston, president of the Rumford Falls Trust Co., Rumford, Me., walked into his office he had noticed empty desks, typewriters silent that should have been clicking. His secretary, Leila Sanders, was not in her place. Albert Melanson, Bessie Strople, Elizabeth Howard had not appeared for work, had sent no word.

When telephones in the bank began to ring, Mr. Thurston began to put two & two together. He learned that his missing employes and 30 others had sailed the day before from Dyer's Cove, 60 miles from inland Rumford, to picnic on Monhegan Island. They had been taken there by Skipper Paul Johnson on the Don, a 44-foot "Nova Scotian," long past her rum-running prime. Thurston telephoned to the Coast Guard. They had seen nothing of the Don.

Boats pushed out into the dungeon fog, blew horns, waited in vain for Skipper Paul's reply. From Monhegan Island and all Casco Bay the searchers sent the same answer: no trace. A throng of weeping kinfolk, scared children gathered at Harpswell wharf. Hours later, a message came from Westpoint that the Don had put in there at 11 a.m. to buy lobsters, then left for Monhegan.

Next morning the Atlantic broke its silence: it tossed a girl's body against the oars of a Bailey Island fisherman. By nightfall six other women had been found floating in the bay, among them, Bessie Strople and Elizabeth Howard. Lashed to a small keg, Skipper Johnson was found, near him charred pieces of the Don.

Seamen's finding: the Don, foul with her own gasoline, and carrying extra tins on deck, blew up.

> One hundred and seventy miles south, on the same Atlantic coast, a pea-soup fog swallowed two other joyriders. Nicholas S. Embiricos, 32, Greek-born director of a London shipping firm, and Mrs. Eleanor Young, 23 (ex-Mrs. Robert Ogden Bacon Jr., ex-Manhattan glamor girl), had taken off from Newport, R.I. in a Fairchild monoplane to fly to New York. At Matunuck, twelve miles down the coast, amateur Pilot Embiricos circled, found a rift in the fog, nosed downward for a landing. As he leveled off, a wave slapped the wings, and the plane crashed in shallow water. Embiricos died at the controls. Carried ashore by lifeguards, Mrs. Young died forty minutes later. Her dog was found dead in the surf, not far from the wreck.

> At Jacksonville, Fla., where the St. Johns River flows into the Atlantic, 53 men, women" & children on the excursion cruiser Ruby Lee were luckier. When the Ruby Lee let go a starboard plank, filled and sank in the mouth of the river, all the crew and passengers were saved. Captain S. E. Baitray sputtered: " 'Twould have been different a few minutes later . . . then we'd have been in the open sea."

>Heading to or from their holiday, or just staying quietly at home exploding things, on the Fourth of July weekend, 628 people were killed throughout the U.S. in plane and automobile crashes, drownings, assorted shootings--only five by fireworks.

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