The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-11-18
GHOSTS STALK TIE DECk
TRAGIC TALE OF A BRITISH BARK
AND HER MASTER AND
MISTRESS
NOT WISELY, BUT TOO WELL
Did beautiful EIma Taylor Love the
Bold Sailor, Capt. John Craigen,
Once OF Her Maiestyzs
Navy.
San Francisco Examiner.

San Francisco Examiner.
Here Is told the romance Of two lives
romance that takes the reader from.
sentiment to continent and abroad upon
the high seas, where the shifting scenes
OF this strange drama of love and re-
Venge, of sin and sorrow and retribution
most terrible were played.
Death has rung down the curtain The
beautiful girl whose love for another
woman's husband proved her doom. like
the love Of Elaine for Launcelot, is sleep
ing her last sleep in Panama soil while
lie Tor whom she swept aside the laws
made by man lies countless fathoms be-
meath the oceans surface
The story of the British bark Melanope.
Its master, Capt. Craigen, and its fair
young mistress, Elna Mabel Taylor, is
The story of man and a woman who
loved not wisely, and whose punishment
was greater than they could bear. 1t is
the story of a ship that, sailing through
enchanted seas of pleasure, drifted at
last into the desolate domain of DEATH
When California celebrated her flftieth
anniversary; when the streets were glad
.. shouts; when the cafes rang with song;
when the lights flashed on shore and ship
and the bay was a-dance with d myriad
blearns, one vessel stood out among the
Others as the brightest gayest, 1veliest
of all-the British bark Melanope.
Yet Death and Disgrace stalked her
bridge, looked upward at her glittering
spars; followed cynically her aspiring
rockets; grew gray and grisly in the
lights nlumining her deck
Now the lawyers are fighting over the
fine bark The harpies of the shore are
plucking the eagle of the sea. While
up from homes as widely scattered as
the caves of the winds come stories OF
md 1C0nc~ 81,
to form with the barnacles on her strakes
and to float with the weeds upon her
keel.
CRAIGEN, THE HANDSOME SAILOR.
There is a grave in the prim Gods acre
OF Glasgow. There is a grave in the tang
led burying place of Panama. There is
grave near where the broad road of
East Orange, N. J., sweeps past the
willows and the expresses where lie the
dead of a fashionable New York suburb.
And somewhere in the painless sea is
the grave of one who looked gaily upon
the restrictions of the world but whose
gIum eyes look now upon the coral and
the pearl, while over him the stately
ships move on. And the ghosts from all
these graves are tangled in the yarn
which clings about the Melanope as the
seaweed clings about her hull
John R. Craigen, r. N, was born in
the land Of the heather and the heath.
the mist and the crag, the minstrel and
the bard. His soul yearned for the sea
for adventure in far lands; for the
knowledge which comes of a wide exper-
ience. So he went from his books to
the WharVeS, and from the wharves To
the decks, and he soon sneIt the salt
air OF oceans untamed domain. He grew
TO have the look which comes with a self
6aust1ed independence, and the bearing
which comes with command. He became
part of Old Englands naval reserve: he
got the rank of lieutenant; mixed with
the men who have made the right lit
tie tight little isle mistress of the sea:
and from them learned the tricks and
Establishments of social experience So
as captain of merchant ship he was
known as gallant who could catch and
mold any woman's glance and stir al
most any woman's heart.
30 when the tricks Of the tide and the
wheel carried him into New York harh1r
some years ago, he took the eve and the
fancy Of a rich widow with a handsoma
nome over in East Orange-over in the
= oranges" where the drives dip I'D and
down under the o'er-arching elms and
naples, where the lawns are fresh and
green, and the household cheer is very
generous To the union was born a
son, but that is a small part OF the
Melahope's story.
capt. Craigen had to leave his home
at East Orange to go cruising with his
SNIP and IN that cruising, some two
years later, he came to Vancouver on
Puget Sound. Here they drifted into his
log the record which now must have its
Ielhng In the San Francisco courts with
the lawyers more concerned about sheir
lees than about the romance. and thu
relatives chaffering and wrangIing Is
relatives always will when there is none
= tary spoil.
THE WOMAN IN THE CASE.
AS Craigen's vessel rode at anchor in
the prosaic harbor, Elma Mabel TAYLOR
came that way. Born in England of a
wealthy family, this girl was educated
in Paris and Berlin She caught some oC
the chic of the Quarter Latin and some
OF the freedom of Inter den Linden In
hef was bred the germs of romance, and
she yearned for that Bohemian life which
Dorothy Duhn Observation-Disclosures re-
Gently so prettily described. Her par
ents died, leaving her their store of neIf
AT vancouver the English girl with her
continental education and her romantic
ideas met the Scotch sailor-tbe man AZ
impressive bearing and the manner of
command She forgot the properties of
her English home He forgot the wife
and son in "the Oranges" The two
beat to open sea, to breast the pillows
OF censure and to dare the tides of fate.
1hat was four years ago-she ninereen.
he thirty-five
They were well matched. Both were
0ashlng in society; both athletic in the
held. They knew well the ways of the
polite set. The water front still remenl-
bers him when he was second officer
OF the steamship Australia before she
became the property of the oceanic
steamship company some fourteen years
ago. lie had then been with the steamer
eight years and had troubled female
hearts in every port at which she rad
touched. Popular with his shipmates he
ever had been known as daredevil
ashore.
INTRODUCED AS HER HUSBAND
She did not at once take ship with
him, but continued her touring as FAR
as the Hawaiian islands. There was q
secret understanding, however that they
We're to meet later in Liverpool. to which
port Cratgen sailed from Vancouver
They met again in England in the earlv
part of 1897. and she tool, hin, III. l. \ :.