Free Ghosts on the Coast of Maine by Carol Schulte Page A

consequently, French politics. With this in mind, the missionary band of hopeful settlers said goodbye to Nova Scotia and sailed merrily upwind.
    Nature, that devious force so often overlooked by those not in tune with the earth, took a hand.
    The Maine fog, totally foreign to the Jesuit ship, enveloped the vessel and caused it to mistakenly land on Mt. Desert Island. The travelers chalked it up as part of God’s plan, and promptly set about establishing a mission. Little did they realize that in three short months the whole place would be ashes.
    The perpetrator of the disaster was just a guy doing his job, a policeman on duty. Arlan Seawall didn’t ask for the job, but the London merchants were so dazzled by his deeds of exploration in the New World, that they appointed him Admiral of Virginia. The letter from the Virginia Company stated that Captain Seawall was to patrol the coast and try to prevent any settlements by the French.
    England and France were not at war in 1613, so bloodshed was not expected. Mediation and peace talks were the tools of the day. Either Seawall’s instructions were misunderstood, or the captain overreacted to a non-threatening situation.
    One day, fishing down the coast, he spotted the little unprotected mission built on a flat, grassy peninsula. He yelled to his crew, who left their nets and wasted no time bombarding the building to pieces. The English artillery and expertise far outweighed that of the religious scholars, who tried unsuccessfully to shoot back with a lone cannon. The Jesuit “cannoneer” was so inept that the weapon backfired and helped destroy part of the mission.
    By the time the smoke had cleared, eight men lay dead, and the remaining hardy souls were taken aboard as slaves to be sold. Those not fit to sell would be set free in small boats in the middle of the ocean, where they would soon perish.
    Seawall’s men prowled the shore and scoured the ruins. When they came upon the spring, they refreshed their thirsty throats and decided that it was a place good enough for a cemetery. They wanted to get going, but they were God-fearing enough to supply Christian burial to the priests. Besides, these Puritan Englishmen regarded Papists with such absolute horror that they considered them nigh instruments of the Devil.
    Devil’s advocates or not, a place spirited by men of the cloth is a formidable place to be. The children of the area will tell you that they have been warned as such. Many tales have they heard about night fishermen seeing white shapes flitting about Jesuit Spring. One kid said that last year his father was out rowing when he saw a man in brown holding a cross to his chest. He took in his oars and grabbed his glasses to get a better look, but the “man” was nowhere to be seen.
    Boats do not dock on the shore by Jesuit Spring, especially since the summer of 1975. It was then the Colby family loaded their sixteen-foot skiff with swimsuits, towels, and a picnic lunch. The water was without a ripple as they cruised along the shore. They spotted the pretty little beach with a freshwater stream pouring onto it and decided to land. Mr. Colby tightly wedged the anchor between two rocks. The tide was not quite in so they put the picnic stuff under a tree and looked up to Flying Mountain. A nice day for a hike, not too warm and no breeze.
    The family climbed the mountain in about twenty minutes. When they came back down, there was no boat, no anchor, no snipped line, and no picnic basket—just the still clear water. Not a sound, not a movement. None of the nearby households had witnessed anyone else in the area although they had noticed the Colbys and all their doings.
    The incident might have gone unnoticed or been passed off as robbery if two more boats hadn’t met the same fate within a year. Besides, stealing is rare in coastal Maine, and when it does occur, everyone knows who did it and why.
    The people of Mt. Desert know