Beadle's Pocket Library No. 281

# Ned, the Boy Pilot: The Lieutenant's Doom

This serial by Jack Farragut, appearing in Beadle and Adams weekly publication (May 1889), presents a maritime melodrama. Nora Norcross, a beautiful young woman living in a Maine cottage with her mysterious mother—known locally as "Elsie the Witch" for her eccentric dress and manner—falls in love with Lieutenant Douglass Elmore after piloting his damaged naval vessel through a storm. The lieutenant abandons her when his father pressures him to marry Eola Curtis, a wealthy Boston woman. Upon receiving Douglass's farewell letter, Nora despairs and leaps from a cliff into the sea. Her mother, discovering the letter and the news of her daughter's death from a fisherman, vows vengeance against the lieutenant. The narrative combines Gothic elements—the "Haunted Fortress" ruins and the witch-like mother—with naval adventure and romantic tragedy.