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September 11, 1931.

A wealthy yachtsman vanished in the waters of Long Island Sound yesterday.

His beautiful wife, hysterical and raving after a midnight murder and

attack, was found adrift in a small boat, and their five-year-old daughter was discovered alone

on their abandoned, blood-stained yacht. The astounding, fantastic situation was further involved when the woman, a stunning brunette,

declared that her husband, Benjamin P. Collings of Stamford, Connecticut,

had been thrown overboard in the dead of night by gunmen, pirates, one of whom criminally assaulted her.

Still more complicated did it become when it was found that the deserted child, Barbara Collings,

had her mother's two diamond rings wedged tightly into the toes of her tiny shoes.

First inkling of the staggering sea mystery

came to light with the gray dawn as the cruiser penguin,

a dim and ghostly shape,

idle along with the current off Lloyd's Point, Long Island.

The penguin, known to many yachtsmen along the sound as the property of Collings, sportsmen and Yale graduate, was hailed by a party of New Rochelle Boatman.

Yo-ho, captain, shouted N. L. Nottman, owner of a fishing boat. They smiled as a pretty blonde infant, poked her tousled head over the side,

and exclaimed, I'm not captain, I'm Barbara. Just then came weird cries and sounds from the water

on the other side of the penguin. Someone drowning, said Noteman.

The noise kept up until the boatman seemed to be within 50 feet of it.

Then it ceased as mysteriously as it began.

About half an hour later, off of Oyster Bay, Long Island,

a woman's piercing screams came across the water. Harold Howard of

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