JEST AT DEATH.

Shannon News, 26 July 1927, Page 4

JEST AT DEATH.

HEROES WHO FLAUNTED FATE. MYSTERIOUS CUESES UNHEEDED. In grim defiance of death and disaster, Captain Nungesser, the great French air pilot, decorated his Atlantic seasplane with a black skull and cross-bones and a white • coffin painted on the side. Warned that he was courting illluck, Captain Nungesser merely laughed. “My skull and cross-bon-es was my lucky emblem during the war,” he said. “It will stand me in good stead now.” A jest or a gibe at fate, a gallant, contemptuous defiance of superstition and warning, a reckless unconcern at their gamble with death—that is how many of the rvorld’s greatest heroes set forth on their great adventures. With viking courage (says the Sunday Chronicle) they dare the gamut of nevils while the world watches with bated breath. Often they go out of their way to flaunt fate with a quixotic but gallant defiance like that, of Captain Nungesser. Things no ordinary man would dale to do without crossing his fingers and uttering a fervent prayer to avert the forces of evil leave them cold. They scoff at superstition, laugh at forebodings of disaster, and go out. to meet success or doom with a smile oYi tlieii lips and high courage in their hearts. 1 /T/DTHf A StnOT

GRIM MASCOT. There - have always been men and women courageous and cool-headed enough to risk ill-luck and disaster bj deliberately flaunting superstition. C&pcuitt Von Richthofen, the great German ace, who was credited with over eighty victories in the air, always carried as a mascot a bullet which had been extricated from a British airman whom he had shot 'down and killed. ' Once he was warned by a fashionable fortune-teller to avoid the thirteenth of the month. It was Ins unlucky day, he was told. ■ But Von Richthofen mocked at superstition, and though when the 13tli of the next month came he was suffering from the after-effects of influenza he insisted upon going up to show his defiance of the warnings. That day he added four British airmen to his list. ONCE TOO OFTEN. Time after time he defied fate with impunity. He seemed to bear a charmed life that neither bullet nor antiaircraft could put an end to. When British machines were over the German lines in force spoiling for a scrap Richthofen would never disap-* point them. No matter how overwhelming were the forces against him he would always tempt Providence by offering battle. But he flew in the teeth of fate once too often, ain'd a crimson crashing to earth out of control ended his daring and adventurous career as a bueeaueer of the air.. In the running fight with.a - number of British machines his ’plane was suddenly seen to stagger and drop like a stone. ' At that moment he was being fired upon by -anti-aircraft batteries, ‘the pursuing British . machines, • and Lewis guns of the infantry. ■ The crimson Fokker was torn to pieces by the-impact with the earth, but Riehthofen remained in his seat — dead. ; .

BLACK MAGIC Of all the stories of the .mystic East, with its black magic and strange curses on those who handled things which are taboo, none is more strangely sinister than Lord Carnarvon’s defiance of warnings that to meddle with Tutankhamen’s tomb meant disaster, and his ultimate doom. When he went out to the valley of the Tomb of the Kings in connection with the Luxor excavations lie was told of the ancient belief in the hand of vengeance which guards the restingplace of Egypt’s mighty dead. He smiled. •

Nothing Avould turn him from his researches. Warned that he was interfering with unknown malignant forces, he scoffed at superstition and went steadily ahead with his work. Soon the marvellous tomb of Tutankhamen lay open to his gaze. '* But the way to it proved the pathway to the grave in more senses than one.

After the tomb had been sealed up for the season, the earl developed blood-poisoning," attributed to a mosquito bite in the face. He died soon afterwards.

All Egypt saw in the tragedy of his death the mysterious vengeance of the Pharaohs, and the potency of the ageold curse laid by the kings upon whoever should disturb their sleep. When the body of Tutankhamen was revealed to those who entered the tomb a mark was found on his face. The mark left by the fatal mosquito bite on the face of Lord Carnarvon was in exactly the same position. Though the tragedy which the unlucky Hope diamond brings upon its possessors is well-known there has never been any lack of people willing to risk adding their names to the long line of its victims.

Throughout its chequered history the blue bauble has brought in its train death, disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy, bigamy, shame, suicide, sorrow, fatality, murder and misery. Misfortunes have pursued its owners from the fateful day when a famous Belgian traveller, M. Tavernnier, sold it to Louis the Fourteenth. SHOT DEAD ON STAGE.

Mme. de Maintenon, dwelling idealistically in the sunshine of her Royal master’s love and boasting that no woman's could supplant her in his affections, first wore it. From that moment her power began to wane.

Year's later the diamond came into the possession of M. Jacques Colot, who, after selling it to Prince Kanitovski, a Russian, went raging mad and shot himself.

Prince Kanitovski lent the jewel to a beautiful actresS named Lorena Ladue, who was then performing amid a shower of idolatry at the Folies Bergere, and the first night it sparkled on her neck the Prince, fro.ni a box, shot her dead,. So the story goes on. Every genera_tion. findp somebody courageous enough to 'flalifit the* cursV. "But always the tragic ill-luck persists.