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By Root 356 0

the boy was so weak that he usually had trouble staying afloat. In the next instant, Charlie Van Brunt saw what he called “the biggest, blackest fish he had ever seen,” streaking underwater for Lester. Lester screamed, and Charlie saw the shark strike, twisting and rolling as it hit Lester, exhibiting its stark white belly and gleaming teeth. To Johnson Cartan, the sight was something he found words for only later. Something huge, something that looked like “an old black weather-beaten board,” rose up out of the water high over little Lester Stilwell. As the boys looked on in horror, they saw Lester's arm in the mouth of the shark and “Lester, being shaken, like a cat shakes a mouse, and then he went under, head first.” Both Lester and the shark disappeared. As the shark jerked the boy underwater, it gave such a mighty swish through the water that its tail hit Albert O'Hara and knocked him against the pilings supporting the pier. Too shocked to feel the painful scrape, O'Hara stared at the reddening circle on the creek and cried, “Oh, Lester's gone!” For a horrific second, Lester Stilwell reappeared, rising out of the water screaming and waving his arms wildly. Then, in an instant, he was pulled back under and disappeared for good.

Small waves had upset the waters of the creek, but they were smoothing and the water was crimson where Lester had been. Suddenly, boys cried, “Oh my God, he's gone!” and swam and stumbled and scrambled out of the water and up on the muddy banks, crying, “Shark! Shark!” Rushing in a group past their heaped clothes, the five boys ran naked down Dock Road and turned right on Main. Frank Clowes was leading them, for he was the oldest, but they were all running dripping wet and wild-eyed into the heart of town, shouting that a shark had taken Lester Stilwell.

A Splendid Type of Young Manhood

In the languid middle of a Wednesday afternoon, Asher Wooley was busy under the striped canopy of his new hardware store at 116 Main Street, setting out watering cans, packs of seed, and flyswatters to tempt passersby. A few doors down, the white-smocked butchers of the new Bell Beef Company were visible behind the big plate-glass window at number 120. Down the block under the shaded awning of Cartan's Department Store, women were picking through the bushels of fruit and vegetables stacked in front, while inside the store—long and dimly lit by hanging lamps—half a dozen Cartans and associates pulled items from open shelves packed with bolts of fabric and shoes, teapots and enamel washbasins.

Abruptly, with a panic that would be remembered for years, Charlie Van Brunt, Johnson Cartan, Frank Clowes, Albert O'Hara, and Anthony Bublin came running down Main Street, naked and smeared with mud and grass and shouting wildly about a shark and Lester Stillwell. At “no time in recent years has there been so much continued excitement hereabouts as on Wednesday,” the Keyport Weekly would report, noting that the hysterical boys had neglected to dress themselves before running into town.

The children hollered, “Shark! A shark got Lester!” to anyone who would listen. A crowd surrounded the boys, trying to calm them. Constable Mulsoff, hurrying to the commotion from the barbershop, had a crisis on his hands. Panic was quickly spreading. A crowd set off to look for a boat “to find the man-eater.” Other friends of the Stilwells who had been nearby were already running frantically along the creek, shouting, “Lester! Lester!” Mulsoff thought it eerie that young Stilwell had disappeared shortly after Captain Cottrell's crazed warning of a shark, but the constable was a sturdy and rational man and the boys' claims were scarcely more believable. He was eager to restore a sense of order.

Moving quickly, the constable rounded up a group of men and marched them toward the creek to rescue the boy, or, more likely, to recover his drowned body. Poor Lester Stilwell must have suffered one of his epileptic fits, the constable feared, perhaps worsened by a sudden cramp, and gone under. The rescuers included men from the Cartan and