Pat Perdiue, age 10, of Muncie, Indiana, for his question:

What is the Flying Dutchman?

Life on olden sailing ships was rough and very risky. It was natural for the sailors to put their trust in signs and omens of good or bad luck. One of these was the legend of the Flying Dutchman. It was supposed to be the ghost of an old sailing ship and those who glimpsed it were sure that it appeared as an omen, a warning of gloomy disaster. They claimed that the Flying Dutchman and her crew had been condemned to sail the seas for¬ever and never reach port.

There are several more detailed versions of the ghastly, ghostly legend. One legend claims that a captain named Herr von Falkenberg had been condemned for crimes unknown to sail the North Sea, forever playing dice with the devil for his soul. Another version blames things on a Cap¬tain Vanderdecker, a great one for using swear words and other bad language. One day he was blasted from On High and condemned to sail forever around the Cape of Good Hope. This version was used by Wagner in his opera,"The Flying Dutchman." Sir Walter Scott had a more sensible version. The crew of the sailing ship, he suggested, was struck with plague    and no port would let them come ashore.