The Strife of the Sea

by T. Jenkins Hains

Once he caught a loose fowl, and its feathers were strewn about the yard. Again he found a string of fine fish the keeper had hung up for the night. They went the way of the ill-fated. His keen sense of smell told him many things the keepers did not wish him to know, and he managed to keep out of harm’s way.

But this could not last. Ripley was an old hunter, and was not to be disturbed beyond reason. He brought out an old mink-trap, with steel jaws of great power, and he buried it in the sand on the edge of the clearing, smoothing the rumpled surface of the ground so that nothing showed, and strewing the place with dead leaves. Then he killed a sea-gull and dropped it almost directly over the steel jaws. The outcast would doubtless smell it and stop a moment to investigate. He had only to step upon the ground in the near vicinity and his leg would be instantly clasped in a steel embrace.

The first night the keeper watched for him. It was very dark, and the cold north wind soughed through the pines, and the surf thundered. The cold made the keeper’s teeth chatter a little as he watched in silence from his place upon the outer rail of the tower. He had his rifle with him for a finish, should the trap take hold.

The outcast came slinking along late that night. He was hungry and wet, and the light attracted him as it did always on particularly bad nights, for it stood for the mark of plenty, the only thing on the barren island that kept a glimmering of the past in his sullen mind. He noticed a peculiar smell as he skirted the fringe of the cover, and soon spied the dead gull. How came it there, was the question. Gulls did not die ashore. At least, he had never seen one. But he knew them in the air. There was something suspicious in the matter. Why should a gull be dead so close to the lighthouse? He began to investigate, and drew near the danger zone.

But months of wildness had made him cunning. All the sly instincts of the races of animals from which he had sprung had been developing. He approached the bait slowly, barely moving, and touching the ground ever so lightly with his paws. Then he halted. No, it would not do. There was something wrong with that bird, showing like a bit of white in the darkness. He could smell it plainly. It was the scent of a man. He drew slowly off, and began nosing about for the trail, and soon found it. He followed along, and it led straight to the dwelling where the keeper lived. Then he went back a little way into the scrub and sat upon his haunches, and, in spite of his cold and hunger, he lifted up his voice in a long, dismal howl, that to the keeper’s ears had an unmistakable ring of derision.

Night after night the trap was set, but the pariah kept clear. Then, one day, it grew thick, and a cold wind began setting in from the sea. Before night it was howling and snoring away with hurricane force, driving the seas roaring up the sands, and tearing their tops into smothers of snowy spume drift.

The pariah came to the beach and tried to look seaward to see what was coming with that fearful rushing blast, but the wind was so strong and the snow so blinding that he soon took to the cover, and headed for the light, in the hope he might pick up something to eat in the vicinity of the keeper’s dwelling. Before going to the yard he looked again seaward and saw a light flash out. He did not know what it meant, but he knew it was off on the Frying Pan, far out on the treacherous shoals where a thundering smother of rolling whiteness flashed and gleamed now and again. Then he skirted the clearing, and brought up back of the fowl-house, where now all the ducks and chickens were secured at night.

He went forward, trying to smell his way, but the snow was too much for him. Then he stopped a moment. He located the house and started again, when suddenly, “Snap!”

Something had leaped from the ground and seized his foreleg in a viselike grip. He sprang forward and fought to get away, but it was of no use. The thing had him fast with an awful grasp that cut into his flesh and squeezed his leg so tight that it soon became numb. With snarling growls, he fought desperately on, twisting and turning, struggling and biting, but all to no purpose. He was fast. Then the state of affairs began to dawn upon him, and he desisted, for the agony was supreme. Sitting there in the flying snow of the winter’s night, with the roar of the storm sounding over him, he raised his voice in a long, yelping bark of challenge and disdain.

But in spite of his howling no one came near him. The snow grew deeper and the wind roared with terrific force, blinding him so that the great eye above was scarcely visible. He remained quiet now, and waited patiently for the daylight, which would mean his end. His sufferings were terrible, but he could not help it, and soon a sullen stupor came upon him.