The Strife of the Sea

by T. Jenkins Hains

A savage stooped and began gathering eggs, pushing away the birds or knocking them on the head with a stick, when, with their sharp beaks, they protested against the robbery. He was a horribly filthy fellow, and his ugly body was partly covered with skins of birds and sealskin. He noticed a female sitting close, calling to our penguin for help, and the bird seemed to be very fine and large, with a good skin. He made a pass with his club and smote her on the head. She struggled desperately to get away, but could not. The blow partly stunned her. The little ones scurried off as she rose, and the savage saw there were no eggs to be had from her. But he would have her skin anyway, so, with a furious stroke of his weapon, he knocked her lifeless at his feet. Then he picked her up and went on.

Later in the afternoon the male came back from fishing. He climbed the cliffs and looked about him. His mate and young were missing, and he sent forth his deep, sonorous cry. But it was not answered. Other birds took it up, but there was no answering call from the mate, and the little dark speck that rose and fell upon the heave of the swell away in toward the shore of Tierra del Fuego gave no token of her fate.

All night he wandered over the rocks, his wild note of calling sounding far out to sea. In the morning he stood once more upon the spot where, a few days before, the mate of his bosom sat proudly upon the white eggs. The empty shells were all that were left. He stood gazing out to sea, and then his instinct told him he would see his family no more. He gave one long-drawn cry, plunged into the sea, and was gone. The great west wind came roaring over the sea before the sun set, and before it he held his way. He would go far away from the scene of his summer’s life. The vast ocean would be his home, and the memories of the ledge be a thing of the past.

For many days the penguin roamed over the huge rolling hills of water. The vastness of the ocean and its grandeur soothed him, though he still called out at intervals when the sadness of his life was strong upon him. Then came a day when sea and sky seemed to blend in one wild whirl, and a hurricane from the high, ragged hills of Patagonia swept the Antarctic Drift. Away he went before it, and the wildness of it was joy, the deepening roar of the wind and crash of Cape combers making music for his spirit. He headed for the middle of the current between the land where the Pacific flows through and meets the western ocean, the stretch of sea that reaches away past the South Shetlands to the south pole.

How wild and lonely was the storm-swept sea! Great hills of rolling water, fifty feet in height, with stately and majestic rush, passed to the eastward, their tops crowned with huge white combing crests and their sides streaked and flecked with long stripes of white foam. Above, the dull banks of hurtling vapor flew wildly away to somewhere in the distance, far beyond the reach of vision. It was more comfortable beneath the surface than above it, and our penguin drove headlong before the sea two fathoms below the foam, only coming up once in a while to breathe. On and on he drove for hours, until hunger warned him to keep a lookout for fish, as he occasionally came up for air, and to see if there were signs of the oily surface denizens showing in the sweep of that great, lonely sea. Suddenly an object attracted his attention. It was a mere speck on the storm-torn horizon, but he knew it must be of considerable size. It was different from anything he had ever before seen, for above it three long, tapering sticks stood upward, and upon the middle one a strip of white, like the wing of an albatross, caught the weight of the wild west wind. He was interested, and drove along toward it until the object loomed high above him, and the deep snore of the gale sounded like a heavy roaring comber tearing through the many lines of the rigging and under the strip of white canvas. The great thing would rise upon the crest of a giant wave and fling its long, pointed end high into the gale, the rushing sea striking it and smashing over in a white smother like the surge on the rocks. Then down it would swing slowly until it would reach the hollow between the moving hills, and the penguin could see upon its body, its tall sticks rolling to windward and the roar of the gale deepening into a thunderous, rushing sound, until the advancing sea would lift it again and roll it toward the lee. The sight of the huge monster wallowing about, hardly making the slightest way through the water, interested the penguin. It seemed like a floating rock without life, and he felt a curiosity to know if it were alive. He rose partly from the sea and uttered a long-drawn, hoarse call that floated down the gale and swept over the great hulk. Nothing happened, and he repeated the call,—a far-reaching, wild, deep, resonant cry.

But the great ship swung along slowly, as before, and he dived under her to see what was below.

In the forecastle the dim light of the summer day made a dismal and cheerless scene. The watch below had turned in, all standing, their wet clothes wrapped about them in their “pews,” or bunks, making a vapor in the cold air through which the light of the swinging lamp shone dimly. The gray light from outside filtered in at the side ports and spoke of the cold, hard day on deck. Once in a while some shivering wretch would turn in his poultice of soaking flannel and get a fresh piece of icy-cold cloth against his skin that would call forth maledictions on the Horn, the weather, and the hove-to ship. In a corner of the forecastle a pile of soaking clothes moved, and a moan sounded above the noise without.

“Stow it, Sammy; you’ll be all right soon, my boy,” said a voice in a bunk above him.

“Oh, but it’s so cold, Tom,” whispered the pile of clothes. “I can’t last much longer, and they might let me die warm, at least.”

“What’s the little man sayin’?” asked a deep voice opposite. “Wants to die warm, does he? Say, Sammy, me son, you’ll be warm mighty soon after you’re dead; why in thunder don’t you put up with a bit o’ cold till then, boy?”