Gifts from the Sea Read Free Page A

got brains,” he said.
    Pain slid across Papa's face.
    “She got those from her mother,” he said.

lways before, Mr. Callahan had spent the night at Devils Rock, but this night he decided to go on to Matinicus Light. Had he stayed, Celia's near-disaster would never have happened.
    Papa lit the lamps and settled in his chair to patch his boots. I washed the dishes quickly, figuring I'd put Celia to bed and begin one of the new books Mr. Callahan had brought, but Celia had other plans. She wasn't the least bit sleepy. The only way I could get her to sit still was to tell her favorite story.
    There once was a fisherman who found he could make more money selling sealskins than fish, so he crept amongst the rocks and killed the seals while they were sleeping. He had great piles of sealskins in his house, and people came from far and wide to buy them.
    One evening, a stranger rode in on a dark horse with a grey mane and tail. The stranger called out to the fisherman, “My master wishes to do business with you and asks that you come with me,” so the fisherman climbed up behind the stranger and they galloped across the moors until they came to a cliff overlooking the sea. The horse never slowed, but leaped off the cliff, and they fell down, down, into the sea. At first all was darkness, but as they fell, the fisherman noticed a green light that got brighter and brighter until he found himself in a kingdom of sea-mountains and sea-forests. Seals were swimming all about, and when the fisherman looked down, he saw that he had been turned into a seal himself. The fisherman could hear the seals' voices but they spoke in a language he did not know.
    The stranger, who was now a seal himself, led him into a sea-foam palace, and on a bed lay an old grey seal, moaning with pain. Next to him lay a bloody knife, and the fishermanwas filled with fear when he saw it. It was his knife, and just that morning he had used it to stab a seal, but the seal had plunged into the sea, carrying the knife in its back.
    The fisherman fell on his knees, begging for mercy.
    “This seal is my father,” the stranger said. “Only you can save him. Put your hand on the wound.”
    The fisherman did as the stranger ordered, and the wound healed at once.
    “You may return to your home,” the stranger said, “but you must promise never again to hunt seals. Go back to fishing, and our seal-folk will make sure that you catch many fish.”
    The stranger led the fisherman back to dry land, where he turned into a man again.
    “Remember your promise,” the stranger said, and disappeared beneath the waves.
    The fisherman kept his promise. He went back to fishing and his nets were full every time he pulled them in, so his wife and children never wanted for anything, and he told his children and grandchildren about the kingdom of seals so that none of them would ever harm a seal.
    Celia was asleep in my lap. I laid her in her cradle and was reaching for
Moby-Dick
when we heard a loud
Bang!
and the sound of glass breaking. Papa leaped up, upsetting his chair. He yanked on his boots and bounded up the winding staircase to the tower, me close behind him.
    A lighthouse keeper has to be ready to handle any emergency, whether it be storms or shipwrecks, or broken equipment, but I daresay even Papa was surprised at what he saw.
    He opened the door to the lantern room and stopped so suddenly I bumped into him. I craned my neck, trying to look around him, but he stepped forward, his boots crunching on broken glass. A large bird staggered across the floor, dragging a wing through the glass. Had I not studied Mama's Audubon book so thoroughly, Iwouldn't have known it was a razorbill, for they were not a common sight along our coast.

    Bang!
I jumped and covered my head as more glass came cascading down around me, and another razorbill dropped at my feet.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bodies fell around me, piling up on the floor. I heard the whir of wings as more birds flew into the