the snow-covered rocks. The vessel went entirely to pieces
in one night and the wreck was not discovered until two years after by a
stray fisherman, who suddenly came upon the bleaching bones and grinning
skulls of those unfortunate sailors. The island was a menace to coasters
and bore an uncanny reputation. It was said to be haunted. During a
night storm a tall man had been seen, by a flash of lightning, standing
on a cliff. Strange sounds like the cries of dying men had been heard.
When the waves were high, a noise like that made by a bellowing bull was
noticed. The ocean and its storms play queer pranks at times, especially
at night. White bursts of foam leaping over black rocks assume ghostly
shape. Dark and grotesque figures appear crawling into or out of
fissures, or hiding behind rocks. Hideous and devilish, snarling and
snapping, sounds issue from caverns. In darkness an uninhabited coast
becomes peopled with demons who sport and scream and leap in hellish
glee.

Such a spot was Pocket Island.

Nature also played another prank here, and as if to furnish a lair for
some sea monster she hollowed a cavern in the island, with an entrance
below tidewater and at the head of this harbor. Inside and above
tide-level it broadened into a small room. As if to still further
isolate the island all about it were countless rocks and ledges bare
only at low tide and, like a serried cordon of black fangs, ready to
bite and destroy any vessel that approached. It is probable that the
Indians who formerly inhabited the Maine coast had explored this island
and discovered the cave. An Indian is always looking for such things. It
is his nature. It may be this wandering and half-civilized remnant of a
nearly extinct tribe whom the Jew had compacted with, knew of this sea
cavern and piloted his sloop into the safe shelter of "the pocket." And
it was a secure shelter. No one came here; no one was likely to. Its
uncanny reputation, added to the almost impassable barricade of rocks
and ledges all about, made it what Captain Wolf needed--a veritable
burrow for a sea fox. Here he brought his cargo of contraband spirits
and stored them in the cave. Here he repacked kegs of rum inside of
empty mackerel kits, storing them aboard the sloop with genuine ones. By
this ruse he almost obliterated the chance of detection. Like a sly fox,
he was always on guard. Even when the sloop was safe at anchor, he
worked only in the cave. When all was ready, h