The Gift of the Sea by Jacob P. Stevens

One day, a long time ago, in a small New England fishing village, there lived a poor elderly

fisherman. Every day this poor fisherman would go to work, he would see this young boy, about 11 years of age, sit on the beach and throw the seashells and washed up starfish back into the ocean. The old fisherman got weary of seeing this be done day after day after day. So he decided to implore the boy as to his reason of doing this. One day, while on his usual routine, the old fisherman saw, as usual, the young boy throw the sea life back into the ocean. The old fisherman stopped and looked hard at the boy. The boy looked up at him and said "sir?" And the fisherman asked him why he did this every day. The boy simply said, "the sea gives back to those who also give back to it also." Seeing as how this boy seemed to have a very close relationship with the deep blue waves, he just gave it an acknowledging grunt and walked on, thinking that he would never understand the idiocy of the boy's declaration.

Several weeks past and it seemed as though the young boy would never stop coming, but, just as suddenly as he came, he stopped. The fisherman was very curious as to why he stopped, so he went to the village lighthouse keeper and asked him about the boy. The old keeper would know something about it, since he had been watching and rescuing the townspeople from the waves of the ocean for nigh on 40 years now. He was basically the village keeper as well as the harbor keeper. The old man just looked at him, almost in shock. He finally managed to stumble out the words, "why sir, you haven't heard?". The fisherman replied he hadn't and the keeper sadly told him that the boy had been lost along with his father in a rough storm at sea a couple of days ago. The fisherman was distraught and saddened by this. After hearing all of the known details, he left the lighthouse and went back home, weeping profusely for the life of a boy he could not have cared a whim for.

Many weeks later the fisherman was out on his job catching the migrating halibut and cod fish miles out at sea. He was doing business as usual and was having a rather bad catch today when he noticed something dark down deep in the waters. He thought to himself, "Yes! The catch of the year!". But, alas, it was no cod or halibut fish. It was coming up closer and closer to the surface and he finally was able to recognize it. It had eyes, arms, a torso, and hair. It was the boy! To his amazement and horror, the young boy surfaced. He was all the same as last time he saw him except for one small detail. The bottom half of the boy was a fish! He thought to himself, "How can that be? Aren't mermaids and mermen just silly legends?" Seeing the fisherman's evident amazement, the boy finally broke the silence simply stating, "I gave back to the sea and it gave back to me." With stating these simple phrase, he slid back down into the deep blue and disappeared leaving the fisherman staring down into the bottomless azul waves.