He was forever pondering, pondering—­one fact astonishing him quite as much as another—­for he could not figure out how this thing he had come into—­this life—­was organized.  How did all these people get into the world?  What were they doing here?  Who started things, anyhow?  His mother told him the story of Adam and Eve, but he didn’t believe it.  There was a fish-market not so very far from his home, and there, on his way to see his father at the bank, or conducting his brothers on after-school expeditions, he liked to look at a certain tank in front of one store where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by the Delaware Bay fishermen.  He saw once there a sea-horse—­just a queer little sea-animal that looked somewhat like a horse—­and another time he saw an electric eel which Benjamin Franklin’s discovery had explained.  One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up considerably intellectually.  The lobster, it appeared from the talk of the idle bystanders, was offered no food, as the squid was considered his rightful prey.  He lay at the bottom of the clear glass tank on the yellow sand, apparently seeing nothing—­you could not tell in which way his beady, black buttons of eyes were looking—­but apparently they were never off the body of the squid.  The latter, pale and waxy in texture, looking very much like pork fat or jade, moved about in torpedo fashion; but his movements were apparently never out of the eyes of his enemy, for by degrees small portions of his body began to disappear, snapped off by the relentless claws of his pursuer.  The lobster would leap like a catapult to where the squid was apparently idly dreaming, and the squid, very alert, would dart away, shooting out at the same time a cloud of ink, behind which it would disappear.  It was not always completely successful, however.  Small portions of its body or its tail were frequently left in the claws of the monster below.  Fascinated by the drama, young Cowperwood came daily to watch.

One morning he stood in front of the tank, his nose almost pressed to the glass.  Only a portion of the squid remained, and his ink-bag was emptier than ever.  In the corner of the tank sat the lobster, poised apparently for action.

The boy stayed as long as he could, the bitter struggle fascinating him.  Now, maybe, or in an hour or a day, the squid might die, slain by the lobster, and the lobster would eat him.  He looked again at the greenish-copperish engine of destruction in the corner and wondered when this would be.  To-night, maybe.  He would come back to-night.

He returned that night, and lo! the expected had happened.  There was a little crowd around the tank.  The lobster was in the corner.  Before him was the squid cut in two and partially devoured.

“He got him at last,” observed one bystander.  “I was standing right here an hour ago, and up he leaped and grabbed him.  The squid was too tired.  He wasn’t quick enough.  He did back up, but that lobster he calculated on his doing that.  He’s been figuring on his movements for a long time now.  He got him to-day.”