"Thought so! He's a 'short'!"

He tossed the lobster overboard.

"What did you throw him away for?" asked Percy. "Isn't he good to eat?"

"Nothing better! But it's the State law. Everything that comes short of four and three-fourths inches, solid bone measure, from the tip of the nose to the end of the back, has to be thrown over where it's caught."

"Why's that?"

"To keep 'em from being exterminated. It's based on the same principle as the law on trout or any other game-fish. Lobsters are growing scarcer every year, and something has to be done to preserve 'em."

"Does everybody throw the little ones away?"

"No! If they did there'd be more of legal size. The Ma.s.sachusetts law allows the sale there of lobsters an inch and a half shorter than the length specified here; so their smacks come down, lie outside the three-mile limit, and buy 'shorts' of every fisherman who's willing to break the Maine law to sell 'em. Besides that, most of the summer cottagers along the coast buy and catch all the 'shorts' they can. So it's no wonder the lobster's running out."

While Jim talked he was emptying the trap. Another "counter" went into the tub, and two more "shorts" splashed overboard. The financial side of the question interested Percy.

"How many 'shorts' will you probably get a week?"

"Five hundred or more."

"And how much would a Ma.s.sachusetts smack pay you for 'em?"

"Ten or twelve cents apiece."

"Then you expect to throw more than fifty dollars a week over the side, just to obey the law?"

"That's what!"

Percy lapsed into silence. The lobsters disposed of, Jim began to clear the trap of its other contents. A big brown sculpin was floundering on the laths. Taking him out gingerly, Jim tossed him into the bait-tub upon the hake heads.

"He'll do for bait in a few days."

He picked out and threw over three or four large starfish, or "five-fingers." The hake head stuck on the bait-spear in the center was almost gone; Jim replaced it with a fresh head from the bait-tub. Then he seized a mottled, purplish crab that had been aimlessly scuttling to and fro across the bottom of the pot, and impaled him, back down, on the barb of the spear. Shutting and b.u.t.toning the door, he slid the trap overboard, started his engine, and headed for the next buoy.

Its trap was caught among the rocks on the bottom, and Jim, unable to start it by hand, was obliged to make the warp fast and have recourse to towing. Just as it looked as if the line were about to part, the trap let go. It yielded one "counter" and three "shorts." Also, it contained more than a dozen brown, unhealthy-looking, membranous things, shaped like long coin-purses, lined with rows of suckers, and with mouths at one end.

"Sea-cuc.u.mbers! I've seen a trap full of 'em, almost to the door.

They're after the bait, like everything else."

Trap after trap was pulled, with varying success. Occasionally from a single one three or four good-sized lobsters would be taken; occasionally one would yield nothing at all. But the majority averaged one "counter." Percy could not accustom himself to the seeming waste of throwing over the "shorts."

"I should think you might sell those little fellows to the Ma.s.sachusetts boats, and n.o.body be the wiser for it."

"I could; but I won't. I'll make clean money or I won't make any at all."

There was a finality in Jim's tones that closed the subject for good.

Half the traps had now been hauled and there were about seventy-five pounds of lobsters in the tub. Spiny, egg-like sea-urchins, green wrinkles, and an occasional flounder or lamper-eel gave variety to the catch. There was always the hope that the next trap might yield five or six big fellows.

"Now and then," said Jim, "you get one so large he can't crawl into a pot. He'll be on the head, just as you start pulling, and he'll hang to the netting until he comes to the top. After they take hold of anything, they hate to let go."

"What's the biggest one you ever saw?" asked Lane.

"One day when I was in Rockland, a smack brought in a fifteen-pounder she'd bought at Seal Island. But of course they grow a good deal larger than that. The big ones don't taste nearly so good as the little ones.

After they get to be a certain age, seven or eight years, the fishermen think, they don't 'shed.' Then you find 'em covered with barnacles, their claws cracked into squares, all wrinkled up. Those old grubbers belong to the offsh.o.r.e school; they stay outside, and never come in on the rocks."

Percy was listening with all his ears.

"What do you mean by saying they don't 'shed'?" he asked.

"Harken to the lecture on lobsters by Professor James Spurling!"

announced Lane in stentorian tones.

The next group of traps was some distance off, so Jim had a chance to talk without interruption.

"In the spring a lobster that is growing begins to find his sh.e.l.l too tight, so he has to get out of it. Some time after the first of July he crawls in under the rocks or kelp, where the fish can't trouble him. His sh.e.l.l splits down the back and he pulls himself out. He stays there for a week or ten days while a new and larger sh.e.l.l is forming. When he begins to crawl again, he's raving hungry. One queer thing I almost forgot. Fishermen say that, while he is lying under cover, all soft and unprotected, a hard-sh.e.l.l lobster, active and ugly, generally stands guard outside the hole, ready to fight off any enemy that may come along."

By the time the last trap was pulled the lobster question had been pretty thoroughly canva.s.sed.

"Guess I've told you all I know, and more, too," said Jim.

They were back in Sprowl's Cove at half past ten, and put their lobsters into the car with the others. Hardly had they finished when a motor-sloop came round the eastern point.

"Here's a smack!" exclaimed Jim. "On time to the minute! Shouldn't wonder if it was Captain Higgins in the _Calista!_"

The boat swept into the cove in a broad circle, and ranged alongside the car. At the helm stood a tall, grizzled man of perhaps sixty, with gray beard and twinkling blue eyes. A lanky, freckled boy stuck his head up out of the cabin.

"Any lobsters to sell, boys?" inquired the man.

"Isn't this Captain Higgins?" asked Jim.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"That's my name--Benjamin B. Higgins, of the smack _Calista_, buying lobsters from Cranberry Island to Portland, and this is my son Brad, my first mate and crew. I own this boat from garboard to main truck, bowsprit-tip to boom-end, and I don't wear any man's dog-collar. I'll give you a square deal on weight and pay you as much as any smackman, neither more nor less. Do we trade?"

"We do," answered Jim. "Let's have your dip-net!"

Stepping upon the car, he was soon bailing out the lobsters. Captain Higgins placed them in a tub on his deck scale.

"Going to be here long, boys?"

"We've taken the island for the season from my Uncle Tom Sprowl."

"So you're Cap'n Tom's nephew? Must be Ezra Spurling's boy."

Jim nodded.

"Glad to meet you! Made a trip once to the Grand Banks with Ezra; must be all of thirty years ago. Well, time flies! If you'll save your lobsters for me, I'll look in here every Thursday. How does that hit you?"