turn the button and throw back
the leather-hinged cover. Through the square opening the water beneath
looked darkly green. There was much seaweed in the car, and occasionally
this weed was stirred by living things which moved sluggishly.

John Brown reversed the net, and, lying flat on the wharf, gingerly
thrust the business end of the contrivance through the opening and into
the dark, weed-streaked water. Then he began feeling for his prey.

He could feel it. Apparently the car was alive with lobsters. As he
moved the net through the water there was always one just before it or
behind it; but at least ten minutes elapsed before he managed to get
one in it. At length, when his arms were weary and his patience almost
exhausted, the submerged net became heavy, and the handle shook in his
grasp. He shortened his hold and began to pull in hand over hand. He had
a lobster, a big lobster.

He could see a pair of claws opening and shutting wickedly. He raised
the creature through the opening, balanced the net on its edge, rose on
one knee, tried to stand erect, stumbled, lost his hold on the handle
and shot the lobster neatly out of the meshes, over the edge of the car,
and into the free waters of the channel. Then he expressed his feelings
aloud and with emphasis.

Five minutes later he got another, but it was too small to be of use. In
twenty minutes he netted three more, two of which got away. The third,
however, he dragged pantingly to the wharf and sat beside it, gloating.
It was his for keeps, and it was a big one, the great-grandaddy of
lobsters. Its claws clashed and snapped at the twine of the net like a
pair of giant nut crackers.

Carrying it as far from his body as its weight at the end of the handle
would permit, he bore it in triumph to the kitchen. To boil a lobster
alive had seemed a mean trick, and cruel, when Seth Atkins first ordered
him to do it. Now he didn't mind; it would serve the thing right for
being so hard to catch. Entering the kitchen, he balanced the net across
a chair and stepped to the range to see if the water was boiling. It was
not, and for a very good reason--the fire had gone out. Again Mr. Brown
expressed his feelings.

The fire, newly kindled, had burned to the last ash. If he had been
there to add more coal in season, it would have survived; but he had
been otherwise engaged. There was nothing to be done except rake out the
ashes and begin anew. This he did. When he removed the ke