sted his
length by pressing his back between the turned-up ends of a brass
measure screwed against the side of the standing-room.

"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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts 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 buttoning the door, he slid the trap
overboard, started his engine, and headed for the next buoy.

Its trap was caught among