After the lobsters were bailed out, Jim and Budge went on board the
smack. Captain Higgins weighed the heaping tub of shell-fish.

"One hundred and seventy pounds. Market price 's twenty-five."

He glanced inquiringly at Jim.

"All right!" agreed the latter.

"Then we'll put 'em in the well."

He lifted off a hatch aft of the scale, opening into a compartment
containing something over three feet of water; it was twelve feet long
and thirteen wide, and divided into two parts by a low partition running
lengthwise of the sloop. Two water-tight bulkheads separated it from the
rest of the boat, and several hundred inch-and-a-quarter holes, bored
through its bottom to allow free access to the water outside, gave it
the appearance of a pepper-box. It already contained hundreds of live
lobsters.

Picking the shell-fish carefully from the tub, Jim and the captain
dropped them, one by one, into the well. Soon all were safely
transferred to their new quarters, and the hatch was replaced. Captain
Higgins invited Jim and Budge down into his little den of a cabin.
Unlocking an iron box, he took from it a wallet and began counting out
bills.

"Forty-two dollars and a half!"

He passed the amount over to Jim.

"You carry quite a sum of ready money, Captain," said Lane.

"Yes; I have to. This business is cash on the nail. My boat can take
over twelve thousand pounds of lobsters, and sometimes she's almost
filled. I've started out with three thousand dollars in that box, and I
rarely go with less than two thousand. It'd surprise you to figure up
the amount of cash these smacks spread along the coast. They say that
one winter, when lobsters were specially high, a Portland dealer paid a
smackman over fifty-five hundred dollars for a single trip."

"Somebody must make a big profit. Think what a lobster costs in a
market!"

"Somebody does--sometimes. But it isn't the smackmen. Lobsters ought not
to be kept in a well longer than a few days. A friend of mine started
out from Halifax with ten thousand pounds of Cape Breton lobsters. He
got caught in a gale of wind and lost forty-seven hundred pounds before
he landed in Boston. Some years ago a Maine dealer put one hundred and
five thousand lobsters in a pound during May and June; he fed them
chiefly on herring, and the total cost was over ten thousand dollars.
Things went wrong and he took out just two hundred and fifty-four live
ones. Not much profit about that!"

Arranging to