Catty Atkins, Sailorman

by Clarence Budington Kelland

Then we started along, and in a few minutes came to anchor off the stone piers that lead through into the little land-locked basin of Cuttyhunk where the lobster fleet anchor. We didn’t go in because we were protected enough outside if a storm came up, and because the basin was so small and full of other craft that we would have had a lot of trouble maneuvering. But Mr. Browning took Catty and me ashore.

There was quite a big wharf inside, and a good sized boat fastened to it. We went right to it to find out what was going on, and a man told us it was the boat that carried lobsters to the Boston market. They were loading lobsters at that very minute. We went aboard and watched.

Catty went and looked down a hatch and called me over.

“Look,” says he.

The whole inside of the ship was a kind of a tank, and that tank was alive with lobsters, and barrels and barrels more were being poured and chucked in. One of the men said there were about ten thousand of them. I guess lobsters object to going to market because they kicked and flopped out of the kegs and pails and waggled their big claws and grabbed at things as vicious as could be. I got over being disappointed in lobsters right there. Why, some of them looked as big as bulldogs, and acted about the same. I wouldn’t have let one of those fellows get a grip on my toe for the whole ship. Just imagine being in swimming and having one of those things grab you by the foot! Whee! I’ve been grabbed by an ordinary crab, but it would be as different to be nailed by a lobster as there is difference between being stepped on by a cat and a horse.

We walked around the island some, and stood up on the cliff and watched the surf smashing against the rocks, which was a fine sight. There is a big club there where folks from Boston come to fish, and a few houses and a lighthouse, and that’s about all. It must be an awful place to live in winter, sort of shut off from all the world, with winds thrashing at you from the ocean all the time, and great waves thundering day and night. I’ll bet it’s about as lonesome a place as there is anywheres.

We didn’t stay there very long, but went back to the Albatross and Rameses III had lunch ready. He served it in spells between arguments with Naboth about whether lobsters were fish or animals, so the meal went kind of slow. Naboth claimed they were animals because they had whiskers, and Rameses III argued that wasn’t any argument at all because cat fish have whiskers, too. Naboth said a lobster was a kind of an alligator, and an alligator was a relation to a turtle, and a turtle was a cousin to an armadillo, and an armadillo was an honest-to-goodness animal, and that anything that was a relative to an animal had to be an animal itself. But Naboth claimed a lobster lived in the water and never came on shore at all for anything. “A lobster hain’t got no bizness to tend to ashore,” says he, “no more’n a flounder has. He jest don’t have no dealin’s with dry land a-tall, and that’s why he’s a fish. All them other critters you mention has transactions to transact on dry land, but not no lobster. He jest tends to his bizness on the floor of the ocean till some feller comes along and hauls him out, protestin’. A critter that’s as fond of water as all that’s a fish whether it’s a fish or not.”

Then Mr. Browning spoke up and says: “What we want is food, and more speed about it, and you men can compromise and call a lobster a bird. It’s as close to being a bird as it is either a fish or an animal.”

“Huh,” says Naboth, “if a lobster hain’t a fish and hain’t an animal, what is it? You tell me that.”

“A lobster,” says Mr. Browning, “belongs to a class all by itself. The scientific name of lobsters is gilly-winkus; and no gilly-winkus can ever get to be a fish or a bird in a million years. They’re called gilly-winkuses on account of the way they roll their eyes.... Now fetch on the coffee.”