And ready to fight they certainly were! With claws in the air and eyes roving madly they approached. Very carefully they looked the boy over. A lobster or a crab never begins to fight unless he knows what he has to deal with.
And still they kept coming! Wherever Pinocchio turned, there was a horrible creature. To the right the large mouth of a common lobster threatened him. To the left an ugly spiny lobster shook his claws at him. Behind and before him the sand was covered with them, large green crabs, common crabs, porcelain crabs, common lobster, spider crabs, glass crabs, tiny fiddlers, and others.
As if these were not enough, out of a hole came a crab larger than any of the others. He was rapidly coming nearer, but before long one of his claws was grasped by one lobster, the other by another. Without the least movement to fight, the crab just pulled off his claws, and quickly went back to his hole.
Pinocchio was thunderstruck. How could the crab do this so calmly? For the simple reason that the crab preferred losing his claws to being killed and eaten up. In a few months he would grow another set of claws as good as those he had lost. Yes, a crab can do that, children. Think of it!
“Oh, dear me!” thought Pinocchio, who was getting rather nervous by this time. “What is going to become of me? If only I had a shell as has a turtle I could hide away and be safe.”
“Oh! what a splendid idea!” he suddenly burst out. “Why didn’t I think of it before? I shall have a shell to hide in!”
And without another word he slipped into the shell he had been looking at. In a moment nothing could be seen of him, not even his nose.
The crustaceans did not understand with what kind of a being they had to deal. So after examining the shell all over, they slowly disappeared into their holes.
With a great sigh of relief Pinocchio dared to stick his head out of the shell. Seeing his shoe lying on the ground, he quickly put his foot in it. It was not very pleasant to walk on the sand without a shoe.