At any rate, Ted and Janet kept as quiet as they could, though they had to talk and laugh a little. It was a wonderful day and they felt very jolly.
Suddenly Janet murmured:
“I’ve got a bite!”
“Pull him in, then,” Teddy whispered in answer. “But pull it up slow! I’ll get the net ready!”
A look at his three lines showed that all of them were loose, or “slack,” as a fisherman would say. This showed no crabs were trying to walk or swim away with the piece of meat. But one of Janet’s cords was pulled out straight, and it was jerking in a queer way.
Carefully she began to pull it up, a few inches at a time. But, somehow, the line came up only a little way, and then Janet could pull it no more.
“It’s stuck,” she told her brother.
“I guess the crab’s holding on to the bottom of the bay with his legs,” Ted explained. “They’ve got sharp legs, besides their claws, and they stick their legs down in the mud and hold on. Pull a little harder, but don’t jerk!”
Janet tried this way, and found, to her delight, that her cord was now coming in. There was a weight on the end, she could tell, but this might be only the weight of the chunk of meat used for bait. It is not always easy to tell when a crab is on, as, once they are raised up off the bottom, they swim along, making themselves very light.
But Janet’s bait was now only a little way below the surface of the bay, and Ted, looking over the side of the boat, exclaimed: