Ray pulled some more and soon the big lobster pot came dripping from the water. It was a peculiar crate-like affair, shaped like half of a cylinder, and at either end was a pocket-like net with a hole in the very bottom through which the lobsters crawled to get at the bait suspended in a bag in the middle of the trap. There were four big green lobsters in the trap and innumerable brown rock crabs which clicked their horny claws maliciously as Jack and Ray took hold of the trap.
“Say, but they look ugly, don’t they?” exclaimed Ray as he looked between the slats.
“Ugly? You bet they are. If that big green fellow should get hold of your finger you’d lose it (I mean your finger) mighty quick.”
“What do they use for bait?” asked Jack.
“Dead fish—flounders mostly, although—”
“’I there, throw that air trap hoverboard! Quick now! Look lively there, you bloomin’ lobster piruts. Hoverboard wi’ hit an’ put hup yer ’ands er hi’ll blow yer bloody ’eds hoff,” shouted some one. And turning, the two lads found themselves facing a bewhiskered old fisherman with a wooden leg, who stood in the stern of a trim little sloop, the tiller in one hand and a tremendously big but old-fashioned revolver in the other.
“By George, it’s the owner of the lobster traps,” said Ray, shoving the contrivance overboard and putting his hands above his head. Jack looked at the blunderbuss, then having made up his mind that perhaps it would go off if urged, he too held up his hands.
“I got ’e now, I ’ave. I been a layin’ fer t’ two o’ ye fer a week past. Says I t’ myself says I, Mitch, Hole Topper, they’ll show hup agin an’ you can slip hout hin yer hole Betsy Hanne an’ poak yer hole barker hunder their noses and there you ’ave ’em. An’ hup you showed, an’ ’ere I are wi’ me Betsy Hanne and me hole barker, an’ ’ere you are jest es neat en’ snug wi’ yer ’ands above yer ’ed and lookin’ t’ bloomin’ crookedest crooks as ever was. An’ now me an’ me Betsy Hanne is goin’ t’ take both o’ ye t’ th’ warden at Haustin’s Pool an’ ’e’ll jug ye as tight as ever was. Honely which one o’ you is th’ lad as has t’ ’nitials J. S.?”
The little sloop had come up in the wind in the meantime and the fisherman, still keeping the lads covered with the old revolver, had by means of a short boathook pulled the dory alongside.
“Come,” he said impatiently, “which o’ ye is hit ’as ’is ’nitials J. S.?”