“They aren’t exactly handsome,” he remarked, as he dropped the sculpin into the bottom of the boat, “but lobsters aren’t particular about looks.”
The next jab brought up a big flounder that had wriggled its head into the mud, and fancied itself safe. The bottom of the boat was soon covered with them.
By the time young Tim was back with the rope, they had enough fish to bait the four pots, and more, and a mess of flounders for supper.
They cut the line into proper lengths, tied one end of each length to the end frame of a pot, and fastened a wooden buoy, previously boiled in coal-tar to prevent its becoming water-logged, to the other end. Then they took the pots, one by one, and rowed out with them to the off-lying ledges.
They baited each pot, by impaling the fish on the wooden spear-head sticking up from the bottom, closed the door, turned the wooden button that fastened it, and dumped it overboard. The pots, weighted with stones, sank slowly to the bottom.
“Great!” exclaimed Joe, as the last of the four went overboard. “Everything complete, except we might have painted a sign, ‘Walk in,’ on each one. What do you think about that, Tim?”
“No, they don’t need it,” said Tim, emphatically. “You might want me to go to the store again for the paint.”
They were down bright and early the next morning to haul the pots. In three of them, their efforts had been rewarded. In the fourth, the bait had been untouched. But one of the pots had begun as a money-maker in earnest. There were three good-sized lobsters in it. The other two had one each.
They had saved some fish from the catch of the night before, so they baited up the pots again, put them overboard, and resumed their occupation ashore of constructing more pots, delegating young Tim to sell their catch among the cottagers, who had nearly all arrived for the summer.
Young Tim was gone not a great while, either. He came back, whooping hilariously, and opened a small and rather begrimed fist, to disclose to their admiring gaze the sum of a dollar and twenty-five cents in silver money.