Five Little Friends

by Sherred Willcox Adams

On one part of the shore the beach was very narrow. Great rocks rose like a fort above it. Paul and Bob liked to play on the rocks. Sometimes they played that they were Indians and sometimes that they were cave men.

They found a place under the rocks for their cave. When they pretended that they were pirates, they hid their treasures in the cave. Their treasures were things they found on the beach. There were shells and boxes, and bottles and queer bits of china and glass. Hero was a fierce monster guarding the treasure.

Sometimes the boys put Hero in the cave and pretended he was a lion. Then they stole into his den and captured him and sold him to a circus man. The circus man was Roy, a little boy who liked to play with them.

One day Bob and Paul and Roy saw some big boys standing on the wharf. They were catching crabs. First they baited their lines and then threw them into the water. When the crabs "bit" they drew them in. It looked very exciting. The three little boys wanted to try.

So they found strings and the big boys gave them some bait. Bob and Roy had good luck. But Paul was so excited he couldn't pull his line in quickly enough to catch a crab. At last he thought, "If I wade into the water I'll be near the crabs. Then it won't be so hard to pull them in."

So down he climbed and into the water he waded. Soon Bob and Roy heard him call, "Oh, Oh, Oh, come quick!"

"What is it?" called Bob. "Have you caught a big crab?"

"Oh, no," said Paul. He was half laughing and half crying, and all the time he was shaking his foot as hard as he could. "Oh, no, I haven't caught a crab. A—crab—has—caught me!" And sure enough, a big fat crab had nipped Paul's toe and was holding it fast.

Bob climbed down and pulled it off. Paul went home and tied up his sore toe. Then he came back and sat on the wharf and watched the others. Somehow, he didn't feel like catching crabs. So he pretended he was a sailor who had been bitten by a big shark.

One day Bob and Paul found a very nice bottle on the beach. It had a tight cork so that the water could not soak in. At first they thought they would hide it in their treasure cave. But that didn't seem exciting enough. So they thought and thought what to do with it. At last Bob said, "I know! Let's write our names and where we live on a piece of paper and put it in the bottle. Then let's throw the bottle out to sea." So he wrote: