Nipper was descended from an old “backslider” that had been a monster of the order of Decapoda, and had at last become so fat and heavy that she could hardly swim, and preferred to crawl about. Like the rest of her species, she had espoused a new male crayfish every other year; the wedding generally took place in November, when out-of-door pleasures were few, and everything, even the water, was cold and grey.
When the happy honeymoon was over, she always suddenly broke off all relations with her spouse, and withdrew into one of the roomiest of the numerous deep, dark, basement flats through the winter, waiting for the sun and the white water-lilies to bring out her little children.
And they came!
Next summer a swarm of little creatures crept out of the eggs that adhered in scores to her tail. From their birth they had tiny claws, a tiny rostrum, and tiny feelers; and they were all an exact copy of him. Holding fast with one claw to their mother’s poorly-developed caudal legs, they hung as to a strap, while with the other claw they fought among themselves as much as possible.
It was a little world of malice, cannibal cruelty, and good, healthy egoism that the old monster thereafter dragged about with her, and she defended it--to her praise it must be said--on every occasion against the violence and malice of the outside world, by interposing her own body.
Half without will of her own and unconsciously, she kept life in her young. Every time she required food and drew it forward under her body, the baby crayfish got a bit of it. On such occasions they let go of one another, and struck out with his free claw, and hastily transferred the morsel to his mouth.
Nipper had hung to one of the outside “straps” and he was with his mother on the night she went into a crayfish trap. He let go the strap in order to cram himself with both hands, and he did succeed in producing a feeling of extraordinary satiety; but when the trap was suddenly hauled up, he was not quick enough in taking hold again; the water drew him with it, and washed him out through the wide-meshed net. In this way he lost the shelter that in the natural order of things he could still have reckoned on beneath the caudal fan of his great parent; but fate had nevertheless been kind to him. While old Madam Nipper, boiled red like a lobster and with lettuce round her tail, lay that evening curled up on a dish, her little nipper was surrounded with all the wonders of life; and he went at them with greedy claws and flapping tail. It was not for nothing that he had been born with the art of going backwards.
He had now lived through three winters, and was therefore not altogether lacking in experience of life. He had successfully passed the age in which his growth of no more than a few weeks made each jacket-sleeve and trouser-leg too short, and had gone through nearly a score of those dreadful “metamorphoses.” They were terrible bouts, real illnesses that cost both toil and suffering. The last was still fresh in his memory. He had suddenly become uneasy, could not even rest in his hole. It was the same with them all; the same unrest seized upon all the inhabitants of the crayfish-town that extended over the rocky reef. None of them any longer ventured out at sunset; they remained indoors. Then the illness began with an irresistible desire to scrape and rub oneself. It was impossible to hold out against it; one had to let it go its way and follow a certain system.
The “system” commenced with some wild movements of arms and legs. Resting on the carapace and the big claws, the hind part of the body was raised, and the tail spread, and then the thighs, legs, and ankles were worked until a hole was made in the old, armour-like skin, and it split up length-wise.
The transformation took days, so one had to sleep now and then, and rest often. Food there was none.