One started up out of sleep, unable to rest for fear of being left in the old skin and dying of starvation. Nothing for it but to go on, and try to get over this most unpleasant process of moulting as quickly as possible.
Nipper, who was endowed with all the courage and impatience of youth, was one of the most eager to push on the business. He quickly got rid of the armour-plates on his legs, and was now working to get out of his tight coat-of-mail, throwing himself on his back, and rubbing himself backwards and forwards upon the floor.
The coat-of-mail has already come away from the trouser-band, and he can raise it from his body; he presses its stiff edges against a stone, while he works himself backwards out of the old crayfish-case. First he carefully releases both his stalked eyes, then come the feelers, and then the big claws. Oh, but it hurts! And he shakes and twists himself, sweating with exertion and anxiety. After all, it is going confoundedly fast! Suppose a limb got into a tangle, or a joint refused to move! Then it would break, as he very well knows: that kind of thing is a part of the crayfish system!
At last the whole thing was accomplished, and he felt stronger and freer than ever. This evening he would kill! This evening he would eat his fill!
The darkness grew deeper The sinister shadows were already darkening the banks, and the deep water, which before had shone with gleaming mother-of-pearl, seemed now leaden-grey. There was not a water-lily leaf to be seen on the surface; it was impossible to distinguish a single green stalk.
Down on the soft mud, beneath a rotten, wrinkled tree-stump, sat a fresh-water mussel with its shells half-open. As the round feelers of the crayfish came gliding tentatively round its foot, it became aware of the approach of an enemy, and had already almost closed its broadly-gaping shells when Nipper, at the last moment, managed to introduce the end of one of his broad pincers, like the heel of a boot in a door. The mussel worked its hardest, straining till its shells creaked and splinters actually broke off in its efforts to crush the hard armour-plating of the claw.
Nipper lay as though petrified in front of his victim, and let the mussel exhaust itself while he watched his opportunity to drive his unimpressionable wedge farther and farther in. He had the patience of Job, and knew that he only had to wait.
It was not long before he had succeeded in making room for his other claw, and now he was cutting and picking at the body of the poor mussel, one claw holding the pearly shells sufficiently wide apart for the other to convey dainty pieces of mussel-flesh to his mouth.
At last the poor mussel’s strength is quite exhausted. It gives up, and Nipper’s head and the front part of his body disappear inside the shell.
Nipper remained there the first part of the night, cramming himself, but at last could not help regretting that a mussel went such a little way. He took a short rest, and then towards morning set out confidently in search of more.