ADRIFT IN A BOAT
“Patter! Patter! I told you to keep away from the crab!” shouted Bunny
Brown, when he saw what had happened to his trick dog.
“Wow! Wow!” howled Patter, limping along and holding up the paw to
which the crab--a large one--had fastened itself. “Bow-wow!”
“Knock the crab off!”
“Smash him!”
“Give the crab a piece of meat and he’ll let go the dog!”
Charlie, Harry and George cried this advice to Bunny as he ran along
after Patter, seeking to help his pet.
Crabs can pinch very hard, as any of you knows who has been unlucky
enough to be nipped by one. I have had even a small one draw blood
when he closed his pinchers on my thumb.
And as this crab was a large one, with powerful claws, it had a good
grip on poor Patter’s paw. Luckily the dog’s paw was tough, and was
covered with hair which was like a cushion, or a glove, so the crab did
not break the skin or draw blood.
But it pinched hard enough to make Patter howl, and Bunny was afraid
his trick dog might run away and be lost. So the boy raced after his
four-legged chum calling:
“Wait a minute, Patter! Wait a minute and I’ll take the crab off your
paw!”
“Better not do that,” advised George. “Knock the crab off with a stick.
If you try to pull it off you’ll get pinched, too.”
“Yes, I guess maybe I shall,” said Bunny.
He caught up a stick and ran until he was close enough to reach Patter.
“Sit up!” commanded Bunny, as he knew if the dog did this it would be
easier to knock off the pinching crab.
Patter did as he was told. Even though howling from pain he obeyed his
master’s voice. Then, when he was sitting on his hind legs with the
paw to which the crab was fastened held pitifully out, Bunny swung his
stick and hit the hard shell of the crab a resounding blow.
The result was that the one claw, by which the crab was then hanging,
was broken off. Crabs’ claws are easily broken, and it does not seem
to hurt the creature. There is a saying that crabs’ claws will grow
back on again, but I am not certain of this. I have caught a great many
crabs with only one claw--large crabs, too--and it seems to me that if
they were going to grow a new claw, in place of the one they have lost,
a little claw would have started growing. And this I have never seen.
Anyhow, by knocking the crab from Patter’s paw the claw of the
sea-creature was broken off and left hanging on the dog’s foot, though
it no longer pinched. The one-clawed crab scuttled off sideways, which
is the way crabs “walk” on dry land, and also the way they often swim,
though sometimes they dart backward in the water.
“Catch the crab!” cried George. “Don’t let it get away! It’s a big one
and full of meat!”
“I’ll get it,” offered Charlie, while Bunny began taking the loose claw
from Patter’s leg.
There is a certain way to pick up a crab in your hand so he cannot
pinch you, and Bunny and his chums, being “salt water boys,” knew how
to do this.
Charlie first put one foot lightly on the crab, hard enough to hold
the crawling creature from moving, but not hard enough to crush the
upper shell, with its sharp, sticking points. Charlie then reached
down and took hold, between his thumb and one finger, of one of the
hind “flippers” or swimming legs of the crab, close to where it joined
the shell. Held thus, the crab could not reach around with its one
remaining claw to pinch Charlie. The boy lifted the crab from under his
shoe and tossed the squirming creature into the basket with the other
crabs.
“Can you get the claw off Patter’s leg?” asked George of Bunny.
“Yes, I got it off,” was the answer. “But it was stuck pretty tight.”
Even after a crab’s claw is torn from its body the claw will still
cling, for it has sharp points that lock like a spring trap.
Patter stopped howling and began to lick his slightly injured paw.
Bunny watched his pet trick dog anxiously.
“I hope he won’t be lame,” he said. “If he’s lame he can’t do his
tricks so well.”
Patter limped a little when he put his pinched paw down on the ground,
but this soon wore off and a little later he was romping around as if
nothing had happened.
But the next time one of the crabs got out of the net and began to
scramble around on the ground, Patter took care to be far away. He
barked and whined at the crab, but he did not put a paw near it. He had
learned a lesson.
“Well, we have enough crabs,” said Charlie, after a while.
“Yes, let’s go sell ’em,” suggested George.
It was not as easy to sell hard-shelled crabs in Bellemere as it would
have been in a town farther away from the seacoast, for in Bellemere
those who wished this form of sea food generally caught their own
crabs. Still the boys had peddled crabs before.
Putting a stick through the slots in the sides of the peach basket
and covering the crabs with wet seaweed to keep them alive--for it
is dangerous to one’s health to cook and eat a dead crab--the chums
started off on their peddling trip, followed by Patter.
“Want to buy any crabs, Mrs. Jones?” asked George, as the boys appeared
at the back door of the lady who had helped to get up the church fair.
“Hard or soft?” she asked.
“Hard,” answered George.
“Thank you, no,” she answered, with a smile. “They’re too much trouble.
If you had some soft crabs now, I’d take a dozen. Mr. Jones is very
fond of soft-shelled crabs on toast.”
“We’ll try to get you some soft crabs this afternoon,” offered Bunny.
“But they’re scarce, I heard Bunker Blue say.”
“I suppose that’s why my husband wants some,” went on Mrs. Jones.
“People often want strawberries in January and soft crabs when they’re
hard to get. Well, if you find any bring them to me. But I can’t use
the hard kind.”
I might explain that a soft crab is one that has just shed its hard
shell. Soft crabs are delicious fried in butter and put on a piece of
toast. The only way to cook hard crabs is to boil them alive and pick
out the meat, which is quite a lot of work. But, as Bunny had said,
soft crabs were scarce. They are also much harder to catch than hard
crabs.
When a hard crab grows, it finds its shell too small for it. The
creature then bursts out from its horn-like casing. Once it is out it
is soft and flabby. It hides away under the seaweed and only sharp eyes
can find it. Soft crabs are scooped up in a net, as their claws are so
flabby they cannot cling to the bait or piece of meat on a string.
“Well, we’ll have to try somewhere else,” said Bunny, as they walked
out of Mrs. Jones’ yard with the basket.
“Sure,” agreed Harry. “Somebody will want hard crabs.”
After many calls the boys at last succeeded in selling the basket of
hard crabs to Mrs. Hampton for fifty cents. This gave them twelve and a
half cents each, and they were quite satisfied with their work.
“It was fun, anyhow,” said Bunny, as they divided the money; buying
candy with the odd two cents and passing that around.
Sue was a little worried that evening when Bunny told her that the crab
had pinched Patter. But when she had looked at the dog’s paw and could
see no wound, she felt better.
“See if he’ll do his tricks,” she suggested.
And as Patter did them as well as ever, his little friends knew he was
all right again.
“We must soon get ready for our show,” said Bunny.
“Yes,” agreed Sue. “And I’ll make a new suit for Patter. I’ll make it
of silver and gold--like a fairy suit.”
“That will do for one suit, besides the Hallowe’en and his clown
dress,” observed Bunny. “But I think it would look different if he had
a tramp suit.”
“What you mean?” asked Sue.
“I mean--I mean--well, in a circus or a show lots of times a man comes
all dressed up like a ragged tramp, but he can do good tricks. Maybe
we could have one act where Patter wore a ragged and torn suit like a
tramp dog, and people would be surprised.”
“Oh, that will be fun!” agreed Sue. “I’ll make a tramp suit, too,
Bunny.”
“No, I’ll make that,” said the boy. “You mightn’t make it torn and
ragged enough. You make the gold and silver suit and I’ll make the
tramp suit.”
So it was agreed, and plans were made for several new tricks it was
hoped Patter would perform. Each day he seemed to learn something new,
but the trick Bunny and his boy chums liked best of all was where
Patter swung on the trapeze with Wango the monkey.
This trick was practiced whenever they could coax or borrow Wango from
Mr. Winkler, and this was pretty often. The trick of having Whitefeet
also ride on Patter’s back was not forgotten.
“I’ll make him do that trick when we have the show, ’cause Whitefeet
is my kittie,” declared Sue.
And so it was agreed.
One day Mrs. Brown sent Bunny and Sue down to the boat and fish dock
with a note to her husband. He had gone out for a little while, but
Bunker Blue said he would be back soon and advised Bunny and his sister
to wait.
“We’ll play in a boat while we’re waiting,” said Bunny.
There were many boats drawn up on the shore of Sandport Bay near Mr.
Brown’s dock, and some boats were already in the water. Bunny and Sue
got in one that was floating, and Patter scrambled in after them. Quite
a little wind was blowing, and the children moved about in the boat,
putting Patter through some of his tricks.
Suddenly Bunny looked up, glanced about, and cried:
“Sue, we’re going adrift!”
That meant the boat had become loosened and was floating away. Already
it was some distance out in the bay, and there were no people near in
other boats to go to the rescue of the children. As there were no oars
in their boat they could not row back to shore, though had there been
oars Bunny or Sue could have handled them.
“Oh, what are we going to do?” cried Sue, as the wind became stronger
and stronger, drifting them farther and farther from the shore and
their father’s dock.