The Curious Lobster

by Richard W. Hatch

  Mr. Badger began to speak.

  “I had three ideas,” he said. “I must admit that one of them is no good, since there are no fish here. So I will now tell you the second.”

  “What is it?” asked Mr. Bear.

  “We shall go now and fish from the beach, and Mr. Lobster can tell us where the big fish are.”

  “That is not very remarkable for an idea,” said Mr. Bear.

  “But the third idea is remarkable,” said Mr. Badger. “It is stupendous!”

  “What does that mean?” asked Mr. Lobster.

  “Well, stupendous is three times as remarkable as remarkable.” Mr. Badger chuckled.

  “Oh.” Mr. Lobster thought for a time. He knew that he could not conceal his curiosity. So he had to say, “Then tell us what the third stupendous idea is.”

  “Oh, no!” protested Mr. Badger. “That would spoil the fun. There must always be a surprise ahead. Life is very dull if you are sure of what is going to happen next.”

  “It is dull if you don’t have anything to eat,” growled Mr. Bear.

  “Let us go right away and try the second idea,” said Mr. Lobster. “Then we can learn the third.” And he said softly to himself under one corner of his shell, “I must learn Mr. Badger’s third idea.”

  So Mr. Badger and Mr. Bear walked along the river to go over the bridge to the beach, and Mr. Lobster said that it would take him so long to walk he guessed he would swim across the river and meet them on the other side.

  Mr. Badger looked quite small and unimportant beside Mr. Bear, but as Mr. Lobster watched them walking away he realized that Mr. Badger was a hero, and so size didn’t matter.

  “It goes to show that you can never tell a hero by his size,” he said to himself. “I will remember that bit of wisdom. It seems to me that I get wiser every time I come ashore, and goodness knows I satisfy a great deal of my curiosity, too. Traveling is evidently a very good thing—so long as you have a good home and know enough to return to it.”

  When the three friends were together on the beach Mr. Bear baited his hook and threw his line so that he could fish way out beyond the waves. Then Mr. Badger did the same.

  “Now we shall see,” said Mr. Badger.

  “I hope we shall see some fish,” growled Mr. Bear. “Do you realize that you have done nothing but make me cross ever since we met?”

  “Let us not speak of the unhappy past,” said Mr. Lobster. He was thinking of the disgraceful red spots on his shell. “I will go right out and see if I can find you some fish.”

  And he crawled into the waves, sank to the bottom, and then began tail-snapping along to see what he could see. Back and forth he went, and back and forth. He saw Mr. Badger’s bait and Mr. Bear’s bait. He saw crabs and clams and dabs and small flounders, but he didn’t see a single big fish.

  “Well,” he said to himself, “probably I am very mean, but I am really glad. If there are no fish here I shall certainly learn Mr. Badger’s third idea, which is stupendous.”

  So he went ashore and crawled out trying to look sorry, but really not feeling sorry at all.

  “I must tell you,” he said to Mr. Badger and Mr. Bear, “that I did not see a single big fish. I think we had better try the third idea.”

  “I think,” said Mr. Bear with a low and disgusted growl, “that I might just as well go and pick blueberries. At least, a blueberry does not run and hide as soon as you come after it.”

  “But you haven’t heard the best idea of all,” protested Mr. Badger. “Listen to me. Over in the river near here is a good-sized boat. It belongs to a sailor who lives in an old sea shanty on the beach. We can take the boat, and Mr. Bear can row because he is the biggest and strongest, and we can go way out on the Ocean where we know the big fish live. We can catch a boat full.”

  Mr. Lobster was delighted at this idea. He had been under the Ocean all his life, but he had never been on top of it in a boat. It was stupendous! But then he thought of something else.

  “We would be stealing the boat,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” said Mr. Badger quickly. “When you steal things you don’t bring them back. We shall borrow the boat and bring it back, and we shall leave enough fine fish in it to pay for using it.”

  “It sounds shady to me,” said Mr. Bear.

  “But think what an adventure it will be!” exclaimed Mr. Badger. “And you just can’t help it if an adventure is just a little shady.”

  “Humph!” Mr. Bear gave a small growl. “It may be an adventure for you, but as I am to do the rowing it sounds like work to me. And I hate work.”

  “We must be cautious,” put in Mr. Lobster at this point.

  “If you are cautious you never have any adventures,” said Mr. Badger. “I am surprised at you two. A hero being cautious! A great strong bear being unwilling to row for his good friends!”

  There was nothing to do but give in to Mr. Badger. So the three left the beach and returned to the river, Mr. Badger leading the way and smiling to himself at his success.

  Just as he had said, there was a fine boat, a fisherman’s dory with two oars in it, tied to a stake in the meadow. Mr. Lobster got in first and sat in the bow, or rather he folded up his tail and lay on the bow seat. Mr. Bear took the middle seat, which bent dangerously under his great weight. Mr. Badger untied the boat and then jumped in the stern. When he jumped in he gave a push. They were out in the river.

  “The adventure has begun!” he cried.

  “But it is not finished yet,” added Mr. Bear.

  “Row! Row!” called out Mr. Badger.

  Mr. Bear took up the oars, put them in the right places between the tholepins, and gave a mighty pull. As Mr. Bear was facing the bow of the boat just as the others were, the boat went suddenly backwards and bumped into the bank, almost knocking Mr. Lobster off his seat.

  “Something is wrong!” cried Mr. Lobster in alarm. “We are going backwards!”

  “A very poor beginning for an adventure,” said Mr. Bear.

  “Wait a minute. Let us think,” urged Mr. Badger. “Let’s all turn around and face the other way. Then we’ll be going frontwards.”

  So they all turned around, and Mr. Bear, being altogether too big for the boat, nearly tipped them all over.

  “Now row again!” cried Mr. Badger.

  Mr. Bear was terribly strong, and he gave a tremendous pull on the oars. This time the boat shot away from the bank and down the river. The boat was going frontwards beautifully, but Mr. Badger, Mr. Bear, and Mr. Lobster were still going backwards.

  “This is a fine boat!” exclaimed Mr. Bear, giving a particularly unpleasant growl. “No matter which way we sit, we go backwards. I don’t like it. I like to see where I am going, and I’m not in the habit of going backwards to get to a place.”

  Mr. Badger was thinking again. He had never been in a boat before in his life. That was why he had suggested the trip. And now he was a little surprised, himself.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “Mr. Lobster and I will turn around so that we can see where we are going. But you will have to go backwards, because evidently that is the way oars work.”

  “I knew it,” said Mr. Bear. “In every adventure someone gets the worst of it. I have to do all the work, and I am the one who has to go backwards. That’s life for you.”

  “I think it’s fun,” answered Mr. Badger. “I think life is fun, and I love life—especially here where the owl can’t come. And think of the pleasure you are giving Mr. Lobster and me.” Mr. Badger was smiling happily.

  So Mr. Bear rowed and rowed, though almost every time he pulled the oars he gave a growl of disgust because he had to go backwards.

  They went down the river and out of the mouth and out on the Ocean. They went farther and farther from shore, and every time Mr. Bear slowed up the least little bit Mr. Badger called out to him to keep going.

  Mr. Lobster did not like the growling of Mr. Bear, but he was enjoying the ride very much. For the first time in his life he was go
ing up and down on the surface of the great Ocean, where he could look away for miles and miles and see nothing but water, which was all perfectly safe for him. And it was such a dark day that he wasn’t getting dry or hot at all. He was very happy.

  “Wait till I see the sculpin,” he thought.

  “What an adventure! What heroes!” Mr. Badger cried out. He was joyous, because, being mischievous, he loved to see Mr. Bear working so hard, and he loved to hear Mr. Bear growl. Mr. Badger thought that was a good joke.

  “Aren’t we nearly there?” asked Mr. Bear for the thirty-third time. “You may not realize it, but I have to row back after the fishing is done.”

  “What do you think?” asked Mr. Badger of Mr. Lobster. “You know all about this Ocean.”

  “I think there must be fish here,” replied Mr. Lobster.

  So Mr. Bear stopped rowing, and he and Mr. Badger began to fish. Mr. Lobster just watched.

  At once they began catching large fish. Mr. Badger and Mr. Bear were soon working furiously, for the Ocean was very deep and it was a long pull to get a big fish all the way from the bottom clear up to the boat. Sometimes the fish got away while being pulled up, and then Mr. Bear growled and Mr. Badger laughed at him.

  Mr. Badger caught fish so big that it was all he could do to haul them up and get them into the boat. All the time he was laughing and chuckling, and every now and then he would say to Mr. Bear:

  “Now what do you think of my ideas?”

  Mr. Bear seemed to be too busy fishing to answer. In fact, it seemed that he did not even hear what Mr. Badger said.

  Mr. Lobster was so busy watching the two fishermen that he was thinking of nothing else.

  And so it was that the fine fishing went on and on, and the boat was beginning to get filled with fish. And not one of the three friends was thinking at all about that important matter—the weather.

  Suddenly Mr. Lobster thought he heard an unusually bad growl from Mr. Bear, and he thought Mr. Bear must have lost a very big fish.

  “I wish,” he said to Mr. Bear politely, “that you wouldn’t growl quite so loud.”

  “I didn’t growl,” said Mr. Bear. “For once in my life I am too happy to growl—though I know it won’t last.”

  “Well, I didn’t growl,” said Mr. Badger.

  And just then came another ominous sound.

  Then they all looked up. There was no mistaking that sound this time.

  “That was thunder!” exclaimed Mr. Badger.

  A great black cloud was coming up the sky, a cloud darker than any other part of the gray and hurrying clouds that had been in the sky all day. The Ocean looked black and strangely still. Another peal of thunder rolled across the great spaces of heaven and sea, sounding much nearer this time. And then there was a puff of wind, and a sound in the far distance, and a few drops of rain.

  “A storm!” cried Mr. Lobster.

  “This will be a real adventure after all,” said Mr. Badger.

  “I knew it!” said Mr. Bear. “I knew that something unpleasant would turn up! You call this an adventure, do you?”

  Just then there was a bright flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, and the wind and rain came in a great rush together. It was almost as dark as night. The Ocean began to show white and angry, and the boat rocked and tossed so violently that Mr. Lobster had hard work to keep on his seat, and Mr. Badger and Mr. Bear held tightly to the sides.

  Mr. Bear managed to pick up the oars and get them in place.

  “Row for dear life!” cried Mr. Badger.

  “Where is the land?” asked Mr. Bear.

  Everyone looked, but the land was nowhere to be seen.

  “I know where it is without seeing it,” said Mr. Lobster. “I will show you how to go.”

  Mr. Bear gave such a terrible pull on the oars that the boat jumped ahead. Then he gave another terrible pull. Crack! The oar in his right paw broke in two, and half of it floated away.

  A great wave slapped the side of the boat, dumping a lot of water over the side so that it ran over the bottom and over the fish. The rain was pouring down.

  “Now we’ll sink!” cried Mr. Badger. “This is turning out very badly!”

  “ROW FOR DEAR LIFE!” CRIED MR. BADGER.

  “I told you so!” growled Mr. Bear.

  Mr. Bear stood up to paddle with the one oar he had left, and he was strong and so frightened that he paddled too hard. Snap! And the other oar broke in two.

  They were helpless. The wind was raging, and the waves were getting higher and higher. More and more water was dashed into the boat. It was a wild storm, and the thunder and lightning were enough to frighten even old sailors.

  “We’re done for!” exclaimed Mr. Bear. “This boat will sink soon, and I could never swim from here to shore even if I could see the shore.”

  “Neither can I!” cried Mr. Badger. “This is the worst adventure I have ever had.”

  “I hope this will teach you a lesson about adventures!” growled Mr. Bear. “I’ll never believe in your ideas again.”

  “It was a good idea!” shouted Mr. Badger. “It is the storm that is somebody else’s idea—not mine. And think of the fish we caught!”

  “Think of getting drowned way out here!” Mr. Bear shouted back.

  “If you would stand up, you would be as big as a sail, and maybe the wind would blow us ashore!” shouted Mr. Badger.

  Mr. Bear tried to stand up, but the wind was blowing so hard and the boat was rocking so much that he immediately slipped and fell down with a crash. The boat very nearly tipped over then, and Mr. Bear nearly went overboard.

  “That was another of your ideas!” he growled at Mr. Badger. “I am going to stay right here in the bottom of the boat. Also, I am going to close my eyes. I don’t want to see what certainly is going to happen.”

  And he lay as still as he could, but he growled every time the least thing happened, and as something was always happening he was growling all the time.

  Mr. Badger looked out at the wild Ocean, and then he spoke to Mr. Lobster.

  “I’ve had a good many bad times in my life,” he said. “I suppose it is very fitting that the worst time should be the last, but I hate to think of it. This was such a stupendous idea, too. I suppose, Mr. Lobster, that you can just climb overboard and sink, and you will be perfectly safe. But I have to die like a hero.”

  Mr. Lobster was holding on for dear life. It is true that he was not worried about himself, because if the boat sank he would sink too, and then he simply would be at home. Home was always a comforting thought to him, but now he was thinking as hard as he could about other things, because he wanted to save his two friends.

  “It is true that I am quite safe,” he said to Mr. Badger.

  “Well, I’ll say good-by now,” shouted Mr. Badger. “Here we go, I guess!”

  A mountainous great wave dashed against the boat, covering Mr. Bear and the fish, who were now all thrown together in the bottom of the boat, with water.

  Mr. Bear closed his eyes even tighter than before and growled harder than ever.

  But still the boat did not sink.

  “Maybe we did steal the boat,” said Mr. Badger. “I’ve nearly always been punished when I’ve done anything shady, and this must have been shadier than I thought.”

  After this no one said anything for some time. The danger was now so great that gloom and unhappiness had descended on them all.

  And then Mr. Lobster, who was still thinking with all his might, and looking everywhere, saw the rope that was fastened to the bow of the boat. And he had a stupendous thought.

  “I will pull you ashore!” he shouted.

  He seized the rope in his big claws and climbed overboard, letting himself go splash in the stormy sea. The water of the Ocean was nice and salt after the rain which had been falling on Mr. Lobster, and he felt strong.

  He began to swim. It was fortunate that he was the oldest and biggest lobster in that Ocean. Certainly no other lobster would hav
e been strong enough to swim and pull that boat with all the fish and Mr. Bear and Mr. Badger in it.

  But Mr. Lobster could pull it, and he did. Very slowly they went, to be sure, and the storm howled louder and louder, and the Ocean grew rougher and rougher, but the boat was moving toward the shore.

  Mr. Badger was trying to throw water out of the boat, using both of his front paws like a scoop.

  “Hurry!” he cried to Mr. Lobster. “I can’t throw it out as fast as it comes in. We’ll sink before we get to shore.”

  Mr. Bear just lay still with his eyes shut. He was half covered with water now, and his growls were low and sad.

  On and on they went. It seemed hours to Mr. Badger and more hours to Mr. Lobster, who was working as he had never worked before in all his life.

  “Hurry!” Mr. Badger kept crying.

  Mr. Lobster was in the rolling waves of the mouth of the river. He gave every bit of his strength to his task. The waves caught the boat, and it almost tipped over. Mr. Badger had to stop throwing water and just hold on. Mr. Bear gave the worst growl of the day.

  And then, as sudden as darkness when a light goes out, there were no more waves. They were in the river itself. The rain was falling and the wind blowing and the thunder rolling far over the great Ocean. The boat was more than half full of water and just barely floating. But they were safe!

  At the sudden stillness Mr. Bear sat up, but he still kept his eyes closed.

  “It is so quiet we must be dead,” he said.

  Mr. Badger laughed.

  “We are saved!” he cried. “Mr. Lobster, the hero, has saved us!”

  And then Mr. Bear dared to open his eyes and look around.

  “I want to go ashore right away,” he said. “I won’t believe I am safe until I am at home and smell my fish frying.”

  Mr. Lobster pulled the boat over to the bank where they had found it.

  “I am sorry to have to say this,” said Mr. Badger, who was quite restored now that he was safe, “but of course we have to leave some fish for the use of the boat, and I am afraid that as you broke both the oars you will have to leave all your share of the fish to pay for them.” Mr. Badger’s eyes twinkled. Once he was feeling well, it did not take him long to think up a joke.