The lobster war

Front matter

THAMES WILLIAMSON

Class J’BjZL'f_

CcpiglitN 0 _L.o_

Contents

Chapter

PAGE

i ii hi

Chapter One

H enry Sennett trudged slowly down the woods path, making a low squashy noise with his rubber boots, but otherwise silent. Behind him strode his sons, Elmer and Tom, chatting and laughing from sheer good spirits. For it was June, early morn¬ ing, and fine clear weather; what more could they ask! The smell of salt water came stronger, a gull creaked; then they rounded a thicket and found themselves at the shore of the cove.

"The tide’s going,” observed Tom lightly. "What shall we do, Elmer, order it back or let it go?”

Elmer did not respond to this sally. As the elder of the two brothers, he was the more inclined to be quiet and serious, and now there was something be¬ sides joking to concern him. Their father had led the way up to a little flat-bottomed skiff that lay just above high-water mark; he had untied it and was beginning to drag it down over the gravelly beach toward the edge of the water, when Elmer cried out:

"Now, Father, you stop that! Tom and I are going to do the work.”

The hint of a smile came to the thin brown face of Henry Sennett; nevertheless he dropped the end of the skiff, and let the boys seize it and drag it swiftly to the water.

"We’re going to do the work,” announced Tom, stepping into the boat and picking up the rude home¬ made oars, "and I guess it’s about time, too. I’ve been hankering after this all spring, and now that school’s over I’m going after it. You can’t have all the fun, Dad.”

They pushed off, Elmer and his father sitting down while Tom rowed. The father was a grave, tight-lipped man, with a slight stoop to his shoulders and a steady eye that ranged back and forth in an arc beyond Tom’s head. He gazed at the calm water and at the occasional small islands that dotted its surface. Farther off lay the rugged shore, and above this rim of yellow-gray rocks rose a wall of low wooded hills, relieved now and then by a square of meadow land, or a wharf, and a white cottage or two. Again the father seemed to smile.

"Well, boys,” he remarked, "Eve been a-trappin* lobsters in and around this here cove for about forty years now, but I’ve never seen much fun to it. Of course you maybe will. I’m not a-sayin 5 you won’t. 55

"Shift a little to your right, 55 Elmer said to his brother.

Tom cast a look over his shoulder, and changed his course. Little by little he brought the skiff into the center of the cove, where there were perhaps a dozen motor boats, tied to their moorings like so many horses. One of these, about twenty-six feet in length, was freshly painted white, and carried on her bow the number B-582. It was the Sennett boat, and in a few minutes Tom had brought them alongside. His father and brother climbed over the rail, leaving Tom to untie the painter, make the skiff fast at the stern of the motor boat, and then get aboard.

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

The father had started the engine. He straightened up and took hold of the upright stick by means of which the boat was steered, and they set out over the water. Elmer stood beside him; Tom established him¬ self on top of a small barrel that smelled violently of herring.

"Got plenty of bait? 55 asked Elmer.

"Sure, 55 said Tom, and got off the barrel to peep under the cover.

Elmer pointed off toward a block of bright yellow wood. It was roughly of the size of a small football, and it was floating on top of the water.

"Whose buoy is that? 55 he asked his father.

“Sam Murray’s.”

More buoys appeared, some of them yellow, others black, or red, or perhaps with a combination of col¬ ors. Each of these marked the location of a lobster trap, and on each buoy there was carved the name and number of the fisherman who owned it. The number was the number of his license, granted him by the Fish Commissioner of the State of Maine, and en¬ titling him to fish for lobsters. The difference in the colors of the buoys was, of course, merely for the purpose of telling them apart.

At last Henry Sennett slackened speed, to glide quietly in the direction of a red and white buoy. It was his, marking the position of the first of the sixtyfour lobster traps he had about the floor of Pelly’s Cove. Elmer caught up a gaff, bent over the rail, and adroitly hooked up the rope which descended into the water from a hole in the buoy.

“Who’s going to haul?” he asked.

“I am!” exclaimed Tom, and in an instant he was into an oilskin coat and was tying a rubber apron about his waist. Thus protected against too much wetness, he seized the rope and began to pull in on it, rapidly until he had taken up the slack, and then more slowly, because of the weight of the trap he was lifting. A lobster trap is baited, tied to a small but strong rope, and lowered to the bottom, after which it is pulled up every day or so, to see what has been caught in it. By this time Tom had brought the trap itself into sight: it was a cumbersome thing that re¬ sembled a chicken coop, with several differences. Per¬ haps a yard in length, the trap was flat on the bottom and semicircular on top, and for the most part was made of laths, with narrow cracks between. Each end, however, was constructed, not of laths, but of stout twine netting, drawn tightly in toward the middle of the trap and also upward from the bot¬ tom, so that a lobster could crawl up it, tumble through the wire ring at its mouth, and find it very difficult to get back the way he came.

"We’ve got something!” announced Tom.

He took hold of the heavy trap, Elmer helping him. Together they pulled it out of the water and balanced it on the edge of the motor boat. Inside the trap there were a number of rocks, put there to keep it from moving too much with the tide, and in addition to the rocks there were two lobsters and a crab.

"A good beginning,” said Elmer, with satisfaction.

The father nodded, unfastening the door in the top of the trap. The crab he tossed back into the water as worthless; then he turned his attention to the lobsters. On top they were dark green with a tend¬ ency toward splotchy color, and on the under side a light yellowish red.

"One counter and one short,” said Henry Sennett.

By the term "counter” he meant a lobster that is legally big enough to keep, a "short” being one that is too small for a fisherman to retain. The distinc¬ tion is a matter of law. In Maine, at this particular time, a lobster was not a counter unless it measured at least three and a half inches from the rear of one eyestalk to the rear of the body shell, beyond which the creature becomes mere tail. And in order that there be no misunderstanding about it, lobstermen carried with them a small metal measure, provided by the Fish Commissioner for this very purpose.

"Both of them look like counters to me / 5 objected Tom, and picked up the measure.

Henry Sennett dropped the larger lobster into the bottom of the boat and handed the other to Tom. The boy gripped it just behind the waving claws, placed one knob of the measure at the eyestalk, and wiggled the other end back and forth at the rear of the body shell.

"Heave him overboard,” said his brother. "Five dollars fine for every short lobster is too much to risk. He’s no counter.”

Tom tossed the creature into the water, and at once it lost its air of being awkward and sluggish. One flip of the powerful tail sent it back down into the water with such swiftness that the eye could not follow it. A flash, and it was gone.

Meantime the father was putting fresh bait in the trap. Taking out a little net bag which had been hanging down inside the trap, he emptied it, refilled it with new herring from their bait barrel, and hung it back inside the trap, to tempt more lobsters to their undoing. Then they lowered the trap back down into the water and set out for the next buoy.

They had started early, yet by this time there were at least half a dozen motor boats popping about in their neighborhood. Here and there darted the lobstermen, occasionally coming to a standstill in order to haul a trap, and afterward moving on. The Sennetts had their traps in widely scattered places, some¬ times in water no more than two fathoms deep, at other times in ten fathoms of water and at a consider¬ able distance from shore. Many of their buoys were alone, on other occasions they found the vicinity thick with bobbing blocks of wood of various colors. Lobsters may be found on any hard bottom, such as clay, gravel, or rock, and every licensed fisherman is free to set his traps where he likes.

"Here comes the smack,” said Tom presently.

Off toward the south the cove gradually widened into the open sea, and now, as they looked in that direction, they saw what they familiarly called the Portland smack. The smack — so called because she was used to transport lobsters — was a vessel some sixty feet in length, run by a gasoline engine, and carrying a crew of two men, including her captain. Henry Sennett watched her push in from the sea, a puzzled expression on his face.

"What’s the matter?” asked Elmer quickly.

"She’s headin’ this way,” was the father’s reply. "Generally she makes straight for the wharf.”

He shut off the engine, waiting for the smack to come up. The vessel cut down her speed. She came slowly closer, her captain on the forward deck. The Sennetts recognized him as a man by the name of McLain, a rough, blunt fellow who was inclined to be violent. When the smack had drifted up alongside the little motor boat, Captain McLain waved briefly and called out:

"Mornin’.”

"How are ye?” answered Henry Sennett.

"Not so bad. I hear you're ailin’, though.”

"That so?”

"Yes,” said the captain gruffly. "I understand you ain’t satisfied with the price of lobsters.”

"Why should I be?” came the answer. "Last year at this time we was gettin’ thirty cents a pound; now it’s twenty-one.”

"Twenty, you mean.”

"What’s that?” demanded Henry Sennett, flushing.

"I said twenty cents a pound was the price to¬ day.”

The boys gazed at their father with lengthening faces. Like innumerable other families along the Maine coast, the Sennetts lived almost entirely from what their lobsters brought, so that a drop of a cent a pound was no light matter. They knew vaguely that the price had been gradually dropping, but not for years had fishermen got as little as twenty cents a pound.

"Twenty,” muttered Henry Sennett, looking hard at the captain. "And next week I s’pose it’ll be nine¬ teen.”

"Maybe so,” admitted the smackman. "Depends on the market.”

"Yes, I know how it depends on the market.”

"Oh, you do, do you!” said Captain McLain. "Well, don’t get to knowing too much, Sennett. You get all your lobsters are worth, and you ought to be satisfied.”

"Well, I’m not satisfied,” was the retort. "And neither is anybody else around this cove, I cal’late.”

The captain opened his mouth for an angry rejoin¬ der, but Henry Sennett had started his engine and was going on, his face grim. He headed for his next buoy, muttering in disgust:

"Pretty soon it won’t pay a man to even go and haul his traps. Just runnin’ this little boat, and keepin’ my traps in order, costs me a couple of dol¬ lars a day. That means some lobsters, at twenty cents a pound, and no two ways about it.”

"Why does the price of lobsters always go down?” asked Tom, helplessly. "I should think it might go up, once in a while.”

"It used to,” said the father, shutting off the en¬ gine, "but that was when we had competin’ buyers in here. I can remember when there was a dozen different people cornin’ to Pelly’s Cove to buy lob¬ sters, and if any of ’em offered us fishermen too little for ’em, why, the others would bid him up, and we got a fair price. Then the big buyers got together and formed an association; they shut out the little fellows by gettin’ a law passed that every smack has to be bonded for five thousand dollars, and when they did that it was just a Ring in control of every¬ thing. So then they began to set the prices just about to suit themselves, like you see they’re doin’ now.”

Tom pulled the trap out of the water. There was nothing in it. The father changed the bait, Elmer asking:

"Is Fred Whipple in with the Ring?”

"Why, sure. Whipple is the man we got to sell our lobsters to, because there’s nobody else allowed to buy in the cove. He’s just the hired man, takin’ orders from McLain just like McLain takes orders from the Tig fellows’ in Portland. As soon as McLain ties up at the wharf over there, he’ll start loadin’ the lobsters all the fishermen around here has been catchin’ and sellin’ to Whipple, and before he leaves he’ll tell Whipple to pay only twenty cents a pound, until further orders.”

"Yes,” objected Tom, "but why doesn’t some¬ body start competition? A five-thousand-dollar bond oughtn’t to be so hard to raise.”

"Harder’n you think for,” returned his father. "You’d have to watch sharp or you’d lose your bond money, too. . . . What! don’t you understand that?”

Silently the boys shook their heads. They were coming to realize how little they really knew about the business of lobstering.

"It’s simple enough,” said the father. "If anybody outside the Ring tried to run a smack in here, why, they’d complain to the Fish Commissioner that he was carryin’ short lobsters, and if the wardens couldn’t find enough doubtful ones to call ’em short, the dealers in the Ring would plant them on him. A fish warden can board a boat and look for shorts any time he wants to, and when he found shorts on your smack you’d forfeit the five-thousand-dollar bond, and the vessel besides. Understand?”

The brothers nodded, at a loss as to what to say. They went on toward the next buoy, Tom staring at the water, Elmer slipping heavy rubber bands over the claws of the lobsters they had caught. Lob¬ sters frequently injure or kill each other with their huge claws, and accordingly the fisherman either in¬ serts a small wooden peg into the hole in which the movable part of the claw works to and fro, so that it cannot open; or he slips on rubber bands, as Elmer had just done. The next trap was empty.

"We’ll move it,” said the father. "This is the third time I’ve hauled here without getting anything.”

The trap was pulled up and laid across the back of the boat. Then they went off across the cove in the direction of Apple Island. This was chiefly a mass of rocks surmounted by a clump of dark firs, but toward the lower end of it appeared a bit of cleared land, a tumbledown hut, and a gnarled apple tree. The tree had been planted there by a hermit many years before, and from the apples that he now and then gathered had come the name of the place. Around the end of the island chugged the Sennett motor boat, suddenly within view of a boat in which sat a man and also a boy about Tom’s age.

"There’s Bart Randall and his father,” said Tom. "Can’t we stop a minute, Dad?”

The motor boat eased down, the Randalls turn¬ ing to see who it was. They were hauling nets, the father pulling them in while his son picked out the seaweed and folded them neatly in the bottom of the boat. Occasionally they took out fish, haddock mostly, caught by the gills in the meshes of the net. Judging from the line of cork buoys floating out ahead of them, they still had plenty of work to do, yet they paused when the Sennett boat came up, ready to talk.

"Gettin’ any fish?” asked Henry Sennett, while the boys grinned and waved at each other.

"Not many. How are the lobsters?”

"Plenty of lobsters, but the price keeps goin’ down.”

Randall looked serious, and said nothing. He was a tall, ragged man, and rather indolent in appearance. The son, Bart, was livelier, but so far as clothes were concerned he was even shabbier. Father and son lived alone in a shack near the shore, and they had the reputation of being ne’er-do-wells, though there was nothing definite against them.

"Yes, sir,” continued Henry Sennett resentfully, "that bunch of dealers up there to Portland is gettin’ to be as bad as a pack of dogfish. There’s no livin’ with ’em. I’ve just about made up my mind that somethin’s got to be done.”

And still Randall did not respond. He appeared to be unwilling to talk about it; in fact, Sennett’s complaint against the Lobster Ring had actually made him uneasy. The man plucked at the net in his hands, curiously silent and embarrassed. Henry Sennett noticed his manner, and said in a casual tone:

"Well, we’ve got to get along.”

"Bart, come over to-morrow,” called Tom. "It’s Sunday, and we’ll do something.”

"All right, I will,” said Bart, and flashed them a smile that was in strange contrast with his ordinarily somber face. "I’ll be there.”

The three lobstermen moved away in their boat, Elmer murmuring:

"Did you notice how nervous Mr. Randall acted? I wonder why that was.”

"Probably afraid of the Lobster Ring,” declared Tom. "He quit lobstering all of a sudden two years ago. Maybe they forced him out, and he’s never got over it. . . . I hope they won’t try anything on you, Dad, for saying what you did to McLain. 5 ’

Henry Sennett looked about. Slowing his boat down he let the lobster trap slide off into the water, carrying the rope and the red and white buoy with it. Then he turned to the boys, his voice low and steady: "I don’t think they will.”

I

Chapter Two

B oth Elmer and his father scoffed at the idea, but Tom kept suspecting that something would come of their tilt with the captain of the lobster smack. And a week later he was certain of it.

The Sennetts had finished hauling their traps one day, and were heading toward the Whipple pier, a heap of crawling lobsters in the bottom of their boat. Henry Sennett was steering, and the boys were gazing idly ahead. The pier ran out from the shore a short distance and at the end was capped by a small build¬ ing which served the lobster buyer as an office. A fisherman by the name of Nat Gilbert was some dis¬ tance ahead of the Sennett boat, and at the sound of his engine Whipple came out of his office, walked across the pier, and descended a gangway to a kind of platform. This platform was in reality a lobster "car,” that is to say, a stout wooden crate some twenty feet square and six deep, with the boards close enough together to keep in lobsters, and yet far enough apart to permit water to flow through. The car lay in the water, its lower part submerged, but its top above the surface. It was in this car that Whipple collected the lobsters he bought of the fishermen in Pelly’s Cove and later turned over to the smack to carry to Portland.

"Nat couldn’t have had many,” commented Henry Sennett, nodding toward the Gilbert boat, which was already on its way again.

Elmer shut off their engine, and the boat glided slowly up to the buying platform. Tom seized a rope which the lobster dealer tossed him, deftly snubbing their boat to a standstill. The father exchanged a nod with Whipple, a fat, unshaven man with an air of being friends with everyone in the world.

"Get any to-day?” he smiled at them.

"Oh, a few,” replied Henry Sennett, and began to toss his lobsters out on to the platform, one at a time.

"You always get lobsters,” said the buyer pleasantly.

"I get ’em,” was the retort, "but I don’t get any¬ thing for ’em. Still payin’ nineteen cents, I s’pose?”

"Yes, but that’s better than eighteen, eh, Henry?”

The sound of voices interrupted them. A party of city people had appeared on the pier, and were gazing down at the curious business of dealing in lobsters. Whipple seized on them as an excuse to change the subject.

"Rusticators is with us again,” he observed. "Queer folks, them rusticators.”

"Yes,” said Sennett, "and one of the queerest things about ’em is that they always have to pay top prices for the lobsters they buy of you, Fred. The price may be down to the fisherman, but it’s up to the rusticators. I hear them restaurants up Boston way is still chargin’ a dollar and a half for a broiled live lobster, too. A dollar and a half for a lobster that we get about thirty cents for!”

Whipple reached for a tin tub and began silently to fill it with the lobsters that the boys and their father had tossed up. The buyer examined them closely, passing them without comment until he came to one that looked rather small.

"Short, ain’t he?” he asked.

"Measure him.”

The buyer applied his metal measure to the lob¬ ster, grating the end of it heavily back and forth along the edge of the body shell.

"Of course he’ll be short, if you rub off the edge of his shell,” said Henry Sennett bluntly.

"I guess he’s a counter,” announced the buyer. "Kind of on the line, but I’ll risk him.”

The boys noticed that Whipple said this as if he were doing them a favor, and presently they saw he had something more to say on the subject. He put the last of the lobsters into the tub, but instead of at once setting them on his scales and weighing them he observed sagely:

"Yes, sirree, the difference between a short lobster and a legal lobster is mighty thin sometimes. About a thousandth of an inch difference, and he either goes back in the water or into somebody’s plate.”

"What are you tryin’ to come at?” said Henry Sennett, as blunt as before.

"HI tell ye,” answered the buyer, and, having made certain that the rusticators could not hear, he went on smoothly: "I got to stay inside the law, of course, but at the same time it’s too bad to turn down lobsters that’s right on the line, especially with the price down the way it is. So let’s suppose you save the ones that’s just about counters, and I’ll see if I can’t put the measure on ’em so’s they’ll be legal size. In a month or so that would put some heft in the scales, eh, Henry?”

"It would all right,” replied Sennett, in a non¬ committal tone. Then he nodded toward the lobsters he had just brought in, adding: "How about the heft in that tub?”

Whipple weighed it. There were twenty-two lob¬ sters, and they weighed thirty pounds and eight ounces, or an average of a little less than a pound and a half apiece. The buyer did some figuring with the stub of a pencil, and announced:

"Five dollars and eighty cents, that what you make it? How about some gas?”

Up on the pier stood a red gasoline tank, and from this a long ropelike hose ran down the gangway and to the buying platform. Many of the fishermen habitually bought gasoline here, receiving for their lobsters only the difference between the price and what they paid for gasoline. Sennett nodded, and the lobster buyer put five gallons into the motor boat, paying over the balance in cash.

"All right, Henry,” he said affably. "See you to¬ morrow.”

The engine started with a noisy popping sound, and the Sennetts slipped off in the direction of home.

"I knew it!” exclaimed Tom, as soon as they were out of Whipple’s hearing. "Dad, they’re tryin to make you keep still by offering to buy doubtful lob¬ sters of us.”

"Trading favors!” said Elmer scornfully.

The father opened his thin tight lips, contempt in his voice: "I’d never trade favors with people that’s robbin’ us fishermen, even if it was within the law, which it ain’t. From now on we’ll just be a little more careful than ordinary about measurin’ lobsters, so Fred Whipple can’t claim he’s helpin’ us get a few pennies more for our catch.”

Henry Sennett said this with an air of finality, but the matter was not finished, as they were to discover. Two weeks went by. It was the middle of July, and nothing had happened. Then one day as they were making for the buying pier with their haul of lob¬ sters, Elmer pointed to the north shore of the cove, exclaiming:

"Grandpa’s got a flag up!”

"That’s good,” said Tom, with a pleased face. "He’s coming over to our house for dinner.”

All three of them gazed interestedly in the direc¬ tion of the flag. Grandpa Sennett’s property included a rickety wharf, an old schooner, and a strip of meadow land which sloped up to a big white house. The boys’ grandmother was dead, and Grandpa lived alone, at a distance of about a mile from his son’s family. Now and then he announced to them that he was coming over to dinner, by running up a flag, as he had done to-day.

"Let me off at the old clam factory,” said Henry Sennett, "and I’ll go up to the store and get a cake. Grandpa’s got to have chocolate cake, and your mother hasn’t baked lately. I’ll cut through the woods, and you boys can go on to Whipple’s, and then home.”

They let him off and went on to the buying pier alone. Elmer tossed out their catch, handing up last of all a lobster known to the fishermen as a punch-tail. This was a female, carrying under her tail a mass of eggs which were turning from dark to reddish, a sign that they were nearing the hatching stage. Lobsters of this type are a valuable means of in¬ creasing the supply; therefore the law declares that they cannot go to market but must be turned over to some buyer representing the Fish Commissioner. This buyer pays the fisherman for it; then he punches a small hole in the middle flipper of the lobster and liberates it, after which it is the property of the State of Maine and must always be put back into the water as soon as it is caught and recognized as a punch-tail.

"Sixteen pounds of counters/’ said Whipple, "and a punch-tail. That all, boys?”

The brothers looked at him in surprise, whereupon he laughed and said confidentially:

"You remember what we were talking about that time, don’t ye?”

"Line lobsters, you mean?” asked Tom.

"Yes, I thought maybe you’d have a few for me this morning. It means money in your dad’s pocket, and I guess he needs it, don’t he?”

"He needs it, all right,” retorted Elmer, with a trace of his father’s blunt way of speaking, "but we’re not selling shorts.”

"Shorts, who said shorts!” exclaimed the buyer, in apparent surprise. "I said line lobsters, ones that could be made to go for either shorts or counters.”

Tom gave the buyer a curious smile: "And what’s Dad supposed to do in return for a favor like that?”

"Nothing,” declared Whipple amiably, "nothing at all. Why, I—”

The sound of an approaching motor boat broke off their conversation. Another fisherman was coming up, and so the boys moved off, Elmer steering while his brother gazed up the shore in the direction his father had taken.

”1 don’t see Dad,” he announced, "'but I think that’s Bart Randall coming down the path. Hey, Bart!”

Bart looked up, waved briefly in response to Tom Sennett’s violent gesture, and then promptly turned off in another direction.

"What’s the matter with him?” demanded Tom, frowning. "Here lately he acts as if he didn’t want to see us.”

"Yes, and he didn’t come over to the house that Sunday, either,” said Elmer. "I was wondering about that, myself.”

"Next time I see him — ” began Tom, and suddenly pitched forward, thrown off his balance by the sud¬ den swerving of the boat. He recovered himself, cry¬ ing out sharply: "What are you trying to do?”

Elmer stopped the engine, gazing intently over the side of the boat. In the bright sunlight the surface of the water looked reddish, and when Tom saw it he gave a whoop.

"Lobsters!” he cried. "Just hatched!”

They let the boat drift slowly through the multi¬ tudes of tiny animals that had given the water its un¬ usual color. A single female lobster, such as the punch-tail they had just sold, can produce as many as a hundred thousand eggs; after she has carried these about with her for some ten or eleven months, they hatch. This occurs on the bottom, in relatively shal¬ low water, and generally at twilight or at night. As soon as they are out of the eggs, the young lobsters are free-swimming creatures, less than an inch in length, and yet recognizable as lobsters. The body is divided as in the adult, though in the infant stage the body wall is so nearly transparent as to show the heart, blood vessels, and alimentary canal. At dawn, the day following their birth, the small creatures swim to the surface of the water, and here they remain for a short period, kicking and reeling about with an awkward gait, attacking anything in their neighborhood, and devouring whatever they can get in their mouths. Tom caught up a handful of them, murmuring: