"Wal, now! Not like lobsters lose their claws. Ye know, lobsters git to fightin' an' shed a claw now and then. But new ones grow on. Ye often see lobsters with one big foreclaw and a little one on t'other side." "I'm not much acquainted with lobsters," admitted Carolyn May. "Only I saw that big dog take one home on his tail the other day." "Oh, yes," chuckled Captain Ozias. "That was Tulliver Hicks' lobster. And he went over to Dave-Ed Mott's, that owns that dog, and tried to collect for the lobster. Couldn't collect the lobster itself, for it got battered to smash on the stones 'fore the dog fetched his moorings. "They had quite an argument, Tulliver Hicks and Dave-Ed did, as to whether Dave-Ed owed Tulliver for the lobster, or Tulliver owed Dave-Ed for damage to the dog. The dog got under the barn floor and ain't come out since; and he was a right sassy dog afore that lobster got a holt on him." "The poor dog!" the little girl murmured. But she was not at all satisfied. Captain Littlefield had not given her the information she so very much desired. She ventured again: "I didn't really s'pose folks could lose legs and have 'em grow on again like lobsters. But how do they lose 'em?" "I knew a feller once't," said the captain ruminatively, "that got his mudhook caught so't the chain parted when he tried to git it up again. He'd anchored, ye see, right over a sunken reef. This here was down in the Caribbean Sea and he had oughter knowed better than to go overboard in them waters. 'Tain't safe for nobody but niggers to go over the side thereabout. Sharks will nose right in among niggers, but they'll take a white man ev'ry time. "Wal, this feller counted his anchor wuth more to him than his body was to his fam'ly, and he dropped a weighted line overboard and skinned off his clo'es and slid down to the rocky bottom with a jackbar in his hand. Jest as he thought, a fluke of the anchor was squeezed in under a big scale of the reef, and he started to pry it out. "Whilst he was workin'--and, mind you, he had to work mighty fast, for a minute and a ha'f without air was his limit--he seen a shadow overhead. For a second he thought 'twas the schooner driftin' over him. But when he glanced around he seen it was a shark--a big, blunt-nosed critter that was slantin' right down toward him, and was a'ready turned on his side, and opening his jaws." "Oh!" gasped Carolyn May, her eyes big with that delightful horror that is always roused by such tales of adventure. "Yep. Reg'lar shark, he was," said Captain Littlefield, pursing his lips and nodding his head. "And he come down at this feller I tell ye of, with a full head o' steam. "Warn't no use to fight. A feller can't use a ten-pound steel bar, under five fathom o' blue water, to punch out the teeth of a man-eatin' shark. Nos-sir!" Carolyn May did not understand all this. But the thrill of the story held her just the same. "And did he eat him?" she asked.