"Kelp!" answered Jim to Percy's inquiry. "Devil's aprons! They grow on rocky bottom. I've seen a trap so loaded with 'em that you could hardly stir it." He dragged the lath coop up on the side. It contained a miscellaneous assortment, the most interesting objects in which were four or five black, scorpion-like shell-fish clinging to the netted heads and sprawling on the bottom. Unbuttoning the door at the top, Jim darted in his hand and seized one of these by its back. Round came the claws, wide open, and snapped shut close to his fingers; but he had grasped his prize at the one spot where the brandishing pincers could not reach him. "He's a 'counter,' fast enough! No need of measuring him! Must weigh at least two pounds." Jim dropped the snapping shell-fish into a tub in the standing-room. "I thought lobsters were red," remarked Percy. "They are--after you boil 'em." Spurling's hand went into the trap again. This time the result was not so satisfactory. Out came a little fellow, full of fight. Jim tested his length by pressing his back between the turned-up ends of a brass measure screwed against the side of the standing-room. "Thought so! He's a 'short'!" He tossed the lobster overboard. "What did you throw him away for?" asked Percy. "Isn't he good to eat?" "Nothing better! But it's the State law. Everything that comes short of four and three-fourths inches, solid bone measure, from the tip of the nose to the end of the back, has to be thrown over where it's caught." "Why's that?" "To keep 'em from being exterminated. It's based on the same principle as the law on trout or any other game-fish. Lobsters are growing scarcer every year, and something has to be done to preserve 'em." "Does everybody throw the little ones away?" "No! If they did there'd be more of legal size. The Massachusetts law allows the sale there of lobsters an inch and a half shorter than the length specified here; so their smacks come down, lie outside the three-mile limit, and buy 'shorts' of every fisherman who's willing to break the Maine law to sell 'em. Besides that, most of the summer cottagers along the coast buy and catch all the 'shorts' they can. So it's no wonder the lobster's running out." While Jim talked he was emptying the trap. Another "counter" went into the tub, and two more "shorts" splashed overboard. The financial side of the question interested Percy. "How many 'shorts' will you probably get a week?" "Five hundred or more." "And how much would a Massachusetts smack pay you for 'em?" "Ten or twelve cents apiece." "Then you expect to throw more than fifty dollars a week over the side, just to obey the law?" "That's what!" Percy lapsed into silence. The lobsters disposed of, Jim began to clear the trap of its other contents. A big brown sculpin was floundering on the laths. Taking him out gingerly, Jim tossed him into the bait-tub upon the hake heads. "He'll do for bait in a few days."