Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was mightily taken with this one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men in the world, with all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain, could never invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous, as a lobster.

[Illustration:  A lobster]

He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and Tom delighted in watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after smelling at them, like a monkey.  And always the little barnacles threw out their casting-nets and swept the water, and came in for their share of whatever there was for dinner.

But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off—­snap! like the leapfrogs which you make out of a goose’s breastbone.  Certainly he took the most wonderful shots, and backwards, too.  For, if he wanted to go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you think he did?  If he had gone in head foremost, of course he could not have turned round.  So he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that sixth sense is), straight down his back to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they almost came out of their sockets, and then made ready, present, fire, snap!—­and away he went, pop into the hole; and peeped out and twiddled his whiskers, as much as to say, “You couldn’t do that.”

Tom asked him about water babies.  “Yes,” he said.  He had seen them often.  But he did not think much of them.  They were meddlesome little creatures, and went about helping fish and shells which got into scrapes.  Well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by little soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs.  He had lived quite long enough in the world to take care of himself.

He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to Tom; and you will hear how he had to alter his mind before he was done, as conceited people generally have.  But he was so funny, and Tom so lonely, that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the rocks, and chat for hours.

And about this time there happened to Tom a very strange and important adventure—­so important, indeed, that he was very near never finding the water babies at all; and I am sure you would have been sorry for that.