Part 9

Nipper was a robber, encased in coat of mail; he spared nothing that he thought he was big enough to overcome. A sharp, serrated dagger projected above his jaws, and the pincers of his large claws were half-open, ready to fasten upon the unwary prey.

He was a young crayfish, no longer than the span of a child’s hand, and with a tail no broader than a finger. His eyes were stalked, and the long, wide-straddling feeling carefully searched the bottom for more than a body’s length in advance. The half-closed claws scraped over rocks and water-lily roots in their efforts to drag the mailed body along.

Suddenly there was a shock to his feelers. Nipper suspected danger, and struck with his tail; and at once beginning to go backwards, he hastily, with his front claws, stirred up a cloud of mud all round him. Step by step, long and rapid, he hastened, without changing his direction, back through the water.

It was only a false alarm, however; there was no otter or water-rat--its worst enemies--close to the tips of it claws. It might take things quietly, and safely set about its search for nocturnal prey again. It stopped beating the water with its tail, and with extended claws and tail outspread, it let itself sink slowly through the water.

Sedately and circumspectly, and with extreme caution, he felt his way before advancing over the bottom of the lake on his clawed legs.

Nipper was descended from an old “backslider” that had been a monster of the order of Decapoda, and had at last become so fat and heavy that she could hardly swim, and preferred to crawl about. Like the rest of her species, she had espoused a new male crayfish every other year; the wedding generally took place in November, when out-of-door pleasures were few, and everything, even the water, was cold and grey.

When the happy honeymoon was over, she always suddenly broke off all relations with her spouse, and withdrew into one of the roomiest of the numerous deep, dark, basement flats through the winter, waiting for the sun and the white water-lilies to bring out her little children.

And they came!

Next summer a swarm of little creatures crept out of the eggs that adhered in scores to her tail. From their birth they had tiny claws, a tiny rostrum, and tiny feelers; and they were all an exact copy of him. Holding fast with one claw to their mother’s poorly-developed caudal legs, they hung as to a strap, while with the other claw they fought among themselves as much as possible.

It was a little world of malice, cannibal cruelty, and good, healthy egoism that the old monster thereafter dragged about with her, and she defended it--to her praise it must be said--on every occasion against the violence and malice of the outside world, by interposing her own body.

Half without will of her own and unconsciously, she kept life in her young. Every time she required food and drew it forward under her body, the baby crayfish got a bit of it. On such occasions they let go of one another, and struck out with his free claw, and hastily transferred the morsel to his mouth.

Nipper had hung to one of the outside “straps” and he was with his mother on the night she went into a crayfish trap. He let go the strap in order to cram himself with both hands, and he did succeed in producing a feeling of extraordinary satiety; but when the trap was suddenly hauled up, he was not quick enough in taking hold again; the water drew him with it, and washed him out through the wide-meshed net. In this way he lost the shelter that in the natural order of things he could still have reckoned on beneath the caudal fan of his great parent; but fate had nevertheless been kind to him. While old Madam Nipper, boiled red like a lobster and with lettuce round her tail, lay that evening curled up on a dish, her little nipper was surrounded with all the wonders of life; and he went at them with greedy claws and flapping tail. It was not for nothing that he had been born with the art of going backwards.

He had now lived through three winters, and was therefore not altogether lacking in experience of life. He had successfully passed the age in which his growth of no more than a few weeks made each jacket-sleeve and trouser-leg too short, and had gone through nearly a score of those dreadful “metamorphoses.” They were terrible bouts, real illnesses that cost both toil and suffering. The last was still fresh in his memory. He had suddenly become uneasy, could not even rest in his hole. It was the same with them all; the same unrest seized upon all the inhabitants of the crayfish-town that extended over the rocky reef. None of them any longer ventured out at sunset; they remained indoors. Then the illness began with an irresistible desire to scrape and rub oneself. It was impossible to hold out against it; one had to let it go its way and follow a certain system.

The “system” commenced with some wild movements of arms and legs. Resting on the carapace and the big claws, the hind part of the body was raised, and the tail spread, and then the thighs, legs, and ankles were worked until a hole was made in the old, armour-like skin, and it split up length-wise.

The transformation took days, so one had to sleep now and then, and rest often. Food there was none.

One started up out of sleep, unable to rest for fear of being left in the old skin and dying of starvation. Nothing for it but to go on, and try to get over this most unpleasant process of moulting as quickly as possible.

Nipper, who was endowed with all the courage and impatience of youth, was one of the most eager to push on the business. He quickly got rid of the armour-plates on his legs, and was now working to get out of his tight coat-of-mail, throwing himself on his back, and rubbing himself backwards and forwards upon the floor.

The coat-of-mail has already come away from the trouser-band, and he can raise it from his body; he presses its stiff edges against a stone, while he works himself backwards out of the old crayfish-case. First he carefully releases both his stalked eyes, then come the feelers, and then the big claws. Oh, but it hurts! And he shakes and twists himself, sweating with exertion and anxiety. After all, it is going confoundedly fast! Suppose a limb got into a tangle, or a joint refused to move! Then it would break, as he very well knows: that kind of thing is a part of the crayfish system!

At last the whole thing was accomplished, and he felt stronger and freer than ever. This evening he would kill! This evening he would eat his fill!

The darkness grew deeper The sinister shadows were already darkening the banks, and the deep water, which before had shone with gleaming mother-of-pearl, seemed now leaden-grey. There was not a water-lily leaf to be seen on the surface; it was impossible to distinguish a single green stalk.

Down on the soft mud, beneath a rotten, wrinkled tree-stump, sat a fresh-water mussel with its shells half-open. As the round feelers of the crayfish came gliding tentatively round its foot, it became aware of the approach of an enemy, and had already almost closed its broadly-gaping shells when Nipper, at the last moment, managed to introduce the end of one of his broad pincers, like the heel of a boot in a door. The mussel worked its hardest, straining till its shells creaked and splinters actually broke off in its efforts to crush the hard armour-plating of the claw.

Nipper lay as though petrified in front of his victim, and let the mussel exhaust itself while he watched his opportunity to drive his unimpressionable wedge farther and farther in. He had the patience of Job, and knew that he only had to wait.

It was not long before he had succeeded in making room for his other claw, and now he was cutting and picking at the body of the poor mussel, one claw holding the pearly shells sufficiently wide apart for the other to convey dainty pieces of mussel-flesh to his mouth.

At last the poor mussel’s strength is quite exhausted. It gives up, and Nipper’s head and the front part of his body disappear inside the shell.

Nipper remained there the first part of the night, cramming himself, but at last could not help regretting that a mussel went such a little way. He took a short rest, and then towards morning set out confidently in search of more.

Unfortunately there were no sleepy, unprepared mussels to surprise; but behind some stones in one of the deep, submarine mountain passes stood a solitary fish, which had apparently got out of its course.

The quiet little Nipper had not much experience regarding the way in which a crayfish catches fish; he was more accustomed to snails and mussels. He could also seize a younger comrade in his claws, and suck him dry, leaving nothing but his coat and trousers; but the finned animal, with fans on back, belly, and tail, the nimblest of all--how did one catch it?

He slyly pushes through a crack at the bottom of the cave, raises himself on the points of his closed claws, and blinks with his diverging eyes. He has turned back his feelers so that they shall not betray him while he is investigating his immediate surroundings.