THE WILD MAN
to satisfy your own greed. Let me press you, just for once, to go supperless to bed, and thus assuage the anguish of a most affectionate mother."
'Much to my mortification and surprise, my conciliatory speech was met by roars of laughter from the flippant old crab. Peal upon peal disturbed the still evening air, and when the last clash of the hideous uproar had died away among the distant hills, the unfeeling brute, now in a state of collapse from loss of breath, gasped out:—"What, me give up the only chance of saving myself from that scoundrel of a lobster who only let me go on my promising to secure him something for supper a little less hard than myself! Well," continued the crab, "that's a good 'un, that is. My good chap you must be quite out of your senses. Why, not only will I hand over the baby oyster to the lobster, but I intend also to have my supper off" that tough old idiot of a whelk, who reckons he's going to get off scot-free, and old mother blue point, too, if I can find her," and then, as an afterthought, "and you, old marrow-bones, wouldn't make half a bad tit-bit if I could get hold of you," and he made a horrid dash at me as he spoke. However, I easily evaded him, and from a safer distance argued the matter out with him in the following way:—
'"Allow me, my dear crustacean, to put the matter to you in this light. Now, first of all, clear your mind of all unnecessary bias. Suppose," said I, "that you 172
