hidden caves among the rocks. There they 

 crawled out of the old shells and lay very 

 quiet in hiding, waiting for the new shells 

 to grow hard enough to make it safe for 

 them to venture into the world once more. 



It was at this very time, when the lobsters 

 were most defenseless, that Kopseep found 

 them. There were hundreds of them, from 

 the size of your hand up to the big, shy fellow 

 that would fill a basket, each one hidden 

 away in his own den ; and Kopseep left all 

 other game and took to lobster hunting. It 

 was a tingling kind of sport, gliding noise- 

 lessly with every sense on the alert through 

 the waving forests and over the rocks ; for 

 scores of hungry bandits — monstrous sea- 

 bass and horse-mackerel and, worst of all, 

 dogfish — had taken advantage of the new 

 food supply and were lurking in every covert, 

 ready to snap up the salmon and other fish 

 that came hunting for lobsters. So Kopseep 

 never knew, when he approached a den, 

 whether he would find a tidbit for himself or 

 an ogre to eat him up ; and his hunting was 

 very much as if you were prowling among 



375 



Hie Story 

 of Kopseep 



