All at once, the lobstering man backed water hard and shipped his oars. He put out his hand into pitch-black night, took in a lobster-buoy, stood up in the boat without tipping it the slightest bit out of plumb, and started pulling. It was his first trap. He could have found it with his eyes closed in all that vast bay. Maybe his eyes were closed. I could not see. The trap came in over the side. Things fluttered and clapped in it like wet wings. The man put in his hand among unseen scissors of claws. He started taking things out. A crab. A crab. A crab. They splashed over the side and sank in the water.
A pause. “He's too small.” It was a lobster, but it was a “short.” Overboard it went. Another followed it. Another. It was dark. No warden could have seen if we had taken a lobster of illegal length.
“A ‘count!’”
A lobster hit the dory's bottom and flapped in a fury. More crabs went over. Another “count” lobster came skidding against my shoe. Another. Three good ones. Still another. And another. This was remarkable. Five good lobsters in one trap! Seemed like a record. The trap was baited up in the dark, slid over the gunwale, was gone.
The rower put out his oars and went on to the next buoy. It was like clockwork. He found it, pulled, and the ritual of falling lobsters began again. Four “counters” this time. The lobsterman rowed on and picked up the next trap just where it should be. More good ones. Clockwork it was. The sound of the oars in the tholepins made it more that way.
The sky was stars all over it now, and it had lifted up millions of miles high, the way September skies do when it gets late. It had got lighter. I could see things dim on the bay now, but no buoys. But the rower could see them, coming up on them backwards, too. He could see them through the back of his head. Or feel them. The way bats feel door-casings when they fly in the dark, by radar. See them or feel them—it was all the same to the lobstering man. He came up on them back-to, and he never missed one or fumbled for one. That was the kind of lobsterman he was. If he ever goes blind, this lobstering man can go right on fishing. It won't hamper him in the least.
The man got every one of his string of thirty-two traps, without turning his head in the night. He must have been using a good “ripe” bait, too. The boat's bottom was alive with lobsters. They were up to our ankles.
The fisherman rowed to the dim shore. It looked all like an entire mountain to me, high on the stars, but we slid gracefully into a deep little cove hardly wider than our boat. We grounded on a beach where I should have said there was nothing but ledges. The lobsterman took out the killick and went up with it and put it down on the turf he knew would be there. We were anchored. The man disappeared into the woods for just a moment. He was back almost before he was gone; he had an armful of bone-dry spruce brush, he threw it down, touched a match to it. A vast blaze like a section of the Milky Way shot up against the night that was already sprinkled with stars. The poet and I had to back away from the light and heat. The bronze face of the lobstering man loomed smiling in the firelight. The brush crackled, and all three of our shadows danced up high upon the wall of silent woods above us.
The man of lobsters went down to the boat, took out the tomato-can pail, dipped some of the bay in it, and crowded it full of lobsters. He came back and set the pail on his fire, with a green fir-bole he had picked up Lord knows where strung through the bail and resting, each end of it, on two jutting rocks that seemed just to have happened to be there, one on each side of the fire he had laid in the dark. The man lit his pipe up and settled back on his calves. We all lit up. It was quiet. Our fire made the only sound there was in the night. But soon the pail of lobsters began to sing low, too.
The fire burned down to red coals. Suddenly the lobsters boiled over. Hiss! The gush of water put out part of the embers. The lobsterman shoved more brush on from somewhere with his toe. The flames leaped up again. The lobsters started to boil over again. But this time the man raised the fir-bole a bit, pail and all, stopped the boil, put the fir-bole back on the two rocks. The pail boiled over fiercely for the third time. This time the lobsterman let it boil. Then he poured the lobsters out bright red in the glow of what coals were left. He kicked on a whole new heap of brush. The fire danced up, sprinkling the night with wild stars. It was as light as day. Our shadows wavered enormous on the high wall of night.
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