“Take him off!” yelled Andy, dancing about. “Grab him, Chet. Wow! How he pinches!”

“Oh! Don’t let it get loose!” begged Miss Mabel, looking for a place upon which she could climb out of danger.

“Loose! That’s just what I want to do—get him loose!” cried Andy.

“How—how did it happen?” asked Chet innocently. “Was that a lobster you gave me, Andy?”

“Never mind what I gave you,” howled the youth. “Help me get him off.”

Now Chet was not a very wise youth, but he knew better than to pick off a lobster, especially when there was yet one large claw that wasn’t working, but which was waving about seeking for something else to pinch.

“Can’t you help me?” begged Andy. Frank had stopped to speak to an acquaintance, and did not see the plight of his brother.

“Oh! Oh, dear! What shall I do?” wailed Mabel. Several men and boys began to gather about the scene.

“I’ve got to get him loose or he’ll pinch off my foot!” cried Andy. He reached over as well as he could, while standing on one foot, and tried to get hold of the lobster by the back, behind the vicious claws. But he made a miscalculation.

The next moment the other claw of the lobster had gripped him on the wrist, fortunately taking hold around Andy’s coat sleeve so that the flesh was not cut by the “teeth” of the crustacean’s pincher.

Andy was now in a peculiar predicament, for he was held in a stooping position with the lobster clinging to his ankle and wrist. He put on the ground the foot which had first been gripped and was vainly endeavoring to pull the lobster loose when Frank, attracted by the crowd, hurried up. He saw at once what the trouble was, and with one well-directed kick he sent the lobster spinning out into the middle of the street, the suddenness of the blow loosening the tight claws.

“Well, of all things! What happened, Andy?” Frank asked.

“Don’t ask me. Come on home,” replied his brother, limping away, while Miss Mabel smiled and turned aside. Chet Sedley grinned. It was the first and only time he had unwittingly gotten the better of Andy Racer.

“I told you not to play any more jokes,” spoke Frank, as he walked along at his brother’s side. “You never can tell when they’re going to come back on you.”

“Oh, say, let a fellow alone; can’t you?” expostulated the younger lad.

“Does it hurt you very much?” inquired Frank.

“I should say it does!” and Andy stooped over and rubbed his ankle and then gently massaged his wrist.

“Better get home and put some vaseline on it,” suggested Frank.

“Vaseline! Say, the next time I try to play a joke on anybody, please holler ‘Lobster’ at me. And if that doesn’t do any good just pinch me good and hard,” requested the younger lad.

“I told you so,” commented Frank.

“Yes, but I didn’t believe you. Let’s get home. Don’t tell mother. She’d think I’d be in for a siege of blood poisoning, and keep me in bed. I’ll be all right. But say, things have been happening lately; haven’t they?”

“I should say yes. I’m sorry we missed that strange man to-day. We might have been able to get something about Paul out of him.”

“I doubt it. However, we had a great time with the snakes and monkeys. Better not say anything about that at home, either, or dad and mom will put a stop to our sailboat if they think that something happens every time we go out in her.”

“I guess that’s right. We’ll lay low and say nothing.”

But the story got out, for the skipper of the lighter told at the dock in Seabright how two boys had come to his rescue, and the description of them fitted our heroes.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you chaps,” said their father after supper a few evenings later, as he looked at them over the top of the paper. “Seems to me you’re always doing something.” He had heard the lobster and snake stories from a friend that day.

“But this wasn’t out fault,” said Frank. “We just had to help that man.&rd............