The Stone Cutter

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The lobster fishery was not what it once was. Back then hardworking professional lobstermen trapped the black crustaceans. Now summertime visitors spent a week fishing for lobsters purely for their own enjoyment. And they didn't obey the regulations either. He had seen plenty of it over the years. Brushes discreetly used to remove the visible roe from the females to make the lobsters look legal, poaching from other people's pots. Some people even dived into the water and plucked the lobsters right out of the pots. Sometimes he wondered where it would all end and whether there was any honour left among lobstermen. On one occasion there had even been a bottle of cognac in the pot he pulled up, instead of an unknown number of lobsters that had been stolen from it. At least that thief had some honour, or a sense of humour.

Frans Bengtsson sighed deeply as he stood hauling up his lobster-pots, but his face brightened when he saw two marvellous lobsters in the first pot. He had a good eye for where lobsters I ended to congregate, as well as a number of favourite spots where the pots could be placed with the same luck from one year to the next.

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