No sooner did the creature set eyes on me than he began to
rush upon me with loud outcries; I ran for a cocoanut tree, and one,
two, three, I shinnied right up the trunk to the top. The lobster
approaches the tree, stops meditatively, and decides to shinny up
after me,--which he did."
"An awful situation," commented the barber.
"Just imagine," replied Don Alonso, blinking. "I only had a little
stick in my hands, and I defended myself against the lobster by
hitting him in the knuckles; but he, roaring with rage, and eyes
shining, continued climbing. I couldn't get any farther, and I was
thinking of coming down; but as I made a movement, biff!... The son of
a sea-cook grabs me with one of his many legs by the coat and remains
there hanging from me. The cussed critter was as heavy as lead; he was
already reaching up after me with another claw when I remembered that
I had in my vest pocket a toothpick that I had bought in Chicago, and
that it had a knife attachment; I opened this, and in a moment slashed
off the tail of my coat, and cataplun! ... down from a height of at
least forty metres the lobster fell to the ground. I can't understand
how he wasn't killed. There he began to cry and howl, and go round and
round the cocoanut tree in which I was, glaring at me with his
terrible eyes. Whereupon I--for being a gymnast had to come in handy
to a fellow,--began to leap from one cocoanut tree to the next and
from one plane-tree to the other, while the lobster kept following me,
howling away with the tail of my coat in his teeth.
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