How vexatious ! The water-babies close to him , and yet he could not find one . And then he left the buoy , and used to go along the sands and round the rocks , and come out in the night -- like the forsaken Merman in Mr. Arnold 's beautiful , beautiful poem , which you must learn by heart some day -- and sit upon a point of rock , among the shining sea-weeds , in the low October tides , and cry and call for the water-babies ; but he never heard a voice call in return . And at last , with his fretting and crying , he grew quite lean and thin . But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow . It was not a water-baby , alas ! but it was a lobster ; and a very distinguished lobster he was ; for he had live barnacles on his claws , which is a great mark of distinction in lobsterdom , and no more to be bought for money than a good conscience or the Victoria Cross . Tom had never seen a lobster before ; and he was mightily taken with this one ; for he thought him the most curious , odd , ridiculous creature he had ever seen ; and there he was not far wrong ; for all the ingenious men , and all the scientific men , and all the fanciful men , in the world , with all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain , could never invent , if all their wits were boiled into one , anything so curious , and so ridiculous , as a lobster . He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged ; and Tom delighted in watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw , while he cut up salads with his jagged one , and then put them into his mouth , after smelling at them , like a monkey . And always the little barnacles threw out their casting-nets and swept the water , and came in for their share of whatever there was for dinner . But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off -- snap ! like the leap-frogs which you make out of a goose 's breast-bone . Certainly he took the most wonderful shots , and backwards , too . For , if he wanted to go into a narrow crack ten yards off , what do you think he did ? If he had gone in head foremost , of course he could not have turned round . So he used to turn his tail to it , and lay his long horns , which carry his sixth sense in their tips -LRB- and nobody knows what that sixth sense is -RRB- , straight down his back to guide him , and twist his eyes back till they almost came out of their sockets , and then made ready , present , fire , snap ! -- and away he went , pop into the hole ; and peeped out and twiddled his whiskers , as much as to say , `` You could n't do that . '' Tom asked him about water-babies . `` Yes , '' he said . He had seen them often .
But he did not think much XXXXX them .
about among as at for in like of to while