About eleven o’clock, on the fishing-prize day, Wampus’s Uncle Oscar came up to the island. He brought the jointed fishing-rod and the reel with him, so we could see what the prize was going to be, and I got him off alone and asked him what he thought about noses. I asked him if he thought Jibby Jones could really smell fish when they were under water, and if a person could exercise a nose and get it so it could smell things other noses could not smell.
“Why, yes, George,” he said slowly. “I do think a nose can be trained quite a little if a person goes about it right. That stands to reason. But I don’t take any stock in this idea that a person can smell fish under water. Does Jibby say he can?”
“Well, no,” I had to admit. “He hasn’t said so out and out; he just hinted it, as you might say. I’ll tell you one thing, though: he’s got Wampus frightened. And there was the way he smelled that bee and knew it was the pilot bee.”
“What’s that?” Uncle Oscar asked. “Tell me about that.”
When I had told him, he laughed.
“You boys want to look out for your Jibby Jones,” he said. “He’s a bright one. He may look a little queer, but some of the brightest men in the world have been the queerest lookers; their looks were out of a rut and their brains were out of a rut, too. Tell me one thing, George; can Jibby see as well as he says he can smell?”
“No, of course not,” I said. “I mean, he sees things we don’t take the trouble to see, sometimes, but his eyes can’t see very far. That is why he has to wear glasses. He’s nearsighted.”
“Has to poke his nose pretty close into things to see them?” said Uncle Oscar. “If he wanted to see exactly how a bee looked, for instance, he would have to poke his nose almost into a bee, would he?”
“Yes, that’s so,” I said.
“Well, you notice this the next time you look at a bee,” said Uncle Oscar. “The part of a bee back of its wings—its abdomen—is striped. When a bee goes out for honey, it goes for two things—a square meal for itself and some honey or some pollen to take back to the hive. A bee is greedy, too; it stuffs itself while the chance is good. If you watch a bee, you’ll see that the longer it feeds, the bigger and longer its abdomen gets. Especially longer. As it fills up, the stripes get farther apart. That’s how Jibby ‘smelled’ that bee, George. He poked his nose close to it so his eyes could see it, and he saw that its abdomen was swelled and stretched as much as it could be. That meant that the bee was ready to call it a day’s work and go back to the hive. So your Jibby knew that when the bee left the flower it would probably make a ‘beeline’ for home. And he was right. That’s how he ‘smelled’ that ‘pilot’ bee. It wasn’t a pilot bee, and he didn’t smell it. So you and Wampus want to look out for Jibby Jones. This bee business makes me think he’s going to win the prize, or thinks he is. He’s a mighty smart boy.”
The next time I saw Jibby, which was about half an hour after that, I asked him:
“Well, how’s the old smeller getting along, Jibby? Is it going to win the prize?”
“I’ll tell you, George,” Jibby said, “I have hopes. I don’t say I’ll win, but I’m trying.”
“It will be an awful thing if it is windy this afternoon and you have to adhesive your nose shut against your cheek, won’t it?” I laughed.
Jibby put his finger to his nose and wiggled his nose at me, and then we both laughed.
“I know how you smelled the pilot bee, Jibby,” I told him.
“Do you?” he said, and it did not seem to bother him at all. “Just see if you and Wampus can see how I smell out the best and biggest fish this afternoon.”
The afternoon turned out to be the best sort for fishing. It was cloudy, but not too cloudy, and a nice riffle on the water, but not too rough. The place Wampus’s Uncle Oscar picked out for the contest was the slough at the upper end of our island, and that meant we would have to fish from skiffs, which is about the best way, anyhow.
There was not much of a gathering to see the contest. You can’t get mothers to be very interested in such things, except to say, “Oh, how nice!” or, “Oh, I’m sorry!” after it is all over, and our fathers—all except Jibby’s—went down to town every day to work. So the audience was just Wampus’s Uncle Oscar and Jibby’s father. They walked up to the slough together while we were rowing up, and they sat on the bank and watched us fish. We each had a skiff.
When we got to the slough, Jibby was ahead, and he ran his skiff ashore and waited for us.
“I’m a butter-in at this game,” he said, “so you fellows go ahead and pick out your places first, and then I’ll take mine.”
I suppose we ought to have let Jibby have first choice, but we didn’t think of it. Wampus rowed to the place he liked best and let down his anchor rock, and then the rest of us got as close to him as Uncle Oscar’s rules allowed. One boat-length away from each other was the rule. The other rules were that every fish counted. The one of us
