We couldn’t say anything. We were stumped. He was too much for us. But he went right on:
“I don’t mean to say it could not be done,” he said. “I suppose a motorboat could be fixed with cog wheels or claws so it could be used to climb steeples. I expect that is what you meant.”
“Oh, yes!” Skippy said. “That’s what we meant, of course!”
He said it as sarcastical as he could, but this Jibby Jones did not turn a hair.
“I suppose so,” he said. “I make it a rule never to doubt anything anyone says, because such strange things can be done. I remember when I was on the St. Lawrence River—”
“Don’t you mean the Nile?” interrupted Skippy. “Don’t you mean they used motorboats to hunt hippopotamuses on the Nile?”
“I suppose they do,” said Jibby Jones, “but I did not see them doing it when I was on the Nile. I was only going to say I saw them use a motorboat to save one ninth of a cat on the St. Lawrence.”
“One ninth of a cat!” cried Wampus, and began to laugh. “How would you save one ninth of a cat?”
“It was starving to death,” said Jibby Jones, quite seriously. “We were at Clayton and someone brought news to father that a cat was on one of the Thousand Islands. They said it was so wild no one could get near it, but father loves cats and cats love father, so he said he would go in a motorboat and save the cat from starving. So he did. He got the cat and brought it back to Clayton.”
“But that was the whole cat,” said Wampus.
“No,” said Jibby Jones quite seriously, “it was only one ninth of a cat. You know a cat has nine lives. And father said there was no doubt that cat had already lost eight of its lives by starvation, so, of course, what he saved was only one life, and that was only one ninth of the cat. I am sure that is right because we kept the cat for years and we always called it Ninth. That was the name father gave it, because it was only one ninth of a regular cat. We kept it until it was drowned in the Rio Grande.”
He pronounced it Ree‑o Grandy, but we knew what he meant. It is the river that is between Texas and Mexico. Tad drew a deep breath.
“You must think you have been on nearly every river in the world, don’t you?” he asked.
“I have, nearly,” said this Jibby Jones. He did not say it in a bragging way, either. He said it as if it was so.
“Have you ever been on the Mississippi before?” Tad asked him.
“Not this part,” Jibby Jones said. “I’ve been on the upper Mississippi, and on the lower Mississippi, but father saved this middle part of the Mississippi until last.”
Tad picked up his wrench and tapped on the side of the motorboat sort of carelessly.
“Well,” Tad said, winking at us, “I’ve not seen many rivers. I’ve seen the Cedar River and the Iowa River and the Rock River, and that is about all, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll tell you this: this middle part of the Mississippi is the greatest old river in the world. That lower Mississippi is too big, and that upper Mississippi is too little, but this middle Mississippi is just right. And it don’t make any difference what you think you know about other rivers, it don’t do you any good when you come to our old Mississippi. This is a real river. It’s different.”
“So father said,” said Jibby Jones.
“Yes,” said Tad, “and this is no river for a raw boy to monkey with until he learns about it. What is your name?”
Then Tad winked at us again, but Jibby Jones did not see him wink and he answered as sober as a judge.
“My name,” he said, “is Oliver Parmenter Jones, but nobody calls me that. Nearly everyone calls me Jibby. They call me that because of my nose; it is like the jib on a sailboat, you see. Don’t you think it is?”
He turned sideways so we could see that his nose was like the jib of a sailboat! I never saw such a fellow! He did not merely pretend to be proud that his nose was like the jib of a sailboat; he really was proud of it. Later we learned he was proud of his nose because it was like his Grandfather Parmenter’s nose. Jibby was the only one in his family that had the Parmenter nose. I thought it was a queer thing to be proud of.
“So you can call me Jibby, if you want to,” Jibby Jones told us, just as if he did not doubt we would want to call him something. “I rather like Jibby,” he said; “it sounds nautical. But you can call me Main Mast if you’d rather. Quite a few call me Main Mast. That’s because I’m so tall. Father and mother call me son, but you wouldn’t like to do that. And the twins and brother call me Wally. I don’t like that so much. It suggests a walrus. Do you mind if I help you with the motorboat? I know quite a little about motorboats.”
Well, he did! He came down the bank and in two minutes he had the motorboat chugging away like an
