Jibby stroked his nose awhile and thought.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to find out about that. Mostly, miners can mine wherever they want to. The man that owns the land owns the surface, but, when a prospector locates a mine and sinks his shaft, he can mine anywhere he wants to, underground. I don’t know whether a worm miner has that right or not. I know it is true of mineral mines, but a worm isn’t quite a mineral; it is an animal. Anyway, I think we had better stake out a claim here, because that is what miners always do.”
So we staked out a claim, stakes at the four corners, so that it took in the whole of Mosquito Hollow. It turned out to be all right, anyway, because Skippy’s father owned the shack and the hollow, but we felt better when we had our claim staked out. It was more regular and like real miners.
We got the shaft about as deep as we thought it needed to be, and the next morning we began to tunnel. We aimed the tunnel so it would go under the back of the shack toward Mosquito Hollow, because that was the best worm-bearing ore on the island, and, as soon as we began to tunnel, Jibby got a saw and a hatchet and some nails and sent some of us to get driftwood planks and boards, to use as mine timber to shore up the tunnel with.
Almost as soon as we began to run the tunnel out toward Mosquito Hollow, we struck better worm ore, and it got better all the time. Out of two spadefuls of ore we could refine enough worms to last a boy for a whole day’s fishing, even if the white perch were stealing his bait as fast as he could put it on the hook. In half an hour after we had begun to tunnel, we had enough worms to last the six of us a week.
“That’s enough,” Jibby said. “We’ll quit now and put up a sign on the shack—‘Five Friends’ Worm Mine. Keep Out!’—and not mine any more until we need more worms.”
I didn’t like that idea; none of us did. Mining worms was more fun than fishing or anything else, and we all hated to stop, but it was Wampus who thought of the big idea.
“Look here,” he said, leaning on his spade, “what’s the use of quitting? We’ve got a worm mine here that is the best and only in the world, and we’ve got the richest worm ore anybody could ever find. It is the driest season for twenty years, and worms are harder to get than they ever were. That’s so, isn’t it?”
It was, and we all said so.
“All right, then,” Wampus said, “now is the time to mine worms. Now is the time everybody will be glad to buy worms. Now is the time when we have the only worm mine in existence, but in a week or so somebody will hear of the Five Friends’ Worm Mine and start another worm mine somewhere, and then there will be more and more worm mines started and everybody will be selling worms.”
“Selling them?” said Skippy.
“Sure!” Wampus said. “I said ‘selling them’ and I mean ‘selling them.’ Why, right here on Birch Island, we can sell a can of worms a day to every family on the island. How many? Twenty families? And some will need two cans. Say twenty-four cans a day. And, leaving out Sundays, there are about sixty-five days that the families are up here—that makes one hundred and thirty dozen cans of worms for the season. If we only got ten cents a can, that would be one hundred and fifty-six dollars.”
“Ten cents a can for worms like these!” exclaimed Tad, holding up a big one. “They are worth a cent apiece! If we put one hundred in a can we ought to get a dollar a can.”
“That would be one thousand and fifty-six dollars, then,” Wampus said. “And only for what we sell on this island. Oh, boy! And think of how many people go fishing from town who don’t spend the summer on this island—hundreds!”
“From town?” Skippy cried. “What do you say ‘from town’ for? From all up and down the old Mississippi! From all over the United States, everywhere! Yes, and in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America people go fishing, don’t they? If we are going to sell worms. …”
“Canned ones,” I said, “packed in cans with holes in the lids, like pepper-boxes, so the worms can breathe.”
We were all getting excited—all except Jibby Jones. All Jibby said was:
“Aluminum cans, because, if there are holes in the lids and the earth in the cans is moist, cans made of tin would rust.”
“And, anyway,” said Wampus, jumping at that idea quick, “aluminum cans would be better than tin; they would be lighter to ship and lighter for fishermen to carry. When we get to shipping tons and tons of worms, the difference in the weight of the cans will save us hundreds of dollars in freight. And I say we ought to have a special can with a wire handle, like a lard pail, only smaller, so boys could carry cans of our worms easily when they go fishing.”
“Sure! Of course, we’ll do that,” I said, “and we ought to have a patent lid—one that will come off and fit on again, like the lid of a baking-powder can.”
“And with letters stamped on it,” said Skippy. “It ought to be stamped ‘Five Friends’ Mine—Best Quality Fishing Worms—Riverbank, Iowa.’ ”
“Yes,” said Wampus, “when they were our best quality, but you don’t think we are going to throw away all the medium and small worms we get out of the mine, do you? No, sir! We’ll have three
