“They’re timid?” asked Jibby Jones as if he understood.
“Timid and tender,” said Tad. “When a mussel is bearing a pearl its shell is ten times as tender as a deer’s horns when they are in velvet. The least touch of anything hard hurts the mussel and makes it drop its pearl. That’s why the pearl-divers root them out with their noses.”
“Is that the way they do?” asked Jibby.
“Of course! You can’t use a hook, because it is too hard; and you can’t use a rake because it is too hard; and you can’t even use your hands, because of your finger nails. The only way you can root out a pearl mussel is with your nose. The end of a nose is soft and does not hurt the mussel. They like the feel of it.”
Jibby Jones felt the end of his nose.
“It is soft, isn’t it?” he said, as if he had never discovered that before.
“Of course, it is soft!” said Tad. “And that is why the pearl-divers of the Mississippi use their noses. The only trouble is that they can’t keep at the job long; they wear their noses down so that they are not fit to dig with. Then they are of no more use in rooting for pearl mussels. A man with a bunty nose, or with a pug like Wampus Smale’s nose, is no good at all.”
“I expect my Grandfather Parmenter—” Jibby began, but we all knew what he was going to say. He was going to say his Grandfather Parmenter would have made a good Mississippi pearl-diver. Jibby did not finish saying it. He thought of something else.
We were in the motorboat, back in Third Slough, fishing for bullhead catfish. They were not biting very well, which was why we had so much time to talk; bullheads do not mind talk; they’re stupid.
Well, we knew there was not much use fishing just then. The river was too high and too low; too much both and too much neither. But we had come because Jibby had wanted to come. It was the last chance he would have to fish with us. The reason was that his father had decided they must leave Birch Island sooner than they had expected and go back to New York. And the reason of that was that Mr. Jones had been asked by a publisher to write a book about spending a summer on an island in the Mississippi and the publisher had suddenly decided he did not want that book. So Mr. Jones thought he could not afford to spend any more time on the island. The publisher had expected to send Mr. Jones a thousand dollars, but now he would not, and this was the last day we were apt to spend with Jibby, fishing together and things like that.
“How do they do,” Jibby asked Tad, “when they dive for mussels and root them out?”
“Why, it is as simple as pie if you have the right kind of nose,” Tad said. “You dive from a boat in a slough or some other muddy place—some place with a muddy bottom—and when you reach the mud you take hold of the mud with both hands. That is to hold you down. Then you begin rooting in the mud with your nose. You root here and you root there, as fast as you can, and if you don’t find a mussel you come up for breath.”
“Of course. One would do that,” said Jibby, as serious as an owl. “But if one roots out a mussel?”
“Oh! Then you have to open your mouth and grab it quick,” said Tad, nudging me. “Like mumblety-peg. When you root up a shell with your nose, you open your mouth and grab the shell and then come up as quick as you can; but you have to be sure you don’t open your mouth until you get in the boat. If you do, the mussel will open its shell and spit out the pearl.”
Jibby Jones looked over the side of the boat.
“Do you think this would be a good place to dive for pearls?” he asked, sort of wistfully.
“This? This is one of the finest places in the Mississippi,” Tad said. “I’m surprised there is no one diving right now.”
I had to turn my head away and grin. The water was not five feet deep where we were.
“I am going to dive for a pearl,” Jibby Jones said suddenly.
“That’s a good idea,” Tad said. “The bullheads are not biting, anyway. That’s always a good sign; bullheads hardly ever bite where there are mussels. And there couldn’t be a better day to get a pearl. The sun is just right. It is low enough to slant on the water and not dazzle the mussels. When they are dazzled, they go deeper in the mud. They ought to be near the top of it now.”
“I can stay under water quite long,” Jibby said as he began to take off his clothes. “I stayed under water so long once, in the River Niger, that father was afraid I was drowned. So don’t worry if I stay down long.”
“We won’t,” Tad said.
It took Jibby quite a while to get ready; he was always slow. Then he stood on the gunwale of the motorboat and put his palms together and dove. He did not have far to dive; he must have run his head into the soft black mud up to his ears, for he was up in a second, shaking his head and holding onto the boat.
“It isn’t as deep as I thought
