THE PRIZE-WINNER
Well, we all laughed! It was a little too ridiculous, the solemn way in
which Jibby said he would be sure to win the prize. We had all tried to
win the prize, and we knew no one but Wampus could win it; he was just a
natural-born fisher and couldn’t be beat.
“Oh, very well, then,” Jibby said, pretending to be offended. “Just for
that I will try to win it, and I will win it. I’m sorry to take it away
from Wampus, but I’ll have to do it.”
We all laughed again.
“I suppose,” Tad said to Jibby, “you’ll go right home and give your nose
some extra exercise now, won’t you?”
“Well, if you see me doing queer things with the old jib, don’t be
surprised,” Jibby said.
The next few days, though, we certainly began to be worried and to think
there might be something in what Jibby had more than hinted to us. He
did some mighty queer things, and we watched him do them. He would stand
with his nose in the air and sniff. He would stand with his nose up and
sniff four or five times, and then turn his head just an inch and sniff
four or five times more, and then turn his head again and sniff again,
and so on. Sometimes he would pull a blade of grass and sniff at one end
of it and then turn it around and sniff at the other end, and keep this
up five minutes at a time.
Then he began sniffing the old Mississippi River. He would lie in a
skiff with his head over the edge and his nose close to the water and
sniff. Then he would get on the seat and row a distance and lie down and
sniff again. A few minutes later, we caught him with fish scales,
sniffing them one after another--a bass scale and a perch scale and a
piece of channel catfish skin and a piece of mud catfish tail, and so
on. Then, while we watched him, he put them one at a time in a pail of
water, and sniffed at the water. He kept changing them in the water,
first one and then the other, and he sniffed each time. It seemed plain
enough to us that he was giving his nose some good exercise.
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 near-sighted.”
“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
‘bee-line’ 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 that
got the most fish, no matter what size, scored twenty-five. The one that
got the one biggest fish scored another twenty-five. The one that got
the biggest weight of fish, after they were cleaned and ready to cook,
scored fifty. That made the most that could be scored one hundred. We
were to fish from one o’clock until five o’clock that afternoon, and we
all had lunch--sandwiches and apples and bananas and water--so we could
eat whenever we wanted to. The only other rule was that it was all worm
fishing; we had to use worms for bait.
As soon as Wampus got his boat settled, he baited up and put his line
over, and we all hustled up and did the same thing. In a minute, almost,
Wampus shouted:
“First fish!”
He had it, too. It was a good channel catfish, and when he unhooked it
he held it up and shouted:
“Oh, you Jibby! Come on with your fishing!”
Jibby hadn’t rowed out from the shore yet. Now he backed his skiff out
carefully and leaned over while he rowed with one oar, and sniffed at
the water over the side of the boat. He rowed here and he rowed there,
and then, all of a sudden, he backed water and plumped his rock
overboard and anchored. He was about twenty-five feet from us.
“Well,” Wampus said, “maybe he didn’t smell fish there, but he picked
out a good place. I thought some of fishing there myself.”
Jibby took his time. He shortened up the rope to his rock anchor, and he
looked to see that his fishpole and line and hook were just as he wished
them to be, and he took out a pocket rule and measured how deep his
bobber was set, as if it had to be just right to a part of an inch. Then
he put his line over very carefully and--whang!--the bobber went under
like a flash.
“Jibby’s got one!” I shouted.
“Shut up!” Wampus said, sort of cross. “We can’t catch anything if you
yell all the time.” So we kept quiet and watched Jibby and our own
bobbers. He had a perch, and it was a big one, almost three pounds.
Wampus opened his eyes some when he saw it, because a three-pound perch
is a good-sized fish and might be good for twenty-five points if nobody
got a bigger one. Just then Skippy pulled in a mud catfish about as big
as his hand, so we all got busy fishing as hard as we knew how.
It was lovely up there in the slough. The big elms and maples hung over
and were draped with vines, and some sweet flower was making the air
sweet. There were a few mosquitoes, but we did not mind them much; we
were used to them. Jibby’s father and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar sat on the
bank and smoked and watched.
Well, in an hour or so Wampus was away ahead of Tad and Skippy and me,
like he always was at fishing, but he was fishing hard and changing his
bobber every few minutes, because Jibby Jones was three fish ahead of
him.
“I guess he’s got a real nose for fish,” Wampus whispered to us. “He’s
smelled out the best fishing-hole in this whole slough; that’s what he
has. I wish I had gone there instead of here. I’m a better fisherman
than he is, and I know it and you know it, and if he beats me it will
just be his nose that does it.”
“Then I wish I had his kind of nose,” I said, for I was so far behind
that I knew I could never catch up unless I caught a whale.
Just then a school of small perch must have come by, for Wampus caught
four in succession. That cheered him up, but not for long, because Jibby
kept right on catching. Now and then Jibby would pull a paper from his
pocket and look at it, and take his pocket rule from his pocket and set
his bobber different, and catch another fish.
By three o’clock in the afternoon the sun was pretty hot, and even
Wampus said the fish had stopped biting right, but old Jibby kept right
on pulling one out now and then. When one side of his boat didn’t give
him any fish, he would try the other side, but first he always sniffed
to see if the fish were down there. So, after Wampus had not caught any
for about half an hour, he tried smelling for fish, too. He leaned over
and sniffed at the water.
“Can’t smell a thing,” he said.
The funny thing was that, right along through the heat of the afternoon,
when fishing is the worst, Jibby kept on pulling in a fish every now and
then. He hadn’t caught so many more than Wampus when the fish were
biting easy, but he had kept up with him, and now, that they were not
biting for Wampus, Jibby forged right ahead.
“There’s no use talking, fellows,” Wampus said. “I’m convinced. Jibby
can smell out the fish. He smelled out the best fishing-hole on this
whole slough, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve got a chance yet, but
I do wish I had a can of nice fresh lively worms.”
“Yours most all gone?” Skippy asked.
“No,” Wampus told him, “but they’re mighty withered, what I’ve got left.
If I was a fish, I’d be ashamed to tackle such sick-looking worms.”
Just about then the fish began biting again, but it looked as if they
had got together and decided to help Jibby beat Wampus. Old Jibby just
pulled them in as fast as he could take them off his hook, and just
before five o’clock he got something on his line that acted like a ton
of brick. It was only a carp, but it was a ten-pound one, and Jibby was
mighty careful, and got it into the boat.
“Aw, what’s the use!” Wampus said. “He’s got these fish trained.”
Then Uncle Oscar, over on the bank, stood up and shouted, “Time’s up,
boys!”--and we knew Jibby had won. We didn’t know how far he had won
until we counted up the fish, and weighed them after they were cleaned.
Old Jibby had the biggest fish, and he had the most fish, and he had the
most weight of cleaned fish; he had the whole one hundred points, and he
could have thrown away twenty fish and still have had the hundred
points. Wampus was mighty disgusted.
It wasn’t until after we were home again and the fish had been weighed,
and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar had handed the prize rod and reel to Jibby,
that he said to Jibby:
“Well, son, I’ve fished on this river a good many years, but you’ve
taught me something to-day.”
“How to smell out fishing-holes?” Wampus wanted to know.
Uncle Oscar looked at Jibby and laughed.
“You tell them, Jibby,” he said. “Your father told me. Tell them how you
smelled out the fish.”
Jibby took his nose in his fingers and wiggled it.
“About a week ago,” he said, “I happened to stick my old nose-jib in a
book, and that was when I smelled out these fish. I thought perhaps I
might want to try for the prize, and I heard that old Izaak Walton was a
great fisherman, so I stuck my nose in his book and tried to smell out
something. Izaak Walton was the father of anglers, you know, George.”
“I know,” I said, pretty cheap, because I had lent the book to Jibby,
but had never read it, because it was all about English fish, and not
about Mississippi River fish.
“Well,” Jibby said, “first, I asked Orpheus Cadwallader where the best
fishing-holes were, up in the slough here, and how deep I ought to set
my bobber for the different fish, and he told me. I thought he ought to
know, because he is the caretaker here and the best fisherman I know.
That’s why I went to the hole I did go to. Orpheus Cadwallader told me
it was good.”
“That’s all right,” Skippy said, “but what did you smell out of that
Izaak Walton book; that’s what we want to know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Jibby. “You know what I told you? I said it
is just the ‘little bit more’ that makes anything the ‘most’? I knew I
couldn’t fish against Wampus unless I had the ‘little bit more.’ So I
went to the Izaak Walton book, and the only thing I found there that I
didn’t know was scouring the worms.”
“Scouring the worms! What is that?” asked Wampus, opening his eyes
pretty wide.
“Walton tells how, in his book,” said Jibby. “You dig your worms ahead
of time, and put them in wet moss, in a box, and let them be there.
Angleworms eat mud, you know, and they’re full of mud. If you put them
in wet moss, they don’t have any mud to eat and they get clean and
bright and husky. They get used to being wet, too. They get brighter in
color. They don’t drown so quick when they are in the water, and they
can wiggle harder and longer, and stay alive better, and the fish see
them quicker and like them better.”
“Shucks!” said Wampus. “Was that it?”
“Sure, it was!” said Jibby. “I figured that your worms would wash out
pale quicker than mine, and that by the middle of the afternoon they
would be pretty sick worms, in a hot tin can, while mine, in a box of
moss, would be cool and fresh and lively. And they were! It was as if I
had live worms to fish with and you had dead ones.”
“And you got that out of a book that was written maybe a couple of
hundred years ago?” I asked him.
“Sure, I did!” said Jibby. “I’ve got a nose that can smell common sense
that far.”
Well, that beat us! That beat Wampus, too.
“You win!” he said. “You had us all fooled, Jibby. You deserve the
prize. You’ve got a wonderful nose!”
So that was all there was to it. We all laughed, and Jibby laughed, and
Wampus’s Uncle Oscar laughed. Then, all of a sudden, Wampus’s Uncle
Oscar put his nose in the air and sniffed.
“Um-yum!” he said. “I’ve got a fine nose, too. I can smell fish frying,
and it certainly smells good to me. Can you smell it, Jibby?”
Jibby put his nose in the air and sniffed.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I can smell three channel catfish and four perch.”
[Illustration: “I GUESS HE’S GOT A REAL NOSE FOR FISH”]
Then he sniffed again.
“Two of the catfish are fried on one side, and the other catfish and the
four perch are fried on the other side,” he said.
And that’s how Jibby was; he was a dandy. He liked to fool, but there
was always something back of his fooling. This time it was a fried fish
supper. So we went to wash up and have it, for we were all eating at
Wampus’s house. And while Wampus was washing, he turned to Jibby and
said:
“Well, Jibby, if your nose can smell out things so extra well, why don’t
you give it a little more exercise and then smell out that land pirate’s
treasure?”
“Maybe I will, Wampus, if you say to. You’re the Captain and the orders
have to come from you,” Jibby said.
But none of us knew then how soon we were going to be a lot more excited
about that land pirate’s treasure.