“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 motor-boat 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 it was,” he said as he wiped the mud from his face. “I did not do that dive very well. I’ll have to try it again.” “We would go in with you,” Skippy said, “only our noses are so blunt it is no use.” Jibby climbed into the boat and made ready again. This time he took a slanting dive. We could see him under water; he looked yellow under all that yellow water. We could see his arms spread out as he dug his fingers into the mud to hold on, and we could see his head move as he ploughed into the mud with his nose. We laughed like fury. It was the funniest thing I ever saw. He did stay under water quite a while. He had not fibbed when he said he could stay under a long time. Wampus got frightened. “We’d better get him out,” he said. “He’ll drown, with his nose and mouth full of mud that way.” Tad was watching pretty close. “No, he’s all right,” he said, as well as he could for laughing. “As long as his head keeps bobbing that way, he is all right; watch him nose-digging for the great pearl mussels of the Mississippi! I hope a mussel don’t bite his nose off!”