“No, please!” Jibby said. “Not that way. Bend it in the other direction. Bend it along the shore. We have to bait it first.” So we shifted to another side of the elm and bent it down. We held it down, with the top touching the ground. Jibby looked at it doubtfully. “It is too bad it isn’t nearer the slough,” he said; and then he said: “I’ve got it!” He got the longest of our fishpoles and tied it to the top of the tree. “That will give just that much more length,” he said, and then he baited the hook with the nicest lot of worms you ever saw and set the bobber at what he thought was about the right height and told us to ease up on the tree. We eased up until the end of the tree was about twenty feet from the ground, and then Jibby told us to swing it around, out over the slough, and we did it. We lowered away until the bait was in the water and the bobber floated. They were out in the deeper water, where fish ought to be if there were any. We tried to hold the tree steady, but it wabbled a good deal, and Jibby got a sound piece of driftwood and propped it under the tree. “Now,” he said, “you can all sit on the tree and hold it down. I’m sorry we haven’t an automatic trigger to hold it, but we haven’t had time to make one. Perhaps this will do as well. You sit on the tree and I will watch the bobber, and when we get a bite I’ll say ‘Jump!’ then everybody jump lively, and we’ll have our fish.” So we sat there and nothing happened. And we sat there longer and nothing happened. “There are no two ways about it,” Wampus said, “this is the craziest idea I ever heard of. Nobody but Jibby Jones would ever think of anything like this. Four boys and a complete tree, and a fishpole, and Jibby Jones, all trying to catch one fish. We won’t catch a fish. But if we do catch a fish, you know what kind it will be--it will be a mud-cat as big as your little finger or a perch as big as your thumb.” “Or a minnow, maybe,” said Skippy. “Surely! A minnow,” I said. “Using a whole elm tree to catch a minnow!” “We could sit here a hundred years,” said Wampus, “and we wouldn’t catch anything.” Jibby did not hear us. He was keeping his eagle eye on the bobber. “I think we had a nibble just then,” he said now. “You fellows want to be ready to jump when I say ‘jump.’” “We’ll be ready,” Wampus said. “Don’t worry, Jibby; we’ll be ready, in about one hundred years. If anybody can catch a fish this way, I’ll--” “Jump! Jump! Oh, jump!” Jibby Jones shouted just then, waving his hands and jumping himself for all he was worth.