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!”