He cooked some carp, which he had caught in the river, and was much disappointed when we found them unpalatable. The following evening he compounded a delicious sauce, with which he camouflaged the despised fish almost beyond recognition, but their identity was unmistakable. Sipes declared that “the dope on them carps is fine, but I don’t like wot it’s mixed with.” He ate the sauce and threw his piece of fish out among the trees. The next morning he saw a crow drop down and eat it.
“That ol’ bird’s been through enough to know better’n that,” he remarked.
The fish that came to us from the land of the Hun, and now infests our inland waters, has little to commend it. It is objectionable wherever it exists. It breeds immoderately, eats the spawn of respectable fish, and begrimes the pure waters with its hog-like rooting along the weedy bottoms. It is of inferior food value and pernicious. No means of exterminating these noxious aliens have been discovered. Like the Huns, they have all of the instincts of marauding swine, without their redeeming qualities.
“These heah cahp ah funny fish,” said Narcissus. “A gen’leman tol’ me a few yeahs ago of a cahp that was caught in the Mississippi rivah that was ve’y la’ge. They opened ’im an’ found a gold watch an’ chain that ’e’d swallowed, an’ the watch was tickin’ when they took it out, an’ theah was a cha’m on the chain, an’ inside the cha’m was a li’l pict’ah of a young lady. The young man that caught the cahp found that young lady an’ theah was a wedd’n. Of co’se Ah didn’t see the watch, er the young man, but that was the tale Ah hea’d. Theah’s been some awful wonde’ful things happened down on that Mississippi rivah.”
“Gosh! if them Dutch fish ’ave got timepieces in ’em, mebbe we better pursue ’em instid o’ clams,” remarked Sipes. “Them carps c’n live on land pretty near as well as they do in water. They’r’ like mudturkles. Bill an’ me seen a big one once’t, that was in a little puddle on some land that ’ad been flowed over. We thought prob’ly the water’d gone down an’ left ’im stranded. His back stuck out o’ the puddle an’ was all dry an’ caked with mud. Mebbe he’d been out devastat’n’ the country fer watches an’ jools, er sump’n, in the night, an’ ’ad jest stopped at that hole fer a little rest on ’is way back.”
We spent many interesting evenings around the old shipmates’ camp fire. Sipes and Saunders related marvellous tales of the sea. Narcissus told many ornate yarns that he had picked up during his checkered life, and sang negro revival songs and plantation melodies. The bleached skeleton of some animal in the woods had provided him with material for two pairs of “bones,” with which he was an adept. His mouth organ was a source of much entertainment. Sipes’s favorite was “Money Musk,” the merry jingle that came over the water when we entered the river, and he often asked Narcissus to “play that cash-money tune some more.”
When the clam-boat was completed, and fully rigged with its paraphernalia, it was pushed out into the slow current. It was controlled with the oars from the Crawfish. The pole, with its pendant wires, was dropped over the side, and actual operations began. A bench had been erected in the middle of the rude craft, before which Sipes stood, flourishing a stubby knife, ready to open the mollusks and remove their precious contents. He had a small red tin tobacco box, with a hinged cover, which he intended to fill with pearls the first day.
“Let’s pull ’er up now,” he suggested, after the flatboat had drifted about a hundred feet downstream. Saunders lifted in the tackle. Two victims dangled on the wires.
“Gosh, this is easy! Gimme them clams!” They were eagerly opened, but careful scrutiny revealed no pearls. “I guess them damn Dutch fish ’ave got ’em, like they did that watch Cookie told about. Heave ’er over an’ we’ll try ’er ag’in, Bill.”
The first day’s work was fruitless, as were many that followed. The clam-hooks frequently got snagged, and seemed to bring up everything but pearls. Once an angry snapping-turtle was thrown back. An enormous catfish, whose meditations on the bottom had been violently disturbed, was pulled to the surface, but escaped.