We found that we were upon a little island, between two shallow arms
of the stream. The camp of the pearl fisher lay at the lower end; and
never have I seen or smelled so foul a place for human habitation. The
one large tent served as shelter, and a rude awning sheltered the
ruder table in the open air. But directly about the tent, and all
around it in every direction, lay heaps of clam shells, most of them
opened, some not yet ready for opening. I had smelled the same
odor--and had not learned to like it--in far-off Ceylon, at the great
pearl fisheries of the Orient. The "clammer" seemed immune.
Presently, he introduced to us a woman, very old, extraordinarily
forbidding of visage, and unspeakably profane of speech, who emerged
from the tent; his mother, he said. It seemed that they made their
living in this way, clamming, as they called it, all the way from
Arkansas to the upper waters of the Mississippi. They had made this
side expedition up a tributary, in search of country not so thoroughly
exploited; without much success in their venture, it seemed. The old
lady, her head wrapped in a dirty shawl, sat down on an empty box, and
stroked a large and dirty Angora cat, another member of the family,
the while she bitterly and profanely complained. It was now dusk, and
she did not notice anything out of the way in her son's rather swollen
nose and lips.
I explained to Lafitte and L'Olonnois that we were now come into the
neighborhood of possible treasure, and the sight of a few pearls, none
of very great worth, which the old crone produced from a cracker box,
was enough to set off Jimmy L'Olonnois, who was all for raiding the
place.
"What!" he hissed to me in an aside. "Did we not spare his life? Then
the treasure should be ours!"
"Wait, brother," said I. "We shall see what we shall see." And I
quieted Lafitte also, who was war-like at the very sound of the word
pearl. "Them's what they take from the Spanish ships," said he.
"Pearls is fitten for ladies fair. An' here is pearls."
"Wait, brother," I demanded of him. For I was revolving something in
my mind. I presently accosted the clammers.
"Listen," said I, "you say business is bad."
"It certainly and shorely is," assented the old dame, fishing a black
pipe out of her pocket, and proceeding to feed it from another pocket,
to the discomfort of the soiled Angora cat.
"Well, now, let me make you a proposition," said I, taking a glance at
the heap of fresh shell which lay beyond the racks of trolling lines
and their twisted wire hooks, by means of which dragging apparatus the
mussels are taken--shutting hard on the wire when it touches them as
they lie feeding with open mouths--"you've quite a lot of shell
there, now."