The Haunters of the Silences: A Book of Animal Life

The unhappy bear lifted his head and looked forth from his den. But he was not going to let himself again be cheated. He had no faith in this alien storm; and turning his back upon it, he once more buried his nose between his paws.

Meanwhile the cold deepened swiftly; the wind grew savage and shrieked over the cages and the roofs; and the snow, dry and hard like the driven needles of the Arctic night, thickened so that one could not see ten paces before his nose. Through the throbbing drift the attendants went hurrying about the open cages, fixing shelter for the animals that needed it. The cold, the savage noises of the wind, the sharp buffets of snow that struck into his den, at last brought the bear to his feet. He turned slowly, and came out into the storm.

He found himself, now, actually alone, and in what seemed almost his own world. This storm was convincing. He could not refuse to believe in the icy driven crystals which cut so deliciously upon his tongue and against his open jaws. This was really snow, that whirled and heaped about him. This was really ice, which crashed about him as he plunged in and out of his pool. Around and around his cage he romped, biting the snow in ecstasy, rolling in it, breathing it, whimpering to it. When his keeper came and looked in at him with wonder, and spoke to him with sympathetic comprehension, he neither saw nor heard. To his eyes the storm was volleying over the illimitable fields of the ice. In his ears the raving of the wind held the crash of grinding floes. To his heart it was the summons of the north, – and suddenly his heart answered. He stood still, with a strange bewilderment in his eyes, as if transfixed by some kind of tremendous shock. Then he swayed on his legs; and sank in a lifeless heap by the drifted brink of his pool.

The Last Barrier

I

IN a circular hollow in the clean, bright gravel of the river-bar the tiny egg of the great Quahdavic salmon stirred to life. For months it had lain there among its thousands of fellows, with the clear, cold, unsullied current streaming over it ceaselessly. Through the autumn the wilderness sunshine and the bracing wilderness air, playing on the unshaded shallows of the wide stream, had kept the water highly vitalized, – though this was hardly necessary in that pure and spring-fed current. When the savage northern winter closed down upon the high valley of the Quahdavic it found difficulty in freezing the swift current that ran rippling over the bar; and when, at last, the frost conquered, gripping and clutching through the long, windless nights, it was to form only a thin armour of transparent, steel-strong ice, through which, as through the mantle of snow which made haste to cover it, the light still filtered softly but radiantly at noon, with an ethereal cobalt tinge.

The bar on which the parent salmon had hollowed their round gravel nest was far up the Great South Branch of the Quahdavic, not many miles from the little cold spring lake that was its source. The Great South Branch was a stream much loved by the salmon, for its deep pools, its fine gravel spawning-beds, the purity and steady coldness of its current, and the remoteness which protected it from the visits of greedy poachers. In all its course there was but one serious obstruction, namely, the Big Falls, where the stream fell about twelve feet in one pitch, then roared down for half a mile over a succession of low ledges with deep pools between. The Falls were such that vigorous fish had no real trouble in surmounting them. But they inexorably weeded out the weaklings. No feeble salmon ever got to the top of that straight and thunderous pitch. Therefore, as the spawning-bars were all above the Falls, it was a fine, long-finned, clean swimming breed of salmon that was bred in the Great South Branch.

When the tiny egg in the gravel stirred to life, – as the thousands of other tiny eggs about it were doing at the same time, – there was no ice sheet imprisoning the current, which ran singing pleasantly under a soft spring sun. The deep hollow in the gravel sheltered the moving atoms, so that they were not swept away by the current streaming over them. But minute as they were, they speedily gathered a strength altogether miraculous for their size, as they absorbed the clinging sacs of egg-substance and assumed the forms of fish, almost microscopic, but perfect. This advance achieved, they began to venture from behind and beneath the sheltering pebbles, to dare the urgent stream, and to work their way shoreward toward shallower waters where the perils which beset young salmon would be fewer and less insistent.

The egg from which he came having been one of the first to hatch, the tiny salmon mentioned in the opening paragraph was one of the first of the host to find his strength and to start the migration shoreward from the nest on the noisy bar. Perhaps a score started with him, trying the current, darting back to shelter, then more boldly venturing again. A passing trout, hungry and fierce-eyed, darted above them, heading up against the current; but being so few and scattered, they escaped his fatal attentions. Terrified, however, by the sudden shadow, they hid in the gravel and for some time made no further trial of the dangerous world.

When again the salmon atom adventured forth, he found himself in a greater company. Hundreds more of the tiny creatures had left the nest and were moving shoreward with him. As the defenceless throng advanced, he saw a couple of what seemed to him gigantic creatures dashing hither and thither among them, snapping them up greedily by twos and threes; and he himself barely escaped those greedy jaws by shooting forward in the nick of time. These seeming monsters were but young redfins, a couple of inches in length, whom he would soon come to despise and chase from his feeding-grounds.

His superior development and speed having so well served him, he was now a foot or more in advance of the throng, and so escaped another and even more wide-ranging peril. A huge shadow, as vast as that of the trout, swept down upon them, and as he shrank beneath a sharpedged stone he saw a big sucker settle lazily where the thronging fry were thickest. With round, horribly dilating and contracting mouth turned down like an inverted snout, the big fish sucked up the little wrigglers greedily, even drawing them out by his power of suction from their hidings in the gravel. Of the hundreds that had started on the first migration from the nest not more than three score were left to follow their frightened and panting mite of a leader into the shallows where the big sucker could not come.

Among the little stones close to shore, where the water was hardly more than an inch deep, even the greedy young redfins would not venture. Nevertheless there were plenty of enemies waiting eagerly for the coming of the fry, and the little fellow whose one hour of seniority had made him the pioneer of the shoal found all his ability taxed to guard the speck of life which he had so lately achieved. Keeping far enough from shore to avoid being stranded by some whimsical ripple, he nevertheless avoided the depths that were sufficient for the free hunting of the predatory minnows and redfins. Such of his kinsfolk as stayed farther out soon served, the greater number of them, as food for the larger river dwellers, while those who went too close inshore got cast up on the sand to die, or were pounced upon, as they lay close to the surface, by ravenous and unerring mosquitoes, which managed to pierce them even through a film of water a sixteenth of an inch or more in thickness. So it came about in a very brief time that of the countless throng emerging from the nest on the bar there remained but a hundred or so of the tiny fry to sustain the fortunes of that particular salmon family.

Even at the safest and most cunningly chosen depth, however, the little pioneer had plenty of perils to guard against. Secure from the suckers and redfins on the one hand, and from the mosquitoes on the other, he had yet for enemies certain predatory larvæ and water-beetles, as well as a few inch-long youngsters of the trout family, who were very active and rapacious. There was a water-beetle with hooked, pincer-like jaws and lightning rapidity of movement, which kept him almost ceaselessly on the alert, and filled him with wholesome terror as he saw it capture and devour numbers of his less nimble or less wary kin. And one day, when he had chanced, in the company of his diminished school of fry, to drift into a shallow cove where there was no current at all to disturb the water, he was chased by the terrible larva of a dragon-fly. The strange-looking creature, with what seemed a blank, featureless mask where its face and jaws ought to be, darted at him under the propulsion of jets of water sucked into its middle and spurted out behind. Having taken alarm in time, he made good his escape between the stalks of a fine water-weed where the big larva could not penetrate. From this retreat he saw his pursuer turn and pounce upon a small basking minnow. The mask that covered the larva's face shot out as if on a hinge, developed into two powerful, grappling claws, and clutched the victim in the belly. After a brief struggle, which terrified all the tiny creatures within a radius of three feet, the minnow was dragged down to a clump of weed and the victor proceeded to make his feast. The little salmon stole in terror from his hiding-place and darted out into the more strenuous but for him far safer waters where a live current stirred among the gravel. To be sure the beetles were there, and the hungry young trout; but he had learned the ways of both these species of foe and knew pretty well how to elude them. Meanwhile, as he was himself continually busy catching and devouring the tiny forms of life which abounded in those fruitful waters, – minute shell-fish, and the spawn of the water-snails that clung under the stones, gnats, and other small insects that fell on the water, and even other fry just from the egg, – he was growing at such a rate that presently the fierce water-beetles and the baby trout ceased to have any terrors for him. And at last, turning savagely as one of his old tormentors passed by, he caught a small beetle between his jaws and proceeded to make a meal of him. A few days later one of the baby trout was too slow in getting out of his way. He made a rush, caught his former tyrant, and, though the latter was more than an inch long, found no difficulty in swallowing him head first.

By this time the little salmon was between two and three inches long. He was what those learned in matters pertaining to the salmon would have called a "parr". His colouring was very beautiful, in a higher key than the colouring of a trout, and more brilliant, if less showy. There was none of the pink of the trout, but a clear silvery tone on sides and belly, with a shining blue-black along the back. The sides were marked with a row of black dots, set far apart and accentuated by a yellow flush around them, and with another row of spots of most vivid scarlet. Along the sides also ran a series of broad, vertical, bluish gray bars, the badge of the young of all the salmon tribe. He was a slender, strong-finned, finely moulded little fish, built to have his dwelling in swift currents and to conquer turbulent rapids. His jaws were strong and large, and he had no reason to fear anything of his size that swam the river.

There were now not more than two score of his brothers and sisters left alive, and these scattered far and wide over the shoaling stream. It was high summer in the Quahdavic country, and the Great South Branch was beginning to show its ledges and sandy bars above water. Deep green the full-leaved boughs of elm and ash, poplar and cedar leaned above the current; and along the little wild-meadows which here and there bordered the stream, where the lumbermen had had camps or "landings", the misty pink-purple blossoms of the milkweed poured a wild sweetness upon the air. In a shallow run near the shore, where the sunlight, falling through an overhanging cedar "sweeper", dappled the clear ripples, and the current was about eight inches deep, and there was no pool near to tempt the larger fish, the active and wary little parr took up his home. The same run was chosen by three of his fellows also, and by a couple of small trout of about the same size. But there was room enough, and food enough, in that run for all of them, so the association was harmonious.

Lying with his head up-stream, his long fins and broad tail slowly waving to hold him in his position against the current, the little parr waited and watched while his food was brought down to him by the untiring flow. Sometimes it was a luckless leaf-grub, or a caddis-worm torn from his moorings, that came tumbling and bumping down along the smooth pebbles of the bottom, to be gathered into the young salmon's eager maw. Sometimes it was a fly or moth or bee or beetle that came bobbing with drenched, helpless wings along the tops of the ripples. And once in awhile a pink-shelled baby crawfish in its wanderings would come sidling across the run, and be promptly gobbled up in spite of the futile threatenings of its tiny claws. The river was liberal in its providing for its most favoured children, these aristocratic and beautiful parr, so the youngster grew apace in his bright run.

Happy though his life was now, in every kind of weather, he was still beset with perils. He had, of course, no longer anything to fear from the journeying suckers, with their small, toothless mouths, but now and then a big-mouthed, red-bellied, savage trout would pass up the run, and in passing make a dash at one of the little occupants. In this way two of the parr, and one of the little trout, disappeared, – the trout folk having no prejudice whatever against cannibalism. But our pioneer, ceaselessly on the watch and matchlessly nimble, always succeeded in keeping well out of the way. Once he had a horrible scare, when a seven-pound salmon, astray from the main channel, made his way cautiously up the middle of the run and scraped over the bar. In this case, however, the alarm was groundless. The stranger was not seeking food, but only a way out of the embarrassing shallows.

Another peril that kept the young parr on the alert – an ever imminent and particularly appalling peril – was the foraging of the kingfishers. A pair of these noisy and diligent birds had their nest of six little ones in a hole in the red bluff just above the run, and they took ceaseless tribute from the finny tribes of the river. Like an azure arrow one of them would dart down into the river with a loud splash, and flap up again, usually, with a gleaming trout or parr held firmly between the edges of his great beak. If he missed his shot and came up with empty beak, he would fly off up the river with a harsh, clattering, startlingly loud cry of indignation and protest. Several times one or other of these troublesome foragers dropped into the run. The dappling of the shadow and sun, however, from the cedar, was a protection to the dwellers in this run; and only twice was the fishing there successful. The second little trout, and one more of the parr, were carried off. Then the birds forsook that particular bit of ripple and hunted easier waters.

In leaping at the flies which came down the surface of the run the little salmon one day got a severe but invaluable lesson. A large and gaudy fly, unlike anything that he had ever encountered before, appeared on the ripples over his head. Still more unlike those which he had encountered before, it did not hurry downward with the water, but maintained its position in a most mysterious fashion. While the parr eyed it curiously, wondering whether to try it or not, it suddenly moved straight up against the current, and was followed at a short distance by another queer-looking big fly, green and brown like a grasshopper. Excited by the strange behaviour of these two strangers, the parr rose sharply and hit the green fly with his tail, intending to drown it and investigate it at his leisure. To his astonishment both flies instantly disappeared. Chagrined and puzzled, he dropped back to the tail of the run, sulking.

A moment later, however, the two flies reappeared, slipping very slowly down the current, mounting up again directly in the teeth of it, sometimes dancing on the surface, sometimes sinking a little below it, but always remaining the same distance apart, and always behaving in a manner mysteriously independent of the power of the stream. For a few seconds the parr eyed them with distrust. Then growing excited by their strange actions, he dashed forward fiercely and caught the gaudy red fly in his jaws. There was a prick, a twitch, a frightful jerk, – and he found himself dragged forth into the strangling upper air, where he fell flopping on the dry gravel of the shore.

As he lay gasping and struggling on the hot pebbles, which scorched off the delicate bloom from his tender skin, a tall shape stooped over him, and a great hand, its fingers as long as his whole body, picked him up. He heard a vague reverberation, which was the voice of the tall shape saying, "A poor little beggar of a salmon, – but not badly hooked! He'll be none the worse, and perhaps none the wiser!" Then, with what seemed to him terrible and deadly violence, but what was really the most careful delicacy that the big hand was capable of, the hook was removed from his jaw, and he was tossed back into the water. Dizzy and half-stunned, he turned over on his back, head downward, and for a moment or two was at the mercy of the current. Then, recovering from the shock, he righted himself, and swam frantically to the shelter of an overhanging stone which he knew, where he lay with heaving sides, sore, aching, and trembling, till little by little his self-possession returned to him. But ever afterward, since he was by nature somewhat more wary and alert than his fellows, he viewed floating flies with suspicion and inspected them cautiously before seizing them in his jaws.

All through the summer and autumn the little parr was kept very busy, feeding, and dodging his enemies, and playing in the cheerful, shallow "run" beneath the cedar. When the early autumn rains swelled the volume of the Great South Branch, he first realized how numerous were the big salmon in the stream, – fish which had kept carefully clear of the shallow places wherein he had spent the summer. Though he held himself well aloof from these big fish, – which never paid him any attention, – he noticed them playing tempestuously, leaping high out of the pools, and very busy night and morning on the gravel bars, where they seemed to be digging with their powerful snouts.

Still later, when, instead of flies and beetles, there fell upon the darkening surface of the river little pale specks which vanished as he snatched at them, he grew fiercely and inexplicably discontented. What he longed for he did not know; but he knew it was nowhere in the waters about him, neither along the edges of the shore, where now the ice was forming in crisp fringes. All about him he saw the big salmon, – their sides lean and flat, their brilliant colours darkened and faded, – swimming down languidly with the strenuous current. Hitherto their movements had been all up-stream, – upward, upward incessantly and gladly. Now the old energy and joy of life seemed all gone out of them. Nevertheless, they seemed very anxious to go somewhere, and the way to that somewhere appeared to be down-stream. Hardly knowing what he did, and not at all knowing why he did it, the parr found himself slipping down-stream with them. He had grown vastly in size and strength, while his vivid and varied hues had begun to soften appreciably. In fact, he was now no longer a parr, but a "smelt"; and after the ordained custom of his kind, he was on his way to the sea.

II

Long-finned and full of vigour, the smelt was not dismayed when he came to heavier water, exchanging the region of the gravelly bars for a space of broken ledges, where the great current roared hither and thither and lashed itself into foam. Through these loud chutes and miniature falls he shot safely, though not at first without some trepidation. The lean, slab-sided salmon, or "slinks", who were his travelling companions, served as his involuntary guides. Except to make use of them in this way once or twice, he paid them little attention; though now and again a big lantern-jawed fellow would rush at him with a sort of half-hearted fury, compelling him to make a hurried retreat.

The Great South Branch, soon after the region of the wild ledges was past, fell into quiet ways, and crept for a few miles with deep, untroubled current through a land of alders. Here the winter, which had by this time settled down upon the high Quahdavic country, had its will, and the river was frozen and snow-covered from shore to shore. The smelt, as he journeyed beneath the ice, was puzzled and disturbed by the unusual dimness of the light that filtered down to him.

This was a condition, however, which he soon left behind. Swollen by the influx of several lesser streams, the Great South now burst its fetters and thundered along through a series of tumultuous rapids. Then above the thunder of these rapids came a louder, heavier roar, a trampling whose vibration carried a warning to the traveller. He paused for a moment; but seeing that the salmon swam on without hesitation or apparent misgiving, he dashed forward-confidently into the tumult. A moment more and he was hurled onward bewilderingly, dashed downward through a smother of broken water which held so much air in it that it almost choked him, and shot into a great, deep, swirling pool where many "slinks" and a few slim smelts like himself were swimming lazily hither and thither. He had successfully made the descent of the South Branch Falls, though, in his ignorance of the best channel, he had missed the solid water, and come down through the smother.

After a very brief rest in the basin below the Falls, to recover his self-possession, the smelt, with many other migrants, resumed his seaward journey. The Great South presently, with a long rush, united its waters with those of the main Quahdavic. Down this full-flowing stream he swam steadily for three uneventful days, to find himself at length in a mighty river whose amber-brown current was a surprise to him after the clear, greenish floods in which he had been born. It took him several days, journeying leisurely, and feeding moderately as he went, to get accustomed to the change in the water. And barely had he become accustomed to it when another and more startling change confronted him. The current, flowing strongly in one direction, would change for a time and flow directly against him. This was confusing. But it was not by any means the worst. A strange, bitter taste was in the water. The great salt tides were rushing up to welcome him. He was nearing the sea.

At first the brackishness in the water repelled him; but almost at once he found himself accepting it with avidity. At the same time he could not but observe a sudden awakening of interest in life among the languid "slinks". They began to show a better appetite, to move about more alertly, to make themselves more dangerous to the smaller fish that crossed their paths. The water grew more and more salt, – with an ever increasing zest to it which made the smelt amazingly keen for his food. Then the shield of ice above him, beneath which he had so long travelled, suddenly vanished, and through long, free shoreless waves he felt the sunlight streaming down to him unimpeded. The water was now no longer tawny brown, but green. He had reached the sea.

For some reason which he could never have explained, – for he certainly felt no affection for them, – the smelt, with others like himself, kept travelling more or less in the company of the reviving "slinks". Like all the rest of the strong-*finned, silver-sided host, he was now feeding with a ravenousness of appetite unknown to him in the old days of rapid and pool. His food was chiefly the very tiny creatures of the sea, shell-fish from the deep-covered rocks and floating masses of weed, young fry swimming in schools, jellyfish of various sorts, and the myriad minute sea things which made certain belts and patches of the sea, at times, almost like a kind of soup ready to his eager palate. Ever north and north swam the silver host, seeking those cold currents from the pole which are as thick with life as the lands they wash are lifeless. Very deep they swam, so deep that, countless as their armies were, they left no trace to betray them to the nets or hooks of the fishing fleets. In those faintly glimmering depths the slow tide stirred softly, unmoved by whatever Arctic storm might rave and shrink over its surface. In the gloom the tiny creatures of the sea shone by their own pale phosphorescence, and in such unimaginable millions did they swarm that the journeying salmon had but to open their mouths to be fed. At this depth, too, they had but little persecution from the more swift and powerful hunters of the sea, the big-mouthed whales, the sharks, and the porpoises. Their most dangerous enemies generally lived and fought and ravaged nearer the surface, leaving to them the lordship of the twilight deeps. Once in awhile, indeed, a sounding whale might drop its mighty bulk among them, and engulf a few scores in his huge maw before the pressure and the need of air forced him again to the surface. And once in awhile a shark or swordfish would rush down, as a hawk swoops from the upper sky, to harry their array. But for the most part now, as at no other period in their career, they went unmolested on their secret and mysterious northern drift.

When the young salmon had been about three months in the sea, growing diligently all the time, a strange but potent influence impelled him, along with most of his companioning hordes, to turn and journey backward toward the coast whence he had come. He was now about five pounds in weight, and if he had fallen into the hands of a fisherman he would have been labelled a "grilse". His companions were nearly all grilse like himself, varying in weight from two and a half to four or five pounds, with here and there a big, adult salmon journeying majestically among them. The majority of the full-grown salmon had preceded them shoreward by anything from one month to four, under the urge of the homing and parental instinct.

As the big grilse journeyed he went on growing daily, till by the time he found himself back in the waters of the Gulf he was a good six pounds in weight. As he mounted nearer the surface and drew inshore he passed the mouths of various rivers and encountered swirling currents of brackish water. At each of these river-mouths numbers of the host would separate and turn up the freshening tide. But our grilse kept right on, making unerringly for his mighty native stream. And those that continued with him were more in number than those that turned aside.

It was during this journey down offshore that perils once more began to assail the young salmon, perils which it took all his good luck and keen activities to evade. For one thing, there were dogfish. These miniature sharks, with their savage mouths set far under their snouts, were no match for the grilse, or any of his kind, in speed; but the latter, being unsuspicious, came very near being caught unawares. A swift surge of his long fins and powerful tail saved him, just in time. He shot away like a silver streak as the fierce jaws snapped sharply at his flank. After that he kept his eyes alert on the approach of any fish in the least degree larger than himself. And in the course of this watchfulness he saw many of his kinsmen caught and torn to pieces by the ravening dogfish, who are the very wolves of the sea.

Another and equally deadly peril was one that took several forms. Once as he swam swiftly but easily onward, he saw a number of his companions, who chanced to be a little ahead of him, stop abruptly and engage in what seemed to him a meaningless struggle. Ever suspicious, he checked himself and tried to make out what was the matter. The struggle was desperate, but the adversary at first invisible. In a moment, however, he detected a mesh of fine, brown lines, which seemed to surround and grapple with the unfortunate fish. Not waiting to investigate further, he retreated with a nervous flurry of speed. Then, since nothing could divert his homeward impulse, he dived almost to the bottom and continued his journey, not returning toward the dangerous surface till he was nearly a mile beyond the throttling peril of the drift-net. But there were yet other nets, and as he entered the great outrush of his native river he encountered them on every side, stretched on rows of stakes running far out into the channels. These "set nets", as they were termed, he was fortunate enough, or wary enough, to detect when he first entered the river, and he avoided them by keeping to the deepest parts of the channel; but he saw what cruel toll they took of the eager and heedless schools that swam with him. Net after net they threatened him; but ever upward he urged his way against the tawny current, his long fins and powerful tail never pausing in their graceful, tireless effort. Neither he nor his companions now lost time in foraging, for their appetite had mysteriously vanished since leaving the salt water. They had become engrossed in one idea, the quest of the clean-rushing rapids and the beds of bright gravel where they were born.

Leagues up the great river, after mounting several noisy but not difficult rapids, the grilse came to a halt for the first time in a deep and spacious pool which swarmed with his fellows. Here he rested, and here he made light, casual meals, jumping at the little flies which fell upon the swirling surface of the pool. Once the bright yellow body of a struggling wasp allured him, – but just as he was rising to gulp it in, a memory, vague but terrifying, swung dimly up into his brain from the far-off days when he had been a tiny, gay-coloured parr in the ripples of the Great South Branch. He remembered the sharp point piercing his jaw, his choking and gasping on the hot, dry bank; and refusing the bright titbit, he left it to be gobbled up by one of his less wary companions. After that revival of memory the crafty grilse inspected every fly before he rose to it, to see if any slender, almost invisible line were attached to it. His precautions were unnecessary, in that instance, the pool being a lonely and unnoted one in a broad, shallow reach of the river; but his awakened watchfulness was to stand him in good stead later on.

A day's journey beyond the pool, a great outrush of colder water, green-white against the amber tide of the main river, greeted the returning grilse, and he found himself in the mouth of his native Quahdavic. It was a scanter and shallower stream, however, than when he left it, for now the long heats of the summer had shrunken all the watercourses. As he mounted the clear current he now encountered fierce rapids, and ledges boiling with foam, which put his swimming prowess to the test. After a day of these rapids and ledges and shallow rips, he felt quite ready to halt once more in a great green pool where two lively brooks, tumbling in from either shore, kept the surface flecked with whirling foam. Here the invigorating coolness of the water speedily refreshed him, and he fell to feeding on the various insects brought down by the meeting currents. The pool was thronged with grilse and full-grown salmon, with here and there a school of graceful whitefish or a group of sluggish suckers, whom he ignored. When the moon rose white over the black, serried masses of the fir woods, silvering the pool, the big grilse, obeying a sudden caprice, shot upwards with a mighty surge of fins and tail, and hurled himself high into the still air. Falling back with a resounding splash, he repeated the feat again and again. He had discovered the fascination of diving upward into the unknown and alien element of the air. Others of his kindred, large and small, had made the same discovery, and the wilderness silence was broken with splash after splash, as the tense, silver shapes shot up, gleamed for an instant, and fell back. As the noise of the mysterious play echoed on the night air, a black bear crept down to the water's edge on one side of the stream, and a lynx stole out to the end of a log on the other side, each hoping that some unwary player might come within reach of his paw. But all the salmon kept out in the safe deeps; and the keen-eyed watchers watched in vain as the round moon climbed the clean heights of sky.

After a few days in this pool, he was surprised one early morning by the sight of a long, dark shape gliding over the surface. From its side, near the hinder end, a strange-looking, narrow fin thrust downward from time to time, and with heavy swirls propelled the dark shape. The strange apparition disturbed him, and he grew restless and watchful. A few minutes after it had passed there came a faint splash on the surface above him, and a big, curious-looking fly appeared. It sank an inch or two, moved against the current, and was then withdrawn. He eyed it with scorn, remembering his former experience with such. But when, a moment later, the strange fly appeared again, he was amazed to see one of the biggest salmon in the pool rise lazily and suck it down. The next instant there was a terrific commotion. He saw the great fish rush hither and thither up and down and around the pool, now scattering the whitefish on the bottom, now splashing upon the surface and leaping half his length into the air. Very clearly the cunning grilse understood what it all meant. For many long minutes he watched the struggle, which showed no sign of ending. Then disgusted and apprehensive, he forsook the pool, darting beneath the canoe as he did so, and continued his journey up-stream.

Late in the day the returning traveller came to the mouth of the Big South Branch. Without hesitation he turned up that turbulent but shrunken stream, knowing it for his own; and he made no stop till he reached the deep, green, foamy pool at the foot of the Falls. Being still comparatively fresh, and very restless, he swam all round the pool, and took a crafty survey of the terrific obstacle before him. But among the sojourners in the pool were many fish with bleeding sides, who had essayed the leap in vain and were waiting to recuperate their energies for another effort. So he, too, paused a little, gathering his young strength.

The Falls of the Big South were about twelve feet in total height. There were two leaps, the upper one, of about three feet, rolling down into a hollow shelf of sandstone some six or eight feet in width, and the lower, dropping nine feet sheer into the pool. Most of the face of fall, at this stage of the water, was lashed into foam by fissures and projecting angles of rock, but on the right the main volume of the stream fell in a clear, green column. Up the front of this column the grilse presently flung himself, striking the water about a foot from the top. As he struck, the impetus of his leap not yet exhausted, his powerful fins and tail took firm hold of the solid water and urged him upward. Over the lip he shot, into the boiling turmoil of the shelf, then onward over the great surge of the upper dip. He had triumphed easily, and the way was clear before him to the shining gravel bars whereon he had been spawned. There were still some tough rapids – shallow, and tortuous, and grid-ironed with slaty rocks – to be climbed; but there were quiet pools to sojourn in, and no perils that his craft could not evade. One by one his fellow voyagershad dropped away, betrayed by the fisherman's luring fly, clutched by the skilful paw of wildcat or bear, or vanquished in their own element by the mink or the otter. But when he reached the wide spawning-beds he was still comraded by a fair remnant of the host which had entered the river with him; and the shallow run that swept the bars were noisy with their splashings through the twilight of evening and dawn.

Every day there were new arrivals at the spawning-beds, and among them the strong and wary grilse soon found a mate. She was considerably larger than he, a trim young salmon of the second year and perhaps nine pounds in weight. But his radiant colouring, his strength and his activity, as he swam around her and displayed his charms, appeared to content her. With his bony nose he dug her a circular nest in the gravel, where the current ran clear but not too strong; and in this nest she laid her countless eggs, while he rubbed his side caressingly against her shining flanks. When her eggs were all laid and fertilized he drifted away from her, dropped down to the nearest pool, and lay there sluggish and uninterested for awhile, until, seized once more by the longing for the great salt tide, he joined a returning company of "slinks" and hurried back down-river to the sea.

III

When he reached the deep sea once more, and regained his appetite among the sweeping tides, he once more began to grow. His fins became smaller in proportion to his bulk, and he was no longer a grilse, but a salmon. His life, however, underwent no great change; his adventures, perils, interests, appetites, were all much the same as during his first season in the sea. Only he now swam with a certain majesty, ignoring the grilse and smaller salmon who swam and fed beside him; for he was of splendid, constantly growing stature, of the lords of his kind.

This time he let nearly the whole round of the year go by, feeding at leisure and lazily dodging the seals, among the icy but populous tides that swung beyond the mouth of Hudson Straits. Then, late the following winter, long before the dark earth had any word of spring, spring stirred secretly in his veins, and he remembered the sunny gravel bars of the Great South Branch. The sudden urge of his desire turned him about, and he began to swim tirelessly southward, companioned by an ardent, silvery host into whose veins at the same time the same compelling summons had been flashed.

It was late May when the returning salmon, having successfully eluded the snares of the nets and the assaults of harbour seal and dogfish, came again to the mouth of his native river and fanned his gills once more in its sweet, amber current. He was now a good forty pounds in weight, and his clean blue-and-silver body was adorned with fine markings of extraordinary brilliancy. His vigorous, wholesome, seasoned muscles propelled him irresistibly against the current of the river, which was now fierce with freshet; and being urged by a stronger and more insistent desire than that which had swayed him on his former visit, as a grilse, he now made more haste in his journeying, with briefer halts in the pools. The pools, at this season, were some of them indistinguishable in the flood, and others turbulent and difficult of access, so the fly-fishermen were not yet out in force. Only once, in the great pool below the Quahdavic mouth, did he see the bright fly whose treacherous lure he knew so well go dancing over his head. He rose lazily and slapped it with his tail in angry contempt, then returned to the bottom of the pool and watched it lazily, while for nearly an hour it went through its futile antics. Then it vanished suddenly.

Perhaps ten minutes after the gaudy fly had disappeared, the big salmon saw a brown furry shape, more like a very young squirrel than anything else, go floating down the current. Other salmon, who, like himself, had ignored the fly, observed this furry shape with interest, and half started to investigate. But when the big salmon rose to it they turned away with resignation. As for him, though he had not been once really hungry since entering the fresh water, he felt that that strange object was the very thing he wanted. Gliding up to the surface on a long slant, very slowly, he opened his great jaws just below the object, sucked it in, and with a heavy splash turned back toward the bottom. The next instant there was a jerk, a prick, a fierce tug at his jaw which swerved him from his course; and he realized that he had been fooled. The furry shape was but the old treason of the fly in another form.

His first impulse was to rush madly across the pool in an effort to escape the small tormentor. But memory and experience, added to that native cunning which had brought him safely through so many perils, now came to his rescue. Instead of rushing to the surface and performing wild feats which would have soon worn him out while delighting the soul of his enemy, he turned resolutely back to his course and bored his way to the bottom against the exasperating pressure of rod and reel. Here he set himself to nosing vigorously among the stones, in the hope of rubbing off this troublesome thing on his jaw. The thing tugged, and tugged, and pricked, and worried, as the fisherman at the other end of the line strove to rouse him into a lively and spectacular struggle. But for some minutes he refused to be diverted from his nosing among the stones, till the fisherman began to fear that the hook had got fast to a log.

Presently, however, the great salmon decided to change his tactics. Though he did not know it, he had already loosened the hook appreciably, tearing the cartilage of his jaw. Now, having craftily eyed for some seconds the fine, taut, almost invisible line of gut as it slanted off through the water, he made a long, swift rush straight in the direction in which the line was striving to pull him. Instantly the pull ceased, the line fell slack. But he felt the hook, with its furry attachment, still clinging at the side of his mouth. He passed straight under the dark shape of the canoe, and heard a sharp, vibrant sound above him, something like the song of a locust, which was the noise of the big salmon reel as the fisherman made wild haste to take in the slack of the line. As he swam he shook his head savagely; but the hook still held. Then, near the farther edge of the pool, he darted between the limbs of a sunken windfall, and back again on the other side, effectually fouling the line a few feet from his nose. The next moment there was a violent jerk at his jaw. The hook tore out, and he swam free.

In tremendous indignation and trepidation the great salmon now darted from the pool and up against the wild current of the Quahdavic. In the next pool he delayed for but a few minutes, not resting, but swimming about restlessly and stirring up the other salmon with his excitement. Then, accompanied by three or four of those whom his nervous activity had aroused, he pressed onward. Through rapid and chute and pool, and white-churned trough where rocks scored the bed of the river, he darted tirelessly, and up the clear torrent of the Great South Branch; and he never halted till he found himself in the boiling basin of green and foam at the foot of the Falls.

The basin was a very different place now from that which he had visited as a grilse. Into its vexed deeps the flood fell with the heavy trampling of thunder, which was echoed back and forth between the high broken rocks enclosing the basin. But what was of most importance to the great salmon was a fact which, if he realized it at all, he realized but vaguely. The Falls themselves had changed since his last visit.

At the very first of spring there had been a landslide. The great, partly overhanging rock, seamed and split by the wedges of countless frosts, had all at once crumbled down beneath the tireless pressure of the cataract. The lower fall, thus retreating, had become one with the upper. The straight descent was now nearly five feet higher than before, – a barrier which no voyager those waters ever knew could hope to overcome.