The Haunters of the Silences: A Book of Animal Life. Roberts Charles G. D.
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