he 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.

[Illustration: "HE SAW A BIG SUCKER SETTLE LAZILY WHERE THE THRONGING
FRY WERE THICKEST."]

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 whims