sness 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