he 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