Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 159: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE Our parr waited out in the open water long enough to witness one battle royal between two twenty-pound “ kippers ”’; tar- ried long enough to see, though he did not know it, what might or might not have been his father, like a battleship among cruisers, towering, enormous and terrifying, plowing his dread way through the crowded packs on the track of his scarcely smaller mother perhaps—a mighty and grand pair of parents such even as that famous stream had not often in all the zons seen before; dallied long enough, too, to know what it was to see five-pound trout hunted like a fox, and to know himself, a second later, how the trout felt when his tiny carcass - caught the eye of a hungry, or angry, mon- ster, and he executed, over, under, round, and it almost Jooked as if through, the jostling crowd of mighty silver kings just the nearest approach to mimicking an elec- tric spark run amuck that ever he accom- plished in his life. Then he got to the bowlder lair and stayed there. Even his irrepressible, rov- ing, insolent, cruel spirit was awed at last, I think. Other fish, even great eels and trout and pike, were permissible terrors, but the “ grown-ups” of his own world! Well, after all, even if he was frightened, it was no small thing to be able to boast that only a salmon can beat a salmon, and he was showing fear from the jaws of the aristocrat of the waters, and not from any “lesser breeds without the law,” say what you will. Our samlet, however, cared nothing for the pomp and majesty of the marriage pro- cession of his tribe. His one hope was to get away from the big cannibals as quickly as might be, especially as, thin, wounded, exhausted, unsightly, and in all probability starving, for aught he knew, they came dropping down-stream again after a time. It was like witnessing a finny retreat | from Moscow, but our friend did not stay. He fled, and, in fleeing, ran smack into a second run of smaller salmon coming round a bend. This meeting with his older tribes-folk was worse than the first, because the smaller fish were more agile, and gave him an even more lively time of it, and it was a very SILVER KING. 631 tired and worried-looking samlet who, toward evening, flopped helplessly over a small waterfall some miles below, and stayed among the crevices between the big bowlders in the pool below to recuperate. One would almost have thought that he had been spawning, too. Spring passed, and summer came again. Our samlet stayed on, a little bigger, a trifle less dusky, a wee bit more ferocious for his size, and with, by the same token, a fraction better chance of surviving in the ever-hungry river. There is no record, however, when he left this place—-some time in the autumn, prob- ably—but we next find him many miles down-stream, lurking, with some sign of cleverness, which must have been in the family, and one reason why his famous father had survived to grow to such gigantic size—lurking, I say, among the branches of a sunken tree, whose trunk was all but silted over. Now, no better spot can be chosen by a fish than such a one as this. Through the mazes of the weed-hung branches he could precipitate his little body upon the numer- ous insects and small fish that came to it as a refuge, could chase them in and out at top speed; from here, too, he could dash forth like some glint of light upon his prey drift- ing downstream, or to this place he could retreat when hunted, and let his pursuers rush in among the snags and spikes, at the risk of scales and delicate fin-membrane, if they dared. Mostly did they not dare, but passed on sulking, as fish do. Because the actions of the wild folk be meaningless to us we think them purpose- less. This fish was not here by chance. There was--you could feel it once every twelve hours, at any rate—a certain smack in the water here different to what it had been up-stream, a hint, a mere suspicion of salt. One might guess that the last lingering power of the invading sea at high tide just, and only just, reached here. It was so, and our parr or samlet had come here to acclimatize himself, to get, as it were, “salted ” before taking that plunge which, among salmon, is the equivalent of what we would call making a man of him. COMmiclboo SS 1