Charles Roberts - The Haunters of the Silences - A Book of Animal Life

By this time the little salmon was between two and three inches long. He was what those learned in matters pertaining to the salmon would have called a "parr". His colouring was very beautiful, in a higher key than the colouring of a trout, and more brilliant, if less showy. There was none of the pink of the trout, but a clear silvery tone on sides and belly, with a shining blue-black along the back. The sides were marked with a row of black dots, set far apart and accentuated by a yellow flush around them, and with another row of spots of most vivid scarlet. Along the sides also ran a series of broad, vertical, bluish gray bars, the badge of the young of all the salmon tribe. He was a slender, strong-finned, finely moulded little fish, built to have his dwelling in swift currents and to conquer turbulent rapids. His jaws were strong and large, and he had no reason to fear anything of his size that swam the river.

There were now not more than two score of his brothers and sisters left alive, and these scattered far and wide over the shoaling stream. It was high summer in the Quahdavic country, and the Great South Branch was beginning to show its ledges and sandy bars above water. Deep green the full-leaved boughs of elm and ash, poplar and cedar leaned above the current; and along the little wild-meadows which here and there bordered the stream, where the lumbermen had had camps or "landings", the misty pink-purple blossoms of the milkweed poured a wild sweetness upon the air. In a shallow run near the shore, where the sunlight, falling through an overhanging cedar "sweeper", dappled the clear ripples, and the current was about eight inches deep, and there was no pool near to tempt the larger fish, the active and wary little parr took up his home. The same run was chosen by three of his fellows also, and by a couple of small trout of about the same size. But there was room enough, and food enough, in that run for all of them, so the association was harmonious.

Lying with his head up-stream, his long fins and broad tail slowly waving to hold him in his position against the current, the little parr waited and watched while his food was brought down to him by the untiring flow. Sometimes it was a luckless leaf-grub, or a caddis-worm torn from his moorings, that came tumbling and bumping down along the smooth pebbles of the bottom, to be gathered into the young salmon's eager maw. Sometimes it was a fly or moth or bee or beetle that came bobbing with drenched, helpless wings along the tops of the ripples. And once in awhile a pink-shelled baby crawfish in its wanderings would come sidling across the run, and be promptly gobbled up in spite of the futile threatenings of its tiny claws. The river was liberal in its providing for its most favoured children, these aristocratic and beautiful parr, so the youngster grew apace in his bright run.

Happy though his life was now, in every kind of weather, he was still beset with perils. He had, of course, no longer anything to fear from the journeying suckers, with their small, toothless mouths, but now and then a big-mouthed, red-bellied, savage trout would pass up the run, and in passing make a dash at one of the little occupants. In this way two of the parr, and one of the little trout, disappeared, – the trout folk having no prejudice whatever against cannibalism. But our pioneer, ceaselessly on the watch and matchlessly nimble, always succeeded in keeping well out of the way. Once he had a horrible scare, when a seven-pound salmon, astray from the main channel, made his way cautiously up the middle of the run and scraped over the bar. In this case, however, the alarm was groundless. The stranger was not seeking food, but only a way out of the embarrassing shallows.

Another peril that kept the young parr on the alert – an ever imminent and particularly appalling peril – was the foraging of the kingfishers. A pair of these noisy and diligent birds had their nest of six little ones in a hole in the red bluff just above the run, and they took ceaseless tribute from the finny tribes of the river. Like an azure arrow one of them would dart down into the river with a loud splash, and flap up again, usually, with a gleaming trout or parr held firmly between the edges of his great beak. If he missed his shot and came up with empty beak, he would fly off up the river with a harsh, clattering, startlingly loud cry of indignation and protest. Several times one or other of these troublesome foragers dropped into the run. The dappling of the shadow and sun, however, from the cedar, was a protection to the dwellers in this run; and only twice was the fishing there successful. The second little trout, and one more of the parr, were carried off. Then the birds forsook that particular bit of ripple and hunted easier waters.

In leaping at the flies which came down the surface of the run the little salmon one day got a severe but invaluable lesson. A large and gaudy fly, unlike anything that he had ever encountered before, appeared on the ripples over his head. Still more unlike those which he had encountered before, it did not hurry downward with the water, but maintained its position in a most mysterious fashion. While the parr eyed it curiously, wondering whether to try it or not, it suddenly moved straight up against the current, and was followed at a short distance by another queer-looking big fly, green and brown like a grasshopper. Excited by the strange behaviour of these two strangers, the parr rose sharply and hit the green fly with his tail, intending to drown it and investigate it at his leisure. To his astonishment both flies instantly disappeared. Chagrined and puzzled, he dropped back to the tail of the run, sulking.

A moment later, however, the two flies reappeared, slipping very slowly down the current, mounting up again directly in the teeth of it, sometimes dancing on the surface, sometimes sinking a little below it, but always remaining the same distance apart, and always behaving in a manner mysteriously independent of the power of the stream. For a few seconds the parr eyed them with distrust. Then growing excited by their strange actions, he dashed forward fiercely and caught the gaudy red fly in his jaws. There was a prick, a twitch, a frightful jerk, – and he found himself dragged forth into the strangling upper air, where he fell flopping on the dry gravel of the shore.

As he lay gasping and struggling on the hot pebbles, which scorched off the delicate bloom from his tender skin, a tall shape stooped over him, and a great hand, its fingers as long as his whole body, picked him up. He heard a vague reverberation, which was the voice of the tall shape saying, "A poor little beggar of a salmon, – but not badly hooked! He'll be none the worse, and perhaps none the wiser!" Then, with what seemed to him terrible and deadly violence, but what was really the most careful delicacy that the big hand was capable of, the hook was removed from his jaw, and he was tossed back into the water. Dizzy and half-stunned, he turned over on his back, head downward, and for a moment or two was at the mercy of the current. Then, recovering from the shock, he righted himself, and swam frantically to the shelter of an overhanging stone which he knew, where he lay with heaving sides, sore, aching, and trembling, till little by little his self-possession returned to him. But ever afterward, since he was by nature somewhat more wary and alert than his fellows, he viewed floating flies with suspicion and inspected them cautiously before seizing them in his jaws.

All through the summer and autumn the little parr was kept very busy, feeding, and dodging his enemies, and playing in the cheerful, shallow "run" beneath the cedar. When the early autumn rains swelled the volume of the Great South Branch, he first realized how numerous were the big salmon in the stream, – fish which had kept carefully clear of the shallow places wherein he had spent the summer. Though he held himself well aloof from these big fish, – which never paid him any attention, – he noticed them playing tempestuously, leaping high out of the pools, and very busy night and morning on the gravel bars, where they seemed to be digging with their powerful snouts.