you know
that the dark moving patches are the advance battalions of countless
thousands of sea salmon, and that the mile-long black and white streak
behind them is the main body of the first mighty army; for others are to
follow day by day for another fortnight.

Probably the look-out man at the pilot station is the first to see
them, and in a few minates the lazy little seaport town awakes from its
morning lethargy, and even the butcher, and baker, and bootmaker, and
bank manager, and other commercial magnates shut up shop and walk to
the pilot station to watch the salmon "take" the bar, whilst the entire
public school rushes home to prepare its rude tackle for the onslaught
that will begin at dark.

The bar is a mile wide or more, and though there is but little surf,
the ebbing tide, running at five knots, makes a great commotion, and the
shallow water is thick with yellow sand swept seaward to the pale green
beyond. Presently the first "school" of salmon reaches the protecting
reef on the southern side--and then it stops. The fish well know that
such a current as that cannot be stemmed, and wait, moving slowly to
and fro, the dark blue compactness of their serried masses ever and
anon broken by flashes of silver as some turn on their sides or make an
occasional leap clear out of the water to avoid the pressure of their
fellows.

An hour or so passes; then the tumult on the bar ceases, the incoming
seas rise clear and sandless, and the fierce race of the current slows
down to a gentle drift; it is slack water, and the fish begin to move.
One after another the foremost masses sweep round the horn of the reef
and head for the smooth water inside. On the starboard hand a line of
yellow sandbank is drying in the sun, and the passage has now narrowed
down to a width of fifty yards; in twenty minutes every inch of water,
from the rocky headland on the south side of the entrance to where the
river makes a sharp turn northward, half a mile away, is packed with a
living, moving mass. Behind follows the main body, the two horns of
the crescent shape which it had at first preserved now swimming swiftly
ahead, and converging towards each other as the entrance to the bar is
reached, and the centre falling back with the precision of well-trained
troops. And then in a square, solid mass, thirty or forty feet in width,
they begin the passage, and for two hours or more the long dark lines of
fish pass steadily onward, only thrown