nce, indeed, he had
good cause to be--as I shall relate.

One Saturday evening, after we had finished our supper, Patrick Kenna
found that he had run out of tobacco, and said that if we were not
afraid of being left by ourselves for a few hours he would walk into Bar
Harbour and buy some before the store closed, returning before midnight.
Of course we did not mind, and in a few minutes Ruth's father set out,
accompanied by 'King Billy' and one or two other black-fellows who
were in hopes of selling some wild honey for a bottle or two of rum. We
watched them disappear into the darkness of the forest, and then, as the
night was suitable, my brother Will proposed that we should all go down
to the creek and fish for black bream.

'The tide is coming in, Ruth,' he said gleefully, 'and we'll have fine
sport. I'll go on first and light a fire on the bank.'

Presently, as Ruth and I were getting ready our lines, he dashed into
the house again, panting with excitement.

'Never mind the lines. Oh, I have glorious news! The salmon are coming
in, in swarms, and the water is alive with them! Ruth, let us get the
net and put it right across the creek as soon as it is slack water.
'Twill be glorious.'

Now, we knew that the sea salmon had been seen out at sea a few days
before, but it was yet thought to be too soon for their vast droves
to enter the rivers and lagoons. But Will was quite right, for when we
dragged down the heavy net we found that the water, which half an hour
before, though under the light of myriad stars, had been black and
silent, was now a living sheet of phosphorescent light, caused by the
passage up the creek of countless thousands of agitated fish, driven in
by hundreds of porpoises and savage, grey ocean-haunting sharks, whose
murderous forms we could see darting to and fro just outside the shallow
bar, charging into and devouring the helpless, compact masses of salmon,
whose very numbers prevented them from escaping; for serried legion
after legion from the sea swam swiftly in to the narrow passage and
pressed upon those which were seeking to force their way up to the
shallow, muddy waters five miles beyond--where alone lay safety from the
tigers of the sea.

Ruth Kenna, as wild with excitement as my brother and myself, took up
one pole of the net and sprang into the water, leaving Will and I to pay
out on our side. She was a tall, strong girl, but what with the force of
the inward current and the mad p