Ben sat dreaming.  The Athabaska Rapids was not an empty name to him now.  He remembered the day he had won the canoe race at Lodge Pole.  Other exploits occurred to him,—­of brutal, savage brawls in river taverns, of adventures on the trail, of struggling with wild rivers when his canoe capsized, of running the great logs down through white waters.  It was his world, these far-stretching wildernesses.  And he blessed, with all the fervency of his heart, the man who had brought him home.

He went to his bed, but sleep did not at once come to him.  He lay with hushed breathing, listening to the little, secret noises, known so well, of the wilderness night.  He heard the wild creatures start forth on their midnight journeys.  Once a lynx mewed at the edge of the forest; and he laughed aloud when some large creature—­probably a moose—­grunted and splashed water in the near-by beaver meadow.

Thus ended the first of a brilliant succession of joyous days, descending the stream in the daylight hours and camping on the bank at night.  Every day they plunged deeper into the heart of the wilderness, and every hour Ben felt more at home.

It was only play for him,—­to meet and shoot successfully the rapids of the river.  In the long stillnesses he paddled hour upon hour, not only to make time but to find an outlet for his surging energy.  His old-time woodsman’s pleasures were recalled again:  shooting waterfowl for their mess in the still dawns, racing the swimming moose when they ran on him in the water.  One day, fish hungry, he rigged up the elementary fishing tackle that they had brought from Saltsville and tried for a salmon.

To a long, tough rod cut on the river bank he attached thirty feet of cheap, white cord, and to the cord he fastened a bright spoon hook—­the spinner that salmon fishers know.  He had no leader, no reel, no delicately balanced salmon rod—­and Ezram was full of scorn for the whole proceeding.  And it was certainly true that, by all the rules of angling, Ben had no chance whatever to get a bite.

The cord was visible in the clear water, and the spoon itself was scarcely more than twenty feet from the rear of the boat.  But this northern stream was not at all like the famous salmon rivers known to sportsmen.  In years to come, when the lines of communication are better and tourist hotels are established on its banks, the river may then begin to conform to the qualifications of a conventional fishing stream, and then Ben’s crude tackle will be unavailing.  But at present the salmon were not so particular.  As fishermen came but rarely, the fish were in countless numbers; and in such a galaxy there were bound to be few misguided fish that did not know a sportsman’s tackle from a dub’s.

The joy of angling, once known, dwells in the body until death, and Ben was a born fisherman.  The old delight that can never die crept back to him the instant he felt the clumsy rod in his hands and the faint throb of the line through the delicate mechanism of his nerves.  And apparently for no other reason than that the river hordes wished to welcome him home, almost at once a gigantic bull salmon took his spoon.