Ezram’s first knowledge of it was a wild yell that almost startled him over the side—­the same violent outcry that old anglers still can not restrain when the fish takes hold, even after a lifetime of angling.  When he recovered himself he looked to see Ben kneeling frantically in the stern, hanging for dear life to his rod and seemingly in grave danger of being pulled overboard.

No man who has felt that first, overpowering jolt of a striking salmon can question the rapture of that first moment.  The jolt carried through all the intricacies of the nerves, jarred the soul within the man, and seemingly registered in the germ plasm itself an impression that could be recalled, in dreams, ten generations hence.  Fortunately the pole withstood that first, frantic rush, and then things began to happen in earnest.

The great trout seemed to dance on the surface of the water.  He tugged, he swam in frantic circles, he flopped and darted and sulked and rushed and leaped.  If he hadn’t been securely hooked, and if it had not been for a skill earned in a hundred such battles, Ben would not have held him a moment.

But the time came at last, after a sublime half-hour, when his steam began to die.  His rushes were less powerful, and often he hung like a dead weight on the line.  Slowly Ben worked him in, not daring to believe that he was conquering, willing to sell his soul for the privilege of seeing the great fish safe in the boat.  His eyes protruded, perspiration gleamed on his brow, he talked foolishly and incessantly to Ezram, the fish, the river-gods, and himself.  Ezram, something of an old Isaac Walton himself, managed the canoe with unusual dexterity and chuckled in the contagion of Ben’s delight.  And lo—­in a moment more the thing was done.

“You’d think you never had a rod in your hand before,” Ezram commented in mock disgust.  “Such hollerin’ and whoopin’ I never heard.”

Ben grinned widely.  “That’s fishing—­the sport that keeps a man an amateur all his days—­with an amateur’s delight.”  His vivid smile quivered at his lips and was still.  “That’s why I love the North; it can never, never grow old.  You’re just as excited at the close as at the beginning.  Ezram, old man, it’s life!”

Ezram nodded.  Perhaps, in the moment’s fire, Ben had touched at the truth.  Perhaps life, in its fullest sense, is something more than being born, breathing air, consuming food, and moving the lips in speech. Life is a thing that wilderness creatures know, realized only when the blood, leaping red, sweeps away lifeless and palsied tissue and builds a more sentient structure in its place; invoked by such forces as adventure and danger and battle and triumph.  For the past half-hour Ben had lived in the fullest sense, and Ezram was a little touched by the look of unspeakable gratitude with which his young companion regarded him.

But the journey ended at last.  They saw the white peak they had been told to watch for, and soon after they came to a green bank from which the forest had been cut away.  Softly, rather regretfully, they pushed up and made landing on the banks of a small stream, tributary to the great river, that marked the end of the water route.