But Tom thought nothing about what the river was like. All his
fancy was, to get down to the wide wide sea.

And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out
into broad still shallow reaches, so wide that little Tom, as he
put his head out of the water, could hardly see across.

And there he stopped. He got a little frightened. "This must be
the sea," he thought. "What a wide place it is! If I go on into
it I shall surely lose my way, or some strange thing will bite me.
I will stop here and look out for the otter, or the eels, or some
one to tell me where I shall go."

So he went back a little way, and crept into a crack of the rock,
just where the river opened out into the wide shallows, and watched
for some one to tell him his way: but the otter and the eels were
gone on miles and miles down the stream.

There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite tired with his
night's journey; and, when he woke, the stream was clearing to a
beautiful amber hue, though it was still very high. And after a
while he saw a sight which made him jump up; for he knew in a
moment it was one of the things which he had come to look for.

Such a fish! ten times as big as the biggest trout, and a hundred
times as big as Tom, sculling up the stream past him, as easily as
Tom had sculled down.

Such a fish! shining silver from head to tail, and here and there a
crimson dot; with a grand hooked nose and grand curling lip, and a