"I dare say Kalvik is rather lively during the summer season," Emerson
remarked to Cherry, later in the day.

"Yes; the ships arrive in May, and the fish begin to run in July. After
that nobody sleeps."

She had come upon him staring dispiritedly at the fire, and his dejection
softened her and drew out her womanly sympathy. She had renewed her
efforts to cheer him up, seeking to stir him out of the gloom that
imprisoned him. With the healthy optimism and exuberance of her normal
youth she could not but deplore the mischance that had changed him into
the sullen, silent brute he seemed.

"It must be rather interesting," he observed, indifferently.

"It is more than that; it is inspiring. Why, the story of the salmon is an
epic in itself. You know they live a cycle of four years, no more, always
returning to the waters of their nativity to die; and I have heard it said
that during one of those four years they disappear, no one knows where,
reappearing out of the mysterious depths of the sea as if at a signal.
They come by the legion, in countless scores of thousands; and when once
they have tasted the waters of their birth they never touch food again,
never cease their onward rush until they become bruised and battered
wrecks, drifting down from the spawning-beds. When the call of nature is
answered and the spawn is laid they die. They never seek the salt sea
again, but carpet the rivers with their bones. When they feel the homing