In the larger individuals I noticed a wider radius of response, even though they circled with fish much smaller than themselves. They were faster. They were gaining more control, and more apparent ability to see what was coming, my hand or sieve, for example, and to avoid it. These later age groups were not tossed downstream so helplessly as the earlier one-and-a-half-inchers had been. They showed more strength against the current. Yet the motion of them all was consistent with what I had seen in the adults going the same course. I would see a little gray school of fish circling above the dam between the two outlets, with a beautiful, light swinging, and running by. There might be a sudden split in the middle of them when a leaf fell or a dragonfly touched close to the surface of the water. Then one or two of the tiny fish would fall back over the outlet with an almost electric beat, while the rest stayed. Then four or five more dropped over, and suddenly all the rest spilled over after them. They were tumbled down the first steep ladder; then they followed out the longer stretches farther on, sometimes running with the current, sometimes turning back against it; and on the down side of the road they were caught in the in-boiling waters of the second fishway, before the uninterrupted flow ahead. A minority came down the side or waste stream instead of swimming down the second fishway, and, because they were not contained there as they were in the resting pools, I could see more clearly what happened to them as they approached a falls. The current was consistently smooth and swift, but it was a long, level, calm stretch of water. I watched them swimming straight down with it and then, quite close to the sudden tug of the high falls, they would turn back. They felt it, and had a quick response to it. It was as though they suddenly had their equilibrium tested, and that they were like trapeze artists feeling wrists, body, and rope, before swinging out and over. Then down where Stony Brook was broad, shallow, and swift, they ran, or were carried on, like sticks and leaves. Where the water lost some of its force they swam up against it, in little schools together, or they swam off to the side of the main flow for a while, sometimes lingering in deeper water, or the shelter of rocks and banks, but continually returning to it, always a part of that outward seagoing rhythm. Gradually they traversed the swirling, eddying, long-stretching waters. They moved toward the influence of the tides where the brook ran through the marshes. They held position or circled back when the brackish water came in against them. Finally they swam, or were pulled out, from Paine’s Creek on an ebb tide, and moved toward the new shelter of the sea and its many dangers. XVII The Power of Fragility