There were a few people walking on the flats in the distance where herring gulls were yelping and an occasional tern gave a light, harsh cry. An old panting setter dog lunged aimlessly across the sands, then splashed through the shallow waters of the creek at its outlet. On the beach a family crowd of bathers were listening to a portable radio that noised out the baseball scores. Some of them got up and saw to their children, or fell, sat down, or dove into the water at the edge of the sands. They sounded low, then high, like the gulls--“Stop it!” “Come on!” “Here, bunny” “Come back here!” “Jump in”--full of alarm, solicitude, friendliness, irritation, communality. Back in the channel where the tiny fish, progeny of _Pomolobus pseudoharengus_, were swimming on in the brown water, a couple of growing, gawky children, a boy and a girl, half round, half lean, were pushing each other down, floundering and thrashing, while they laughed and threatened each other, completely oblivious of the great migration a few yards away. Or can anything be oblivious? I felt that I had come to the middle of things. =Transcriber’s Notes= New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected. Illustrations have been moved nearer to the text to which they refer.