“But why do you think that, Cal? What proof is there—”
“Why, the thing’s obvious on its face. A dead fish floats, doesn’t it? Well, in any good fishing water, such as the Adirondack lakes, where I fished with my father one summer, there are millions of fish—big and little—scores of millions, even hundreds of millions, if you count shiners and the other minnows, that of a clear day lie in banks from the bottom of the water to its surface. Now, if fish died natural deaths in anything like the proportion that all other living things do, the surface of such lakes would be constantly covered with dead fish. Right here at Quasi and in all these coast waters the same thing is true. Every creek mouth is full of fish and every shoal is alive with them, so that we know in advance when we go fishing that we can catch them as fast as we can take them off the hook. If any reasonable rate of natural mortality prevailed among them every flood tide would strew the shores with tons of dead fish. As nothing of the kind happens, it seems to me certain that as a rule fish do not die a natural death. In fact, most of them have no chance to do that, as they spend pretty nearly their entire time in swallowing each other alive.”
“You are a close observer, Cal. You ought to become a man of science,” said Dunbar with enthusiasm. “Science needs men of your kind.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Cal. “I imagine Science can get on very comfortably without any help of mine.”
“How did you come to notice all that, anyhow, Cal?” asked Dick.
“Oh, it didn’t take much to suggest that sort of thing, when the facts were staring me in the face. Besides, I may be all wrong. What do you think of my wild guess, Mr. Dunbar?”
“It isn’t a wild guess. Your conclusion may be right or wrong—I must think of the subject carefully before I can form any opinion as to that. But at any rate it is a conclusion reasoned out from a careful observation of facts, and that is nothing like a wild guess.”
Thus the conversation drifted on throughout the long rainy day, and when night came the boys were agreed that they had learned to know Dunbar and appreciate him more than they could have done in weeks of ordinary intercourse.