For his part, the White Sturgeon had no desire to hurt anything. His sole wish was to be left alone, so he could peacefully pursue his own path of destiny. He grubbed in the mud for his food and idled when he was not eating. But, because he had a prodigious appetite, he was eating most of the time. As a consequence, he continued to grow very rapidly.
Again and again, while he pursued his lazy journey down the river, the White Sturgeon saw the lake sturgeon swim past him as they headed upstream toward the spawning grounds. Swimming strongly, they came in huge schools. Spent from the spawning, they swam slowly past him on their way back to the lake.
Vaguely the White Sturgeon identified himself with these fish. Never did he have more than a passing wish to join them. He wanted only to continue his leisurely trip down the river, and time meant nothing at all.
Though the White Sturgeon did not realize it, everything was part of a mighty pattern and a vast scheme. Though there had never been a time when he was not in danger, the river had not been an unkind school. There he had learned how to avoid his enemies and how to become the powerful fish which he must be were he to live. Then the river gave him his last test.
He was near the mouth, only a few miles from the lake, when he suddenly found himself face to face with a monstrous pike. The pike in the pool of his birth were big, but they were dwarfed by this one. Out of the shadows he came, a long, sinewy thing with the heart of a tiger and the jaws of a pike. Even wolves' jaws are not more terrible.
The White Sturgeon did as he always did when danger threatened; he held very still. But this time it was futile because the pike had already seen him. Thus the thing which must never happen, did happen. The White Sturgeon came face to face with danger in its deadliest form. If he lived through this, then never again would he have to fear an enemy that swam in the water.
Suddenly the pike whirled, flipped a contemptuous tail, and drifted back into the shadows out of which he had come. He was not afraid; no pike is ever afraid of anything, but the White Sturgeon was nearly as large as he and even the pike never killed wantonly, or destroyed that which he could not eat. The White Sturgeon swam on. He had graduated with honors from the river's school, and he seemed to know it. For the first time since his birth, a mighty restlessness gripped him.
Not again did he linger in the pools, or stop to feed for a week or a month wherever he found a rich feeding bed. Urgings and commands within him that had been passive were suddenly active.
With all this, he remained a harmless fish. Never born to battle, he had no wish to fight and he did not abandon all his hard-won caution. If the pike had not hurt him, nothing that swam in the river or lake would hurt him; but the White Sturgeon retained a fear of those creatures not born of the water. Aliens, they would not abide by the creed of the water. While heeding a sudden and great wish to get out of the river and into the lake, the White Sturgeon stayed far from both river banks.
A ghost figure in the murky water, he shot out of the river's mouth and into the cold lake. For a while he sported like a dolphin, rising to the surface, showing his white back, and diving.