The Silver Eel
An old fisherman frees a silver eel; the next year a great drought comes and the eel leaps from the stream into the fields, greening the grain and filling the ponds so the village survives, but its scales fall and it lies spent. The villagers set its figure in the shrine.
Old Zhou the fisherman cast his net at night in the stream and caught a silver eel, some three feet long, its scales white as frosted, its eyes bright as if holding sorrow. Touched by its purity, Old Zhou freed it from the net. The eel looked back three times, then sank away.
The next year a great drought came; the wells ran dry and the crops curled brown, and the old and young in the village wept, facing one another. Old Zhou grieved and could not sleep. Suddenly he heard water murmur outside the door; he went to look and saw the silver eel leap from the stream into the fields, winding along; where it passed, the withered grain put forth ears and the dry ponds filled. By dawn the whole village survived by it, but the eel's scales had fallen and it lay spent at the water's edge.
Old Zhou fed it rice broth; the eel lingered a few days, then died.
The villagers, moved, set a silver-eel figure in the shrine, and in drought they pray there.
The Chronicler of the Strange says: Old Zhou's single kind thought freed an eel in its small hour; the eel's single act of repayment saved a village at its end. A creature's knowing of kindness brooks no size; a man who receives favor may forget its source. Today there are those who eat a man's bread and forget his grace — set beside this silver eel, can they not redden? The eel is a tiny thing, yet its repayment weighed more than a mountain; man is smarter than the creature, yet bears ingratitude as if natural — is that not a sorrow?