With their last strength, the boys gained the rock. Tom clambered on Jim’s shoulders, drew himself on to the flat summit and with a desperate effort reached down and drew his companion up beside him.
And not an instant too soon. Before Jim’s feet were over the edge the bear had gained the base of the rock. He reared up, made a terrific swipe with his fore paws at Jim’s dangling feet, and the boy escaped death by an inch. Even as it was, one of the beast’s swordlike claws ripped through Jim’s moccasin and he howled with terror.
They were not yet safe. The bear, standing on his hind legs, could actually reach the edge of the rock’s summit and again and again he strove to draw himself up; growling horribly, cutting great grooves in the ice on the sides of the rock as he dug his hind claws into it. The boys huddled close and yelled each time one of the great, shaggy feet, with its three-inch claws, appeared over the edge of their refuge. Presently something of courage and confidence returned to them. Unless the bear found a grip, a crevice or a roughness on the rock for his hind feet, he could not reach them. Wounded as he was, his strength was unequal to the task of lifting his enormous weight by his front feet alone. Still, those fearful claws brought mortal terror to the boys each time they appeared. Then an idea came to Jim. Whipping out his heavy knife, he reached forward and each time a paw appeared he rapped it and slashed at it with the heavy steel blade.
Roaring until the air trembled, the bear drew back his feet and hurled himself bodily at the rock. At his second onslaught the boys’ faces grew white, their hearts seemed to stop beating. The rock moved! There was not a question of it. Instead of a solid, upjutting ledge as they had thought, it was merely a big upstanding bowlder, a loose stone frozen to the hilltop. At any moment it might crash over and throw them, injured and helpless, into the grip of the bear!
Sick with deadly fear, speechless, scarcely breathing, the boys cowered on their narrow refuge, while with each blow of the bear, the stone swayed and rocked. Each time the boys expected to feel it toppling to crash down into the snow.
Never in all their lives had such utter terror filled their hearts. They were absolutely at the bear’s mercy. The hope that his wounds might tell and that his strength would give out were groundless. He seemed as fresh, as strong and more maddened than ever. The boys felt that only their mangled bleeding bodies would remain to tell of their fate when Unavik arrived. It was awful to be killed this way—ripped and slashed and torn by the infuriated bear. Bitterly the boys regretted having remained behind to guard the bodies of the slain deer.
“I—I guess it’s all up with us,” stammered Tom, trying to choke back the lump in his throat.