"Here," said I, "shoot that bear for me!"
The old salt chuckled, and had his eye to the piece immediately. I snatched up my glass. Kit paused to see the result. The old man pulled the trigger. There was a moment's hush, then a great "Hurrah!" The bear had jumped up, and, whirling partly round, ran off across the ice-field roaring, we fancied; for he had his mouth open, and snapping round to his flanks. He had been grazed, if nothing more. With the glass we could detect blood on his white coat.
"He's hit!" said I. "Let's bear up into the channel: that'll stop him from getting back to the high islands. We can then hunt him at leisure on the ice-field. He won't care to swim clean up to the"—
"Hark!" exclaimed Raed suddenly. "What's that noise?"
We all listened.
It was a noise not greatly unlike the faint, distant cawing and hawing of a vast flock of crows as they sometimes congregate in autumn.
"It's some sort of water-fowl clanging out there about the high islands," said I.
Again it rose, borne on the wind,—"Ta-yar-r-r! ta-yar-r-r! ta-yar-r-r!" Had we been at home, I should have taken it for a distant mass-meeting cheering the result of the presidential election, or perhaps the presidential nomination at the convention. It had a peculiarly barbarous, reckless sound, which was not wholly unfamiliar. But up here in Hudson Straits we were at a loss how to account for it.
"I believe it's the Huskies," said the captain. "Take a good look all around with your glasses."
We ran our eyes over the islands. They looked bare of any thing like an Esquimau convention. Presently Kit uttered an exclamation.