The meat would at once freeze and there was a good chance of finding it still eatable according to Eskimo appetites even six months hence.
When everything had been made ready on the third morning after sighting the Omingmongs, it was decided that Tukshu and Tunkine should proceed on the journey towards Eskimo town while Eiseeyou prospected about for the balance of the day for more Omingmongs. He could easily overtake the party as the komatiks were loaded very heavily and would travel slow.
So Eiseeyou took fresh meat enough with him for a day's rations, filled his belt with a new supply of cartridges, and set off.
They had come northward parallel with the sea, not going more than twenty miles inland at any time. So Eiseeyou turned back towards the sea, wishing to explore that part of the country. If he was looking for an adventure he certainly found it, but not in just the form that he would have selected had he had anything to say about it. But when one goes prospecting in a wilderness like this, he must expect to meet almost any sort of a wild stranger. So if Eiseeyou was astonished, he may also have surprised the Czar.
The polar bear, whom I call the Czar of the Frozen North, is in a class quite by himself. He is not nearly as large as his cousin the Kadiak bear, but that huge beast inhabits a comparatively small area and is little known, while the white Czar ranges along the shores of the Arctic sea round the entire world. His scientific name, Thalarctos Maritimus, means Bear of the Sea.
He is also called the water bear. By this you will know that he is very much at home in the water. In fact cold baths are his specialty. With the thermometer registering twenty below zero, this hardy fellow will plunge into the Arctic sea and swim for hours among the floating ice cakes. He also dives with great ease, but rarely goes further than a day's journey inland.
His home is on the icefloe and he travels with it, going northward in the summer and coming back southward in the winter.
Like the walrus, the seal, the narwal, and some of the foxes, he follows the icefloe because it gives him such good eating.