The White Czar: A Story of a Polar Bear

by Clarence Hawkes

First she spent a day and a night in seeming deep grief, lying in the snow by his side. Then she yielded to the urge of hunger, and, sad to relate, made a good meal upon him. Having satisfied the gnawing at her vitals, she turned back towards the seashore where the white bears had been spending the last two months.

But hunting was poor in the land of Omingmong. The seals and walrus were all further south, where they were slowly following the first movements of the ice northward. So, as the hunting was poor and she was restless, being heavy with young, the Czarina started southward following upon the ice almost parallel with the three heavily loaded komatiks, upon one of which was the white coat of her mate. She did not go as far southward as they did, however, but stopped about ten miles north of Eskimo Town, and took up her abode in a cave in the side of a cliff which fringed the sea. Here she gave birth to two white cubs, blind and almost hairless.

Ordinarily while she was nursing the small bears, her mate would have hunted for her, but he was dead; so the responsibility for her own food and the sustenance of the two cubs fell upon the mother bear. Thus it happened that this white hunter came forth to hunt along the icefloe on the same morning that the Eskimo party started out.

But she was up much earlier than they. For two hours before the tardy arctic sun finally appeared, she had been lying upon the ice, partly shielded by an upturned cake, watching a pair of walrus which were disporting themselves in the open water nearby.

She would have much preferred hunting seal, as walrus hunting is dangerous sport.

Just across from where she lay a point of land jutted far out into the open water, and the cow and the bull walrus finally climbed upon some rocks to sun. The sun's rays were still very feeble, but this was better than nothing.

After watching them closely for a long time, the white bear saw another cow walrus climb upon a rock nearby. Her calf stayed in the water disporting himself and occasionally popping up his round head, which was not shaped like anything in particular. The calf himself was a fat rotund bundle of flesh, weighing perhaps a hundred pounds. Anyhow he looked good to the hungry mother bear as she lay on the ice watching.

Finally she decided that the bull was asleep. The cow also seemed to be dozing. This was her chance, so she silently slipped into the water and swam slowly towards them, keeping just the tip of her nose in sight.