"The sun would come back again for him. The moon and the stars would shine for him once more. It must be very hard for him, a little boy alone in the dark."
They were white men, and they knew how to argue and to make bad things look good. Eiseeyou was only a simple Eskimo and he needed the money desperately. So he finally agreed. He would help; he would help them capture the White Czar. But little Oumauk must never know for it would break his heart. It already ached enough.
So the ship's carpenter set to work the following day making a cage for the White Czar. The frame was made of three by six timbers and the rest of the cage was two inch plank. Eiseeyou shook his head and said it was rather frail to hold him, for he knew the great bear's strength better than the white men. So they bolted it at all the corners and bound it with iron straps, which would stiffen it without making it too heavy. Finally it was all ready, and with a heavy heart Eiseeyou set forth with four white men in a motor boat to betray the White Czar into the clutch of civilization—that great strong hand which reaches forth to the ends of the earth and grasps so many beautiful and wonderful things, only to kill both their beauty and life at last.
They found the white bear upon a small island eating a seal pup. But when one of their number landed he at once took to the water in an attempt to swim to another island nearer the mainland. That was just what the men wanted.
Now the White Czar is the very best swimmer of all quadrupeds. He can swim for hours in the icy water. Miles in the water are nothing to him, if he has the time in which to do them.
But the poor white monster had never heard of a motor boat. All of the modern engines for annihilating distance were unknown to him. He was amazed and rather frightened at the speed with which this strange thing came after him. But he was not really afraid, for he was the White Czar. He was the Czar of the frozen north; and why should he be afraid? But he could not understand this strange chugging thing. It had neither head nor legs, yet it swam like a great fish.
Before he had covered half the distance to the other island, it was almost upon him. Then he turned with an angry snarl to fight. He raised his head up out of the water and showed his shining set of teeth and snarled at the white hunters in a way that made their blood run cold. If their plans should miscarry—if he got at them, it would be a fight to the finish.