From where we were all that could be seen of the bear was a small yellow spot away over on the other side of a big pan. I was told to go aloft and keep my eyes on him and to yell if he went into the water. If a bear [[139]]gets into the water it is pretty easy to get him, for he doesn’t swim too fast to catch. But if he gets to land he is likely to get away. Cap’n Bob was afraid he might start across the big pan one way, as we went round the other.
Anyway, the Morrissey went around the pan and nosed up, very quietly, to within about thirty yards of him. The bear held his nose high in the air and then came toward the ship making a very pretty jump across some young ice. He seemed not a bit afraid, only very interested in this strange new huge animal that had come to bother him.
Cap’n Bob wanted to be sure for us to get this first bear, so several took a shot together. The rifles of Dad and Dan and Doc all blazed out together and later we found that each shot hit and that any one of them apparently would have been fatal.
Jim and Ralph jumped out on the ice from the bowsprit and made a line fast to the dead [[140]]bear and he was hoisted aboard and laid up forward, the rest of the deck being pretty full of walrus meat and skins and heads. About that time we looked pretty messy and like a butcher shop, but right away, as the barometer was falling and it felt like snow, all hands went to work and kept at it until breakfast, by which time things were pretty shipshape.
Kellerman “Shoots” Some Eskimos of Inglefield Gulf.
After that, by the way, we had a wonderful assortment of meat. There was walrus heart and meat, and bear meat hanging in the rigging and a big bunch of auks and murres hanging in the shrouds, and also some fine seal meat. Some of this seal we ate at dinner that next day, boiled not very much, and it certainly was fine. So for some time we had a pretty fine meat diet.
Right away, too, Billy boiled out a couple of bottles of bear oil for Dad and Rasmussen. This is great stuff for shoes and leather.
And speaking of bear, I now have two complete [[141]]outfits of Eskimo clothing. The northern kind has nanookies, or bear pants. Nette made these on board from a part of a skin Dr. Rasmussen gave Dad, and at Karnah when we stopped the Eskimo women there chewed it up in their teeth so that the hide became very soft and easy to work. Then there are sealskin boots with rabbit fur inside and a sealskin netcha or jacket with a hood to go over the head. It is a wonderfully warm and comfortable rig, this northern outfit.
This bear of ours, they said, was a four-year-old. He measured seven feet and four inches long and they guessed he weighed close to six hundred pounds. Later on Fred fixed up the skin and the head to be taken back and made into a rug. I worked on the skull, which takes quite a lot of work to clean all the flesh off.