“I wonder if he has had lessons in aviation and wants to show off his skill. Wouldn’t he cut a fine figure in my place, yanking the levers and cruising round in the sky? What would Professor Morgan think if he saw him? Probably he would suspect it was I trying to disguise myself.”
But there was a serious side to the situation. The machine was likely to be injured beyond the present power of repair unless the brute were driven away. After nosing for some minutes he seemed to know that no more sandwiches remained. That being the case, what more tempting morsel could he ask than a plump American youngster about seventeen years old? Probably from his standpoint there was none, for at this juncture he dropped back on all fours and started round the aeroplane with a view of sampling that youngster.
“This is a good time for me to leave,” was the hasty conclusion of Harvey, who plunged into the woods, with the bear in hot pursuit. He knew something of such animals, and although he could see only dimly in the gloom under the trees, he recognized a sapling by running against it and nearly knocking himself senseless. He staggered back, recovered himself, and grasping the small trunk, ascended it faster than he had ever before climbed a tree. He strove desperately, expecting every second that the enormous claws of the bear would grip one of his legs and drag him back to the ground, but when he had gone so high that his support began bending over alarmingly, he knew he was secure for the time.
A few moonbeams straggled through the limbs and showed the dim outlines of the shaggy brute, which once more rose on his rear legs and reached upward, as if he expected his supper to drop into his maws.
“You can wait there till doomsday, but you won’t see me coming down to meet you.”
Harvey was twelve or fifteen feet from the ground, enough to ensure his safety so long as present conditions continued. He had reached a limb half as thick as the sapling and he swung a leg over it. Thus he was able to sustain himself, but the position soon began to be irksome. The limb chafed his leg, and when he shifted it as much as he could the relief lasted only a few minutes.
Meanwhile, he kept his enemy under observation. The ursus species is not noted for its intelligence, but after awhile this one decided he was baffled for the time. His kind cannot climb a small tree, though they find little difficulty in going up a shaggy trunk around which their claws do not meet. This specimen sank back on all fours, but held his place at the foot of the sapling.
“Now what is he thinking about?” Harvey asked himself, with a chill of fear the next minute, when his support was violently shaken; “I wonder whether he’s going to pull up this young tree by the roots. I don’t believe he can do it, but if he knew enough he could wrap his paws around it and draw it over to bring me within reach.”
The shaking ceased, as if the bear had given up that idea, if indeed he had ever held it. The obscurity was too deep for Harvey to make sure, but he fancied that a tree, probably an oak, with trunk several feet in diameter, grew so near the sapling that it was within reach of his hand.
“Like enough he will climb it,” reflected Harvey, “till he is higher than I am and then drop down on my head. Why don’t he give up and clear out?”