Although they were hardly aware of this warning, they obeyed it instantly, their careful footsteps entirely muffled in the thick carpet of snow as they approached the clearing.
Perhaps one thing that had warned them was the fact that they could no longer hear the voices of Kapje and his son. Their low, guttural jabbering had ceased, and in its place reigned an uncanny silence.
Bobby, his hair fairly rising on his head, was the first to reach the clearing and, still keeping himself partially concealed, he peered forth cautiously toward the spot where he had last seen the Eskimos.
At the sight that met his eyes it is small wonder that the blood congealed in his veins. It seemed as though his whole body had turned to ice.
With a slight motion of his hand he warned his comrades to be quiet. But in spite of the warning they crept close to him, peering over his shoulder at the tableau that held him spellbound.
Then slowly they also seemed turned to ice, frozen to the spot, horror-stricken, unable to move.
For there, a few feet from the water’s edge where they had left them, lay the two Eskimos motionless, apparently dead. And above them, sniffing at them curiously, patting them tentatively now and then with a great clumsy paw, stood a sinister, yellowish shape.
“A bear,” thought Bobby, in horror.
The bear was a lean, half-grown brute, half-starved by the look of him, his coat a dirty yellow white—by Kapje’s own admission the most vicious and formidable of his kind.
Bobby heard a gasp behind him and knew that Fred was about to rush into the open, with nobody knew what mad hope of rescuing the two men from their horrible fate.