"And eating up our stores, as like as not!" cried Maurice.
This made the case considerably more serious.
"We must get him out of that!" Macgregor exclaimed.
How to do it was the difficulty, and, still more, how to do it with safety. Both the rifles were still lying loaded under the shelter, probably under the very feet of the bear.
"Well, we've got to take a chance!" declared Macgregor at last. "Talk about cold feet! We'll certainly have them frozen if we stand here much longer. Scatter out, boys, all around the camp. Then we'll snowball the brute out. Likely he's too scared to want to fight. Anyhow, if he jumps out on one side, the man on the opposite side must jump into the camp and grab a rifle."
It looked risky, to provoke a charge from the animal in that deep snow, where they could hardly move, but they waded around the camp till they stood at equal distances apart, surrounding the hollowed space.
"Now let him have it!" cried Peter.
Immediately they began to throw snowballs into the camp, aiming at that dark hole under the cedar roof where the animal was hidden. But the snow was too dry to pack into lumps, and the light masses they flung produced no effect. Peter broke off branches from a dead tree and threw them into the shelter, without causing the bear to come out. Finally Fred, who happened to be standing beside a birch tree, peeled off a great strip of bark and lighted it with a match.
"Hold on! Don't throw that!" yelled Peter.
He was too late. Fred had already cast the flaming mass into the camp, too close to the piles of cedar twigs. The resinous leaves caught and flashed up. There was a glare of smoky flame—a wild scramble and scurry under the shelter, and the bear burst out, and plunged at the snowy sides of the pit on the side opposite Fred's position.