“That first shot of mine must have fatally wounded it. Anyway it’s as dead as a door-nail, and seems to have been dead for some time. I expect we might have come down a lot sooner if we had known.”
“I wish we had,” said Alice. “I think I’m a pincushion of beestings.”
“Well, go and get the bees off you. I’ll light a fire, and then I’ll do the same.”
Alice retired into the shadows and loosened her clothing. Carl built a blaze from light wood, got rid of his own bees by brushing and slapping, and dragged the carcass of the bear up to the firelight. It was a medium-sized animal, with a beautiful, black, glossy pelt, but nearly the whole of one side was soaked and stiffened with blood. There was, also, a large pool of blood where it had been lying. It was plain that Carl’s first bullet had cut an artery somewhere, and the bear had gradually weakened and lain down to die quietly by the tree.
There was something rather pathetic about this ending of the wild animal, Alice thought, when she had come back and had it explained to her.
“Well, you’ll have your bearskin anyway. That’ll partly compensate for the honey we’ve lost through him.”
“Do you know how to skin a bear?” Alice demanded.
“No,” replied her brother, “but I’ve got a knife, and I’m going to try.”
It was then shortly after two o’clock in the morning. They got out their lunch gladly, and ate it by the fire, and then Carl undertook the task of skinning the game. The light was not very good, and he had only a large pocket-knife, so that the operation proved longer and more fatiguing than he had expected.
“I don’t know whether I’m doing this in the orthodox manner,” he said as he wrestled with it. “But anyway I’m getting the hide off all in one piece.”