We all promised faithfully to do as she wished. These were dear mother's last words to us, and a few moments later she died and her soul flew away to those happy hunting-grounds where, as we bears are taught to believe, it is our part to handle the fire-sticks, and that of the human beings to be hunted!
Thus we lost our dear mother, together with a small sister and brother whom we could better spare. Considering the circumstances of our deprivation, by means of the foulest murder, of a parent's care and authority, and of our last promise to a beloved and dying mother, is it to be wondered at that I can never cherish any other feeling towards that arch-enemy of my family—man, than hatred, and that of the deepest? My brother Mishka, from whom I hear occasionally, in a manner utterly unsuspected by his "Keepers" in the Zoological Gardens at St. Petersburg, frequently does his best to persuade me to modify my opinion of and conduct towards mankind. He says the humans are not nearly so bad as one thinks, and that he has a very good time in his perpetual berloga (from which the poor fellow cannot escape), and gets plenty of victuals of the best quality. He says he likes children the best—they are so very generous with their buns and cakes. Ha ha! I agree with him about the youngsters! I like the children best, too! they are so deliciously tender and flaky. I have enjoyed several, and sincerely hope I have not tasted my last.
But I must proceed with my narrative. This then was to be the pivot upon which my future career was to turn: hatred of and animosity towards the human race. If I could at any time injure their persons or damage their property it should be done; I had vowed it; that very night as we three children lay huddled and trembling, poor orphans of a murdered mother, within our desolate berloga, we all vowed it. Man was henceforth our enemy.
We were all reduced to great straits just at this time, for a living. Poor little creatures that we were, it puzzles me now, when I think of it, how we managed to pull through that dreadful period. The fact of the matter is, we were obliged to eat all sorts of things which we should otherwise have left alone; it was now April, and we contrived to live upon the young leaves and grass blades and shoots of various trees and bushes, together with—I blush to record it—field-mice, squirrels, an occasional hare, and sometimes a partridge or grey hen, when one could be found obligingly sitting on a nestful of eggs and dreaming of the joys of maternity. We ate the eggs also.
So we dragged along until July came. But each day life became easier and more enjoyable, for the rye and oats soon began to grow tall in the fields surrounding the villages; the bees were up and about, and furnished us with the perfectly delicious results of their labours; and the woods gradually filled themselves with berries and luxuries of all sorts. When the oats were ripe we fared magnificently.
One day we met a splendid specimen of our family whom we soon discovered to be none other than our father—the consort of our dear mother, now deceased. He received us fairly well; but my veneration for the paternal relative suffered a rude shock when he informed my brother and sister and myself that, with every desire to be a good father to us, he could not permit us to trespass upon a certain oat-field which he declared did not contain any more than he absolutely required for his own subsistence. He made some sympathetic remarks as to mother's death, with his mouth full of delicious ripe oats, and then bade farewell of us (meaning us to go—he evidently had no intention of leaving the field!), remarking, cordially enough, that he would always be glad to see us, and to hear of any favourable feeding-grounds we might come across, if large enough for all, "but never mind your old father if rations are scarce!" he added. I never saw my parent again. Very shortly after the day upon which he warned us off that oat-field, which—by the way—we had discovered, he actually permitted himself to be driven away from its precincts by a mere peasant-human armed with an axe. I fancy my father must be a very inferior person compared with my good brave mother. She would have behaved very differently towards that peasant—we should undoubtedly have had him for supper: oats, peasant, and honey; a supper of three courses fit for the gods. But for a member of the family of Ursidæ to be ignominiously chased away from an oat-field by a peasant—oh! dear me—disgraceful! disgraceful!
II
Well, it was a grand time for us, that first summer. How we grew and fattened! By the early part of the autumn, we were really quite respectable-sized members of the community. About this time we lost our brother Vainka. It was an exciting thing, rather, and I will note down the story in full. It was like this.
We were all three busily engaged in breakfasting among the tall stems of a rye-field, near a village, when we observed several human children playing about in an adjoining belt of pasture-land. There were no grown men present, so far as we were aware, and we determined to amuse ourselves, and at the same time to piously observe the injunctions of our dear mother deceased, by doing our best to frighten the brats out of their wits, and, if possible, injure them besides; we were too small, as yet, to do them any very serious harm; in fact, they were rather bigger, I think, than we.
So we crept towards them, hidden from view by the beautiful thick rye-stalks, until we were close to the edge of the pasture-field. Then, at a signal from Natasha, we all three pounced out upon them, growling and open-mouthed. Oh dear, oh dear! it was a funny sight to see those children! The silly creatures were too startled to move until we were upon them. They stood staring and shrieking, with eyes and mouth open, and turned to run only when it was too late. How we laughed as we rolled them over and over in the grass and scratched their faces, and tore their dresses off their backs! and how they screamed! The whole population of the village rushed out to see what all the noise was about, big men and women with axes and long things called scythes, and then we thought it was time to retire among our rye-stalks. There we hid ourselves and laughed, and ate the delicious cool, juicy grasses, and the luscious rye-grains, until we could eat and laugh no more, and determined to make a move into the woods, in order to have a good drink in a moss pool we knew of and then lie down a bit and sleep off the excitement. But to our horror we found that those mean wretches, the humans belonging to the village, were waiting for us outside the cover. They had sneaked up and surrounded us, and were sitting silently all along the edge of the field, armed with their axes and scythes and nets; luckily they had no fire-sticks!