“We don’t want to be left in the lurch again, Steve,” said the captain, “if we do happen to meet a bear. What do you say, Johannes? There are bears here, I suppose?”
“For certain, sir. You never know where you may meet them. But this is hardly the place. You see, there are not likely to be any seals here. Where there are seals there are pretty sure to be bears.”
“What are we likely to get, then?” asked the doctor.
“Deer, sir. If we go cautiously up the valley yonder, we shall see the deer where the snow has melted off the slope. There will be moss there.”
But a long and tedious tramp over exceedingly tangled ground followed their landing, and they trudged along among stones, over snow, and through swampy patches, where there were wild fowl; but these were left in peace in the hope of a more substantial addition to the larder being found.
Snow was all around them, but the sun poured down with so much power that they were all pretty well exhausted when the captain proposed that they should endeavour to make their way back by another valley, separated from the one they were in merely by a lofty hog-back-like range of rocky hill.
“I saw wild fowl going in that direction, and we must direct our attention to them now.”
Jakobsen gave his opinion that such a course was quite possible, and leading the way he struck along a narrow gulley, which evidently connected the two valleys at the end of the range.
The walking was worse than ever there, and Steve was beginning to lag and wish that some one else would carry his heavy gun, when Jakobsen, who had passed out of sight behind a chaotic mass of rocks, suddenly came hurriedly back.
“He has seen deer,” whispered Johannes, who was close beside Steve, and seemed to look upon himself as the boy’s bodyguard.