Silas was delighted when he saw the two live bears. “Heaven bless you, sir!” he exclaimed. “Why, sir, they’ll fetch forty pounds each in the London too. Forty pounds, sir! Think o’ that. Eighty pounds for the two o’ them. Keep my little wife and all the family for a month o’ Sundays. Hurrah! matie, luck’s turned.”
Chapter Eighteen.
A New Arrival—The Dogs—Trapper Seth Becomes Kennel-Man—Preparations for a Great Seal Hunt—The Greenland Bear.
On the very day that McBain shot the great she-bear—for it was one of the largest that ever fell before a sportsman’s gun—on that day, and on the afternoon of that day, just as our heroes were about to leave the island and re-embark on the Arrandoon, there landed from off that saucy “little two-stick yacht” one of the tallest Yankees that ever stepped in boots.
Seth squeezed the hand of this countryman of his till tears sprang into the stranger’s eyes; and they were not tears of emotion, nor sentiment either, but of downright pain.
“I say, siree?” cried the newcomer, shaking his hand and looking at the tips of his fingers, “patriotism and brotherly love are both beautiful things in their way, but when it comes to squeezing the blood out from under a fellow’s finger-nails, then I say, bother brotherly love.”
“I’m proud to meet you, sir,” exclaimed Seth, “let us shake hands once more.”
“Never a shake, old man,” said the stranger; “let us admire each other at a respectable distance. But come, gentlemen all,” he continued, turning to the others, “you ain’t going on board just yet. Come up with me to my house. I daresay you’ve been there already; but come back and break bread with Nathaniel Cobb, sometimes called the Little Wonder, because I ain’t much more’n seven feet high.”