Seth paused, and pointed upwards. “The b’ar is yonder!” he whispered. “Stay here; the old trapper’s feet are moccasined, he won’t be heard. Gentlemen, Seth means to have that b’ar, or he won’t come back alive!”
So leaving his companions, onwards, all alone, steals Seth. A bear itself could not have crept more silently, more cautiously along than the trapper does.
Those left behind waited in a fever of almost breathless suspense. The doctor stretched out his arm and took gentle hold of Rory’s wrist. His pulse was over a hundred; so was the doctor’s own, and he could easily hear his heart beat.
How slowly old Seth seems to move. He is on hands and knees now, and many a listening pause he makes. Now he has reached the edge of the icy verandah, and peers carefully over. The bear is there, undoubtedly, for, see, he gives one anxious glance at his rifle—it is a double-barrelled bone-crusher.
Crang-r-r-r! goes the rifle, and every rock in the island seems to re-echo the sound. The reverberation has not ceased, however, when there mingles with it a roar—a blood-curdling roar—that seems to shake the very ground. “Wah-o-ah! waugh! waugh! wah-o?” and a great pale-yellow bear springs from the cave, then falls, quivering and bleeding, on his side in the snow.
Our heroes rush up now.
“Any more of them?” cries Rory.
“Wall, I guess not,” said the old trapper. “Yonder lies the master; I’ve given him a sickener; and the missus ain’t at home. But there is suthin’ black in thar, though!”
“Why,” cried Allan, “I declare it is Freezing Powders himself!” and out into the bright light stalked the poor nigger boy, staring wildly round about, and seemingly in a dream.
“Ah, gem’lams!” he said, slowly, “so you have come at last! What a drefful, drefful fright dis poor chile have got! ’Spect I’ll nebber get ober it; nebber no more!”