“O! but it is something!” said the Captain, in an agony, as three or four more shots rang from the out-post itself, followed by confused cries and shouts, as if men were engaged in mortal conflict.
The Captain threw himself on the steep descent, the whole of which he would have accomplished very much quicker than was at all salutary for his bones, had not Birger caught him by the collar as he was disappearing.
“For God’s sake, mind what you are about! Take a torch in your hand, if you must go; or, better still, let Tom go first. Whatever it is, the thing must be over long before you can get there. All you will do at that headlong speed will be to break your neck down the precipice!”
Tom, much more cool, had already taken the lead, and was throwing a light on the narrow and broken pathway for the Captain to see where to place his footsteps. Birger’s selection of Tom for a leader was a good one, for it was absolutely impossible for one man to pass another during the descent, and no threats or entreaties from the Captain could urge the phlegmatic Norwegian beyond the bounds of strict prudence. The last ten feet of the rock the Captain leaped, and pounced down from above into the midst of the picket.
Before the great fire lay a full-grown bear, dead, and bleeding from a dozen wounds, and round him were grouped the whole picket—including the sentries, who had deserted their posts,—whooping, and hallooing, and screaming, and making all sorts of unintelligible noises.
The story was soon told, when the men had been reduced to something like order. The bear had been attempting to steal past the first fire, and, sidling away from it, had almost run over the two sentries, who were much too frightened to fire with any aim or effect. The bear, almost as frightened as they, had rushed forward, but, startled at the great blaze upon which he came suddenly at the turn of the pass, hesitated a moment, and received Torkel’s spear in his breast. The rifles and guns, which were lying about, were caught up and discharged indiscriminately, and, as luck would have it, without taking effect on any of the party. Some rushed on with their axes, some with knives, some with blazing brands; and the bear dropped down among them, mobbed to death, every individual of the party being firmly convinced that it was he, and none but he, who had struck the victor stroke.
“Well!” said Birger, “there is the bear, at all events; and a good thing for us that he is there; we should not have heard the last of it from Moodie for some time, if he had slipped off. Hang him up, my men; we will skin him when we have time and daylight; we do not want to make goat’s meat of that fellow, at all events. Hang him up openly, by the side of the wolf.”
“Bother that moon,” said the Captain, sulkily, for he did not enter into the spirit of ‘quod facit per alium facit per se.’ “What a set of lunatics we were to go staring after the picturesque instead of minding our business; all of us together, too!”
“It was very poetical,” said the Parson.
“Yes, that is the very thing. Birger, you do not take in the allusion, I can see—a ‘grāte powut,’ as they pronounce it, is, in Ireland, slang for an irrecoverable fool.”