This involved the abandonment of the Captain’s picket, which reinforced the beating party, the materiel being conveyed, under the superintendence of Jacob, to the travelling-waggon which had been brought as near to the scene of action as the forest roads permitted.
And now began the real dangers of the skal,—the difficulty of restraining the men from firing indiscriminately into the skalplatz, and shooting everything alike,—wolf, hare, fox, or beater.
Fortunately the men were sober, and the officers well aware of the danger. Flags were sent into the forest to mark the advancing line; strict injunctions were given that none should be permitted to advance faster than his neighbours, and a trusty man on the outside of the cover carried a white flag about five yards before the main body of the beaters, followed by an extempore provost marshal, with a party of trusty men, who had orders to tie up and flog on the spot any man who fired at anything whatever in the rear of the flags.
All these arrangements were completed in little more than half-an-hour, and the bugles on both sides rang out the advance. The progress was very slow, not only on account of the necessity of preserving the accurate line, but because the beasts themselves required so much rousing; many of the smaller game, and, on one occasion, even a wolf, absolutely refused to move at all, and was knocked down or speared as it lay. In no case was resistance made by any of the wild beasts, with the single exception of the gallant fox, who, desperate but unsubdued, stood boldly at bay, and bit furiously at everything within its reach, but in vain,—for as the line soon became two or three deep, escape was next to an impossibility. One of the bear cubs, a three-parts grown animal, was dispatched by a blow of a hatchet, and the other was shot in the thick cover, by a man who had almost stepped upon it without seeing it. The Captain’s bear, a full-grown male, did not live ten minutes after it had gained the cover; there was no faltering in its gait or symptom of injury, for no muscle had been cut or bone broken by the shot, and its pluck and energy had carried it on till it fell suffocated by internal bleeding.
And now the shouts rang out from the river-side; the she-bear had taken the water, and was gallantly forcing her way across it at a point rather higher than the boats had expected her. The stream was strong; the boats were at some distance; the Swedes, who were never good at moving-shots, had blazed away when she first dashed into the stream, and there was every chance of her escape, for they are terribly awkward in loading their terribly awkward firearms; the rowers were pulling away for life and death, and the heavy boats were forcing their slow progress against the stream, which was gradually bringing the bear down to them as she swam across it, when a long-shot from Bjornstjerna took effect, she rolled over, recovered herself, struck out again, but was carried down among the boats, secured, and brought to land.
The game was then mustered,—so far, indeed, as it could be recovered, for it was shrewdly suspected by some, that the whole was not forthcoming. There were four full-grown bears and three cubs, seven wolves, two lynxes, three or four badgers, and a queer nondescript animal of the genus canis, which they called a filfras; foxes there were in some numbers, and this a much more valuable description of animal than ours; hares were numberless, and also squirrels,—many of both these last species of game, too, had been stewed and eaten on the preceding days. Whether any other description of larger game had been shot, did not appear. Notwithstanding what Moodie had said about the herd of stags, none were paraded at the muster, and as he did not, after all, make any complaint to the Ofwer Jagmästere on the subject, it may be concluded that the whole was a mistake or a dream of his own, and that no such breach of forest law had been committed by any one,—a fact of which the Captain loudly declared his complete conviction.
DEATH OF FEMALE BEAR.