“Nearer and nearer came the bear, and greater grew our alarm. Our hearts beat violently in our breasts; our faces were pale as death; we held our breath, as if fearful of making the least noise to give the bear encouragement. At length our enemy gave a sudden start. It seemed to us as if he had now made a dash at the window, so we both rose to our feet, with our weapons ready to meet him; but, to our great joy and relief, the sound of his footsteps showed that the beast was retreating, rather than advancing, and was moving more rapidly. A moment afterward we heard the rattle of stones, and now, from fear for ourselves, we passed instantly to fear for our stores; for we knew that it was our stores, and not us, that he was after, and that he must be tearing down one of our principal storehouses. And now, what if he should tear them all down, and eat up all our food and fuel? It was a fearful thought.
“How often do we pass almost insensibly from the greatest terror to the greatest courage! Relieved now from all immediate personal apprehension, we felt at once inspired to protect our property, on the safety of which our lives depended. We ceased at once to feel like standing passively on the defensive, but immediately crawled out of the hut to do something,—exactly what, we did not know. Our thoughts had, indeed, hardly time to take shape in our minds, so quickly had the change come in the situation and in our feelings.
“The bear was plainly in sight as soon as we got outside, tearing down our storehouse; but he appeared not to be thinking of us at all. Without reflecting in the least what I was about, but filled only with alarm at the prospect of losing our food and fuel, I set up a loud shout, in which the Dean joined; and, to our great surprise, the huge beast, that had caused us so much terror, took fright himself, and without looking round, or stopping a moment, he made a great bound, and tore away over the rocks, plunging through the snowdrifts, and rolling down the hill into the valley, where we had dug the turf, in a most ridiculous manner.
“We passed now from a state of terror to a feeling of perfect safety, and in such an unexpected manner, too, that we laughed outright, and we thought that we had been very foolish to be so frightened, and looked upon our enemy as a great coward. So we concluded that an animal who was so easily scared as that would never attack us, and therefore, getting our weapons, we followed after him, hoping to drive him from the island. The jumps that he had made were quite immense, showing clearly the state of his mind.
“Following the tracks of the bear, we came very soon in full view of the beach where the carcass of the narwhal was lying, half buried in ice and snow. The tracks led in that direction, and finally pointed straight to the spot. He had in his flight evidently smelled the old narwhal, and, remembering only that he was hungry, had stopped there; for presently we caught sight of him, tearing away at the narwhal with as much energy as he had before wasted upon our storehouse.
“We had come quite near to the bear before we saw him; and now our spirits underwent another sudden change, and our minds were once more filled with such feelings of respect for the bear, that we turned about immediately, and beat a hasty retreat; and, when once more under the shelter of the hut, prepared again to stand on the defensive.
“All we could now do was to watch the bear closely. So long as the old narwhal lasted, we felt that we were safe enough, even after he had apparently satisfied himself with a good meal, and had gone away, as seemed likely, to sleep. He would certainly, however, come back to the narwhal again when he got hungry; but now, worse than ever, when he did come back, there were two other bears with him, and all three of them were making a meal off the carcass of the dead narwhal. These last two were quite small ones,—the smaller not being larger than a big Newfoundland dog.
“With this discovery all our newly found courage took rapid flight, and we were overtaken with even greater alarm than before. That the narwhal would soon all be gone seemed plain enough, with three bears feeding upon it; and then, when this feeding was over, this first bear, knowing where our storehouse was, and forgetting his fright, and having two bears, and perhaps by that time even more, to help him, we were sure he would soon come back again. It seemed as if a great crisis had now come in our fortunes, and what to do we did not know, and what was to become of us we could not imagine. We were in great trouble.”
“I don’t wonder,” exclaimed William,—“the horrid brutes!”
“I should have been scared to death,” cried Fred; while little Alice thought it was too dreadful to think of; but, “The poor bears, how cold and hungry they must have been!” said she.