“Again the noise was heard; again the footfall creaked upon the snow.
“‘The bear-hunter, it must be!’ cried the Dean, again.
“‘O, I pray that it is so!’ I added, earnestly.
“Again the voice was heard. I answered it. The answer was returned, and with the answer came a heavier and more rapid creaking of the footfalls on the snow.
“We rushed from the hut into the open air without another moment’s loss of time, and without saying another word; and there, not ten yards away, stood the very man who had passed us on the sledge,—the bear-hunter of the frozen sea.
“And a strange-looking creature he was, to be sure. There was not the least sign of alarm or fear about him; but, on the contrary, he was looking mightily pleased, and was talking very fast in a language of which the Dean and I could neither of us understand a single word. When he was not talking he was laughing, and his enormous mouth was stretched almost from ear to ear. ‘Yeh, yeh!’ he went, and I went that way too, by way of answer, which seemed greatly to delight him. He was dressed all over in furs, and looked very wild; but, as he kept yeh-yeh-ing all the time, we were not afraid. As he came up to us, we greeted him very cordially; but he could no more understand what we said than we could understand him. He talked very much, and gesticulated a great deal, pointing very often in one particular direction with his right hand. Then he cried, ‘Mick-ee, mick-ee!’ and pointed to the beach below, towards which we followed him. There we found a sledge and seven dogs; and now we understood very certainly, if we had any doubts before, that this was the man and these were the dogs that had passed us, following the bear.
“The man tried his best to explain to us the whole affair, talking very rapidly; but we could not gather from what he said more than our eyes told us already, for on the sledge we soon discovered a large bear-skin, all bloody and folded up, and some large pieces of bear’s meat. The dogs were tied some distance from the sledge, and were securely fastened by their traces to a heavy stone, which I was very glad of, for the wolfish-looking beasts were snarling at each other, and fighting, and howling at us continually,—seeming all the while to wish themselves loose, that they might fly upon us, and tear us to pieces.
“If we could not understand the hunter’s words, we made out by his signs, after a while, that he had seen us when he passed in pursuit of the bear. After overtaking and capturing the animal, he turned about upon his track to look for us, and, finding our footmarks at last, he had followed us to the hut, calling loudly, as he neared us, to attract our attention, for he could not find us easily,—our hut was so buried up in snow.
“After being fully satisfied with the inspection of the dogs and sledge, and what there was upon it, we all three went up to the hut.
“It would be difficult to describe our visitor. I have said that he was wholly dressed in furs. His pantaloons were made of bear-skins reaching to the knees, where they met the boots, which were made of the same materials. His underclothing was made of birds’ skins, like our own, and he wore a coat of fox-skins, with a heavy hood covering up the head completely. On his hands he wore mittens made of seal-skins, with warm dog-skin for an inside lining, and his stockings were of the same. So you see no part of him was exposed but his face, which was quite dark, or, rather, copper-colored (something darker than a North American Indian), and it was very broad and very round. The nose was very small and very flat, and the eyes were small and narrow. His hair was jet black, long and tangled, and was cut straight across the forehead. He had but little beard,—only a few black, wiry-looking bristles growing on his upper lip and on the tip of his chin. You would hardly suppose that such a creature could be anything but savage and repulsive; yet this he did not seem to be at all; on the contrary he appeared like the most amiable fellow that ever was seen.