"At first they crowded together in a sort of circle, with heads facing out; while the dogs ran round them, snarling and barking, and watching their chance to spring. A few moments later the circle was broken up into a dozen roaring, writhing, yelping groups, composed of a bear with four or five of the dogs clinging tenaciously to different parts of its body.
"It was the Vixen strain that told now. Again and again would the bear, rising on his hind quarters, hurl the dogs from him with mighty sweeps of his huge fore paws, only to be penned at once, and brought to the ground by a fresh attack.
"At frequent intervals an agonizing death-howl would pierce its way through the horrible clamour, as some unfortunate dog, caught in the grasp of its maddened enemy, would be crushed to death in his resistless embrace.
"The minutes slipped by, and the fight still raged, but there could be no doubt how it would result. The dogs had the best of it as to numbers, and they were the equals of the bears in courage, ferocity, and endurance, if not in sheer strength.
"One by one the big brown bodies rolled over in the stillness of death. At the end of about half-an-hour the fight was over. Not a bear breathed, and around their torn carcasses lay between twenty and thirty of the dogs, as dead as themselves—the best possible proof of how fiercely and obstinately they had fought.
"Not a word had passed between Heathcote and myself while all this went on. We were too much taken up with the extraordinary conflict going on before our eyes even to look at each other: but when it was all over, and the surviving dogs, having satisfied themselves that the bears were really all dead, lay down to lick their many wounds before they began upon the feast their brave victims had provided for them, I touched Heathcote on the shoulder, and whispered,—
"'We've seen the dogs; let's take good care they don't see us.'
"After such a proof of their powers as we had had, we were in no mind to claim a nearer acquaintance with them on the score of having once owned their ancestors. Accordingly we crawled noiselessly away, and making a long circuit, rejoined our party in time to prevent their turning down into the valley, which we no longer considered a good place to camp in for the night.
"That was my first and last sight of the wild dogs of Athabasca. The following autumn I went east, and never returned to Fort Assiniboine. Whether the dogs have since been all killed off or are still running wild among the far recesses of the Rockies, I don't know; but that wonderful battle in the valley was one of the greatest sights of my life, the like of which no one perhaps will ever again see on this continent."
BIRDS AND BEASTS ON SABLE ISLAND.