The dogs had sat down a few rods back, a line of black dots along the path through the tall weeds, and did not seem to care for anything at all. I had to lay my hand on the preacher’s shoulder and ask him to please get on; then they all started on together, and oh, the moon, through the swaying cypress moss, the mighty river above!
It was with great effort that I got them to cross a foot-log that lay across a lagoon only a little way in the moss-hung woods, the brave dogs all the time only a short distance behind us still. It was a hot night and the mosquitoes were terrible in the woods, but I doubt if they bite the blacks as they did me. Surely not, else they would not be even as nearly alive as they are.
Having got them across the lagoon, I gave them each 25 cents more, and this made them want to go home. The dogs had all sat down in a queer row on the foot-log. Such languor, such laziness, such idiotic helplessness I never saw before, even on the Nile. The blacks, as well as the dogs, seemed to be afraid to move now. The preacher again began to mumble a prayer, and the whole pack with him; and then they prayed again, this time not so loudly. And although there was melody of a sort in their united voices, I am certain they used no words, at least no words of any real language.
Suddenly the dogs got up and came across and hid among the men, and the men huddled up close; for right there on the other end of the log, with his broad right foot resting on it, was the shaggy little beast we were hunting for. We had found our bear, or rather, he had found us, and it was clear that he meant to come over and interview us at once.
The preacher crouched behind me as I cocked and raised my gun, the blacks hid behind the preacher, and I think, though I had not time to see certainly, that the dogs hid behind the blacks.
I fired at the dim white spot on the bear’s breast and sent shot after shot into his tattered coat, for he was not ten lengths of an old Kentucky ramrod distant, and he fell dead where he stood, and I went over and dragged him safely up on the higher bank.
Then the wild blacks danced and sang and sang and danced, till one of them slipped and fell into the lagoon. They fished him out and all returned to where I was, with the dead bear, dogs and all in great good spirits. Tying the bear’s feet together with a withe they strung him on a pole and we all went back home, the blacks singing all the way some barbaric half French song at the top of their melodious voices.
But Colonel Bloom was afraid that the one who had fallen in the river might take the fever, and so as soon as we got safe back he drank what was left in the bottle General Beauregard had sent him and he went to sleep; while the superstitious blacks huddled together under the great levee and skinned the bear in the silver moonlight, below the mighty river. I gave them each a silver dollar—very bright was the brand new silver from the mint of New Orleans, but not nearly so bright as the moon away down there by the glowing rim of the Mexican seas where the spectacled bear abides in the classic land, Barra Tarra, Kingdom of Sancho Panza.