Tom spied some dead limbs lying below a cottonwood tree and they used these as rollers, after which their progress was swifter. But just as they reached the water's edge the bears were upon them. One good shove and they were knee deep in the water.
"She's afloat!" cried Jack gleefully.
He sprang into the boat. Sandy was not a minute behind him. But Tom's foot caught on a boulder as he shoved off the bow, and he fell headlong into the water. As he fell, he was conscious of a hot breath and a deafening roar almost in his very ear. Then he heard something crash downward with a dull thud, followed by a scream of pain.
The next instant Jack had him in a strong grip and pulled him on board the dory. Sandy plied the oars furiously. In a few moments more they were out of danger and Jack was telling Tom how, just as the big bear prepared to seize him, following his unlucky stumble, it had come into his, Jack's, head like a flash of inspiration that in the grapple that lay in the bottom of the boat was a weapon that could be utilized against the monster.
He had snatched it up and whirled it around his head for an instant, and then let the weighty mud-hook, with its sharp points, come crashing down on the bear's head. One of the points had wounded the creature too badly for it to give its attention to anything but a gaping cut for the next few seconds, during which the dory had been rowed far out of reach of the big bears of Kadiak with which the boys had had such a thrilling encounter.
"Well, where away?" asked Sandy, as they gazed back at the shore.
On the beach stood the three bears, while beyond them the smoke of the fire they had kindled towered high into the sky in a wavering pillar.
He let the weighty mud-hook … come crashing down on the bear's head.—Page [154].
"We'll pull right along the shore," decided Tom after a moment's thought, "we may fall in with some ship, or at any rate a native canoe."