In due time the dogs were once more started; and Pouchskin—putting them to their highest rate of speed—soon overtook the sledge-train; which did not come to a halt until a good mile of snow-covered country was between it and the bears.
The hunters only paused then, for a short while, to breathe their panting dogs; and this done, they resumed their seats on the sledges, and continued on to the ostrog—without a thought of going back after the bears.
They had no intention, however, of giving them up entirely. They only drove home to the village—in order to get assistance; and, as soon as their report was delivered, all the men of the settlement—Cossacks, Kurilskis, and half-breeds—turned out armed to the teeth for a grand battue, and proceeded towards the lake with the Governor himself at their head.
The bears were still upon the ground—both the living and the dead—for it was now seen that two of their number had fallen to the shots of our hunters—and upon the former a general fusillade was at once opened, which ended in their complete discomfiture. Five more of them were killed upon the spot; and several others that took to flight were tracked through the snow, and destroyed in their hiding-places. For a week after, there was very little fish eaten in the ostrog of Petropaulouski—which for a long period previous to that time had not witnessed such a carnival.
Of course our Russian hunters came in for their share of the trophies; and, choosing the skin of one of the bears they had themselves shot, they left it with the Governor, to be forwarded via Okhotsk and Yakoutsk, to the distant capital of Saint Petersburg. Shortly after the fur ship carried them to Canton,—whence they might expect to find a passage in a Chinese trading vessel to the grand island of Borneo.
Chapter Fifty Five.
The Sun-Bears.
There are colonies of Chinese settled in different parts of Borneo—whose principal business there is the working of gold and antimony mines. These Chinese colonial settlements—along with numerous others throughout the Oriental islands—are under the protection and direction of a great Mercantile Company called Kung Li—somewhat resembling our own East India Company. In Borneo, the headquarters of this commercial association of the Chinese, is the port and river of Sambos, on the western coast; though they have many other settlements in different parts of the island. Of course, between these colonies and Canton there is a regular traffic; and our travellers found no difficulty in proceeding to Borneo in a Chinese junk which traded direct from Canton to Sambos. At Sambos there is also a Dutch settlement, or “factory,” belonging to the Dutch East India Company; and this Company has also two other stations in the island—all, however, occupying a territory of limited extent, compared with the large surface of the island itself. No other European settlements exist in Borneo, if we except an English “agency” lately established at the little island of Labuan; and a settlement at Sarawak, under an English adventurer, who styles himself “Rajah Brooke.”