Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him to contrive to sting and wound him.
Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron, good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached. The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.
'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards. He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal, only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.
'I will give it the coup de grâce,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.
'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear. I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'
Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass. In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.
He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.
The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon a boulder of rock, but he resisted.
'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.
'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him, and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.