"He sat on his haunches and looked at us, uttering a tremendous growl."
Then we saw the centre of the heap or hillock of snow tremble, as if some live creature were moving slowly under it. Then the snow moved a little quicker. There was no mistake, the bear was awakened, had moved, and was on the point of rising; he was listening, and getting ready to come out. The noise had frightened him. The snow trembled more and more and rose higher and higher. Suddenly there was a great upheaval, and great cracks appeared in the crusted snow. Then we saw peeping out the head and back of a huge brown bear, then two legs, and finally the whole animal.
He looked round him with amazement. He seemed to be dazed at the strange and sudden sight before him. He sat on his haunches and looked at us, uttering a tremendous growl. We could not tell whether he meant to fight or to run. The dogs barked angrily around the huge beast, but did not dare to approach near enough to attack him. In the meantime we had all drawn together so that we could fire without danger of hitting any of our party. The bear was getting ugly, gave a series of fierce growls, and rose on his hind legs. At this moment Mikel and I fired. A grunt of pain showed that the animal was hit. He ran a few steps towards us and as we got ready to fire again the big beast fell, his blood reddening the snow.
We gathered round and looked at him. He was a huge beast, but very thin from his long fast, for he had been six months or more without food.
After the killing of the bear there was no time to be lost, for we had deviated from our course and had gone eastward into Finland. So now we had to go westward, and after two days' travelling we came to the river Muonio, to a Finnish hamlet called Kuttainen, not far from Karesuando.
Now travelling became really dangerous. The frozen river was full of treacherous cracks, and others were appearing all the time. Once in a while we came to small open spaces, where we could see the swift water of the stream rushing with great rapidity; this made me shudder. In some places there were large pools of water.
It was getting really warm. Some days my "pesh" was comfortable, at other times it was much too warm, the thermometer reaching 48 to 50 degrees in the shade and 86 to 88 degrees in the sun. The dripping from the melted snow came into the river from the hills, and had succeeded in many places in melting the ice on the banks. This travelling was no joke. I followed Mikel, and watched him constantly, fearing that his reindeer and sleigh would disappear under the ice. Travelling appeared to become more and more perilous as we followed the Muonio southward. At times I could hear the angry water under the ice striking against boulders, and this became quite common.
At last I shouted to Mikel, "Let us travel on the land, for surely if we do not we shall fall through the ice and be engulfed."
"We cannot," he shouted back, "the snow is too soft. Our reindeer could not pull our sleighs. We can get along much better on the river, though the ice is very bad. Trust in me, Paulus. I have made this journey over the Muonio River many times before, but you must follow me very closely, for sometimes I shall have to pass near rotten ice or open spots."
"I will follow you carefully, dear Mikel. Go on! Go on!" I said.