"There is so great an evaporation while the sun is shining that I am surprised that we have not had snow before," the professor observed. "These mists rising from the earth and the bodies of water would become heavy nightly rains in any other climate. Here they will result, now that the atmosphere has become saturated with moisture, in heavy hail storms and much snow. It is nothing more than I have looked forward to."
The remainder of the party were not so much interested in the natural phenomena as he, however; they looked forward mainly to reaching some safe refuge—some place where there were supplies and the fellowship of other human beings.
The wind increased, but its keenness the party did not mind. They were only glad that it remained favorable to their line of travel. They swept down the frozen river at a speed not slower than ten miles an hour.
The wolves had followed them on the ice, or along the edge of the river, up to this time. They saw, indeed, a pack of the ugly creatures on a wooded point ahead of them, at a distance of a couple of miles. But before the sleds reached this point (which served to hide the icy track beyond) the wolves suddenly disappeared.
"Something has scared them fellers," Andy declared.
"The traders?" suggested Jack, who traveled with the old hunter and
Mark on one sled, while Roebach, Wash and Professor Henderson sailed
on the other. "Not hardly. Men wouldn't scare them critters so.
Something bigger and uglier than the wolves themselves, I reckon."
To prove how true Andy's guess was, Mark shouted the next moment:
"A bear—two of them! Three! See that crowd of bears, will you? No wonder the wolves skedaddled."
Several of the huge bears, like the one they had had the fight with on the glacier, appeared out of the woods and waddled on to the ice. They had evidently sighted the sailing party, and they roared savagely and tried to head off the sleds. That they were wild with hunger, there could be no doubt.
"I have heard the Indians say that, in bad seasons, the bears travel in packs like wolves, and will attack villages and tear the huts to pieces to get at the inmates," Roebach said, from the other sledge.