"You must do exactly as I tell you," Mrs. Bear kept saying, "and you must never stray from me a minute. For we are going to start on our journey, and there will be a great many dangers to guard against."
When little Odin and Olga trotted along beside their mother, with the whole world before them, and a keen appetite with them, they were as alert and excited as any two bears in the world could be.
The great rolling, blue water, the ice that floated on its surface and shone like white ivory in the sun, the patches of green grass on the sides of the hills, and the rocks black with snow water, made a dazzling scene.
Their long day began with a wonderful feat on the part of Mother Bear. After they had swum to a low, wide ice floe, which was a little way from shore, and Odin and Olga were just learning to use the hairy pads of their feet in climbing the sides of the small iceberg, Mrs. Bear gave a sudden plunge into the water, and disappeared from view. She swam far out, her nose barely coming to the surface, and the rest of her body entirely concealed. Then, rising to the surface, she brought back with her a huge fish which she had stunned with a blow of her mighty paw.
"It's all in the way you slide into the water," she said; and then, as they ate greedily of this morsel, she told them of diving for sea-lions and of capturing them by coming up from under the prey.
"You will swim under water great distances, as soon as you learn to hunt," she said, "and you will learn to make no noise about it."
This was the truth, as not only the seals and the sea-lions, but plenty of the great fish, could bear witness.
But, as events of the day were to turn, little Odin and Olga were near to never growing up at all; for the very danger which their mother most dreaded was speedily approaching. While they were playing first on the ice cakes and then on the shore, and Mrs. Bear had about made up her mind that they would stay that night at a point not far distant, where she saw many sea-birds fluttering, and where, she reasoned, the fishing and seal hunting might be good, the hunters with their trained dogs were fast approaching the very spot.
For your Eskimos have their own way of reading the signs; and as many birds had been flocking in this direction, the men had steadily pursued the trail. Day after day they had traveled, and they felt sure that they were coming upon at least a herd of seals or of walruses. And they hoped, of course, to bag a great white bear.
But Odin's mother had assured herself that there was no danger, or it would have been revealed during the time that the whale had attracted such crowds of her brother animals. She did not perceive that her enemies knew exactly how prone the well-fed bear is to linger near the spot of her recent feedings.