Patiently and courteously I waited until the little pup, with a lot of snorting and splashing, slowly but stubbornly wriggled himself out of the water. When my turn came I was half dead with cold, and barely managed to pull myself on the ice in safety. Leaving the seal where he was, I tottered back to the ship.
I found the skipper very unsympathetic. The only thing he had to say was: “Serves you right. This is Sunday.”
Tale XXI: Filming a White Bear on Land
During the filming of “Nanook of the North”, in the winter of 1921, we decided to take a scene of a white bear hunt at close quarters on land.
In a genuine film like ours, where one must take “close ups” of wild animals, the difficulty lies not only in approaching them sufficiently near so as not to have to use telescopic lens, but also in keeping the animals more or less on the same spot in front of the camera. Consequently, after studying the matter carefully, we concluded that the only way we could film the white bear hunt was to find in the early spring a “she” bear with cubs in her den.
The idea was that the bear would refuse to leave her young, would make a stand right away and give battle on the spot, thereby allowing the cameraman to crank away to his heart’s content. We sent, accordingly, a few Eskimos to scour the country. After a few weeks they reported having found a bear asleep in a snow bank under a cliff on the seashore, about seventy-five miles north from where we were. We were certain that the animal was a “she” bear, as the males do not hibernate but roam all winter on the ice far out to sea.
We made the trip at once with six Eskimos, three sleighs and twenty-two dogs, and built our Igloos two miles away from where the bear had been found. Then we went out on foot to reconnoiter.
We found the bear’s den easily. A large yellow spot on the snow, from which rose a slight vapor coming from the animal’s breath, plainly showed that someone was at home. We carefully chose the best spot to place our one and only camera and rehearsed the whole scene. One Eskimo was to climb above the den and rouse the bear with a long pole. The others standing in front of the den were to let the dogs go as soon as the brute appeared. We knew that the Huskies would surround the bear; and we had no doubt that she would immediately make a stand in front of her cubs and fight.