Once more she wouldn’t go off!
The bear was now nearly on top of me and was beginning to rear on its hind legs. Somehow the rifle came into my hand muzzle-end, and I hit the great brute across the eyes with the butt hard enough to have felled an ox.
I might as well have struck it with a cane. Whack came a big yellow-white paw, the Henry went flying, and my wrists tingled with the jar; and there was I left looking, I’ve no doubt you’ll think, very humorous.
The bear might have finished me then if it had chosen. But it must needs turn aside to go snuffling at the rifle and lick the oil off the locks. I turned and footed it.
Now, at the best of times, I am no [v]sprinter, and in the great mountain of clothes one wears up there in the cold Arctic night, no man can make much speed. Besides, the way was that uneven it was a case of hands and scramble more often than plain running over the sharp, spiky level.
The bear, once he had finished his snuffle and lick at the Henry, came on at a dreadful pace, making nothing of those obstacles that balked me,—he had been born up there, you know. He laid himself out—I could see over my shoulder—like one of those American trotting horses, caring nothing for the ups and downs and ankle-breaking ice. In about two shakes he was snorting at my heels again, till I could almost feel his hot breath. The bundle of clothes hampered me. I stripped off my outer over-all and let it drop behind me.
The bear stopped and snuffed that, but I didn’t stay to watch him. I got a good fifty [v]fathoms ahead of him whilst he was thus occupied. But presently, when he’d got all his satisfaction out of that, on he comes again, and I had to give him my coat. I hadn’t a chance of equaling him in pace, but the trick with the clothing never tired him. Fifty fathoms was the least gain I made over a single piece, and as I got lower down toward my skin he stayed over the clothes longer.
But still the Gleaner was a long way off, over very tumbled ice, and there I was careering on in a costume which was barely enough for decency, and certainly insufficient for the climate.
However, it was little enough the bear cared for such refinements as those. I stripped off my last garment as I ran, and gained nigh on two hundred yards whilst he investigated it; and there were the bark’s upper spars showing above the hummocks half a mile away, with me in nothing but my long seal-skin boots!
But there was no help for it. Up came the hot breath behind me, and I leaned up against a hummock and stripped off a boot. I hailed the Gleaner with what breath I had left, but no one gave heed. Away went the other boot, and there I was running, mother-naked, over the jagged floe, leaving blood on every footmark.