CHAPTER XXXII
“Ugh—ugh!” our starboard bear shouts to-day; not a roar now, it is a hopeless complaint. “Ugh! let me out—ugh! look at my coat, all stained and soiled.... Ugh! let me out, I don’t want to go to a zoo”—then almost silence, only a steady chawing of timber and scrape, scrape, for hours on end.
The above labour ended in his getting his head and one paw out this morning early, and the skipper and Hamilton only being about—the rest of the crew were afloat in the boats—they had a lively time. The skipper anxiously shouted: “All hands on board!” and they came and all bore a hand, and there were timbers, nails, hatchets and hammers all about, and bears’ roars, till it was subdued. Hamilton got his hand hurt. It is a wily fellow this starboard bear, waiting his opportunity till all were overboard hunting, and again I expected to have to use my pistol. Almost all hands were in the boats securing two bear cubs, about a third of the size of the bear referred to. We spotted them and their mother on a floe about five A.M., playing together, poor things, and they took to the water and we pursued. Dauntlessly we approached, Don José in the bow, rifle in hand. Without tremor he calmly held his fire till within a few yards; the first shot went extremely close, a second actually touched the bear, but the range gradually shortening allowed of greater accuracy and the third shot hit it in the neck and killed it.
A boat followed the two youngsters, and after a number of ineffective throws they were at last roped. From board-ship we rather smiled at the ineffective attempt to lasso, but we gather that several casts were well thrown and over their necks, but each time the cunning little beggars threw the noose off their heads with their paws so quickly that there was not time to haul taut.
Now there is a frightful row going on; the two cubs are roped alongside and the two seniors on board, all are shouting: “B-e-a-r, b-e-a-r, w-augh, w-augh, b-e-a-r.” Holy smoke! It is as if half-a-dozen zoos were in chorus and were shouting for dinner; it is a frightfully tiresome, irritating sound, arranged so by Nature, I suppose. No mother bear could shut her ears to it, were she alive. The two cubs, each on a line, are swimming; they seem to prefer the water to the floe-edge. A huge mushroom of ice, pale blue and of exquisite form, drifted alongside, and the young male cub got on to it and it slowly turned over—how he swore and gnashed at his rope; but what exquisite delicate colours, the bears, the ice, and the reflections make. They are brother and sister; the brother is the stronger and makes, if possible, more row than his sister in their struggles for liberty. But he threatened his sister, thought it was all her fault. He was swimming behind her and made a pretence at biting her; she did not argue, simply turned, and in a second put her four white teeth into his cheek and the yellow face flushed with blood and he said no more. So they go on complaining together or alternately to us and to all nature. Now the little woman goes on to the floe-edge blown, wheezing and puffing—how she tugs violently at the rope, a faint primrose heap of impotent anger and wretchedness spurning the white snow. “Bear” or “Bé-waugh” in bear language must mean “Mother, why don’t you come to help us?” The sea is red with poor mother from our scuppers. Her skin is off her pathetic-looking red body, to decorate the boudoir of some lady of Spain.
To condescend to the base commercial aspect of our hunting, a living bear is undoubtedly of much greater value than a dead bear’s skin, yet I believe our joy would emphatically be greater were our four live bears dead, for apart from the natural fear of our lives, should either of the larger couple get out, we have to endure their ghastly chorus at all hours.
Towing Two Bear Cubs to the “Fonix”