As proof of even the bear’s belief to the contrary of this protective colouring theory, he will hold his yellow paws over his black nose, so I am told, when stalking a seal; and I can vouch myself that one endeavoured to hide both his black nose and yellow body when he stalked me.
Reloading Gun with Harpoon
Note the explosive point of the harpoon is not yet screwed on.
Towing Archie Hamilton’s Big Bear’s Skin
Hamilton and Gisbert are in the rear.
The most prominent thing on a floe, bar a bear, is a piece of brown ice, or yellow ice patch, the first coloured by land streams, the second coloured by sea algæ. You swing your glass round and round the horizon, with nothing to mark your direction on some days, when the sun is behind clouds, and keep time, and mark your place, by a yellow or brown patch. Therefore for a bear to resemble either is to court observation.
The next most interesting thing to stalking a bear, or being stalked by one, is to watch and criticise a stalk from the superior position of looker-on. It was the greatest fun imaginable to watch with the glass the little dots of figures, mere black specks, wandering over the distant floe. Of course, from your position on the bridge you can watch both the movements of the bear and the hunters, and sometimes their cross purposes make you laugh at the poor human mistakes. In this case the hunters came off best, but without the vessel the bear would have had the best of the competition. He got down wind of the group of hunters, Don Luis Velasquez, De Gisbert, and two men—sniffed the air and came hurtling along in the opposite direction and took to sea, half-a-mile from the Fonix, which we had anchored to the floe, and off it swam to a neighbouring island of ice, about half-a-mile away, so we up-sticked and headed it round till the hunters came off the floe in the boat, and the poor yellow fellow got first a bullet in the neck, which enraged it and changed the colour of the sea, then, after several more shots, a lucky one in the brain ended its charmed life. He may have left no friends, but he died without enemies to be afraid of, bar man—and we did not even find a flea on it; which was disappointing, but what was to be expected.
We think the Eskimos have met the bears here, owing to the bears’ retiring manners, which are not characteristics of these polar bears in less populous parts of the polar basin. It is not a fortunate ending to a stalk to have to shoot your game in the water. Still our friend fired several shots before he got the deadly one into the brain, but there is some excuse—a heavy tramp over snow-fields after a beast that, say what you will, takes a little nerve to approach for the first time, and then the bobbing boat might upset even a very experienced shot.