Neither Obed nor I had been idle while watching the scene. We both loaded our rifles, and now stood ready once more to fire. By moving a little on one side, we saw that we could get a good shot at her without hitting Short. Not a moment was to be lost. Running on I fired, Obed followed my example. The bear’s struggles grew less violent, and Sam began to try and haul himself up by her leg. It was a dangerous proceeding; there being an inclined plane at the edge, his weight appeared to move the body of the bear on. She could not rise, but she turned round and dug her sharp claws into the snow to save herself. Now, instead of wishing her to die, we were anxious that she might survive till the rest of the party could get up to her. Her growls became more and more feeble. She could scarcely hold on another minute. Poor Sam! We trembled for his fate. We shouted to the rest of the party to hasten on. They had had a difficult place to cross in single file at the head of the gully. Now they came on, hurrying over the snow. The bear gave two or three convulsive struggles. I wished that I could have leaped across the chasm to poor Sam’s help. I thought that the bear was slipping down again. If she had got any way on her, as sailors say, it was evident that the united strength of the party could not stop her. They sprang on, and just as I felt sure the bear would have slipped over the precipice, they seized her by the fore-paws. She was not dead, however, for in return for the act of kindness she made some desperate attempts to bite them.
“Haul away, haul away,” sang out Sam, and they did haul with all their might. Though they could not move the bear, they prevented her from slipping down. She gave several severe kicks with her hind foot. Sam clung on to it, and by the most violent efforts managed to drag himself up by her shaggy coat till two of the party caught hold of his collar and hauled away till they got him up from the edge and placed him in rather a safer position, but still not one free from danger. For the first time for some minutes I breathed freely, and as we could do no more where we were, Obed and I hurried round to help the rest. When we arrived the bear had received her quietus, but it was astonishing how many shot and what terrific blows she had received before she was killed. We were congratulating ourselves on the additional supply of hams and steaks she would afford us when a crack appeared in the snow just below our feet, and to our horror we found that the whole mass, carrying us and the carcase of the bear with it, was slipping off over the precipice.
Chapter Twelve.
We feel as if we were going over the falls of Niagara—Smothered by snow—We appear by degrees—Obed missing—We give him a warm bath inside the bear—Our dangerous predicament—How to get out of the ravine—Sam appears above us—We climb out with no little difficulty—The bear’s cave—Having had enough bear-hunting we return home—Find a native visitor, who informs us that we may expect soon an attack from an overwhelming force of red-skins.
We were all standing round the carcase of the huge she-bear, when it and the surrounding mass of snow began perceptibly to glide onwards over the edge of the terrific precipice. I have seen a poor fellow sitting in a boat, utterly beyond his control, gliding rapidly down the rapids towards the falls of Niagara. Quicker and quicker it has moved, till, reaching the edge, it has seemed to hover for a moment, as if unwilling to make the fatal plunge, and then over it has leaped with the rapidity of lightning, and it and its hapless occupant have been for ever hid from human sight. I felt at the moment very much the same sort of sensations which I can fancy the occupant of the boat must have experienced, as the mass of snow, increasing in speed, rapidly neared the precipice. From where I was, I had not the slightest power to leap off it. I fancied that all my companions were in a similar condition.
There is an eastern story, in which a man puts his head into a basin of water, and during the few seconds he holds it there, he finds that he has gone through the adventures of a lifetime. I do not think that many seconds could have passed from the moment that the snow began to move, till Short and I, and the rest, found ourselves, with the body of the bear, rolling over and over, and bounding from rock to rock, amid confusing heaps of snow, down into the bottom of the glen.
How I am alive to tell the tale I do not know, and that fact makes people listen to me with no small amount of incredulity. I was more blinded, stunned, and confused than I had ever been in my life before, and each bound I made I thought would knock the breath out of me; but as for reaching the bottom, I never expected to do that—at all events alive. Now I got a kick from one of my companions in misfortune; now I was knocked against the hairy carcase of the bear; now I was almost suffocated with the overwhelming masses of snow which were showered around me. One thing I own—I did not just then think much about anybody else; I could not help anybody, and I knew that no mortal could help me. Down I went, as I was saying, bounding away, snow above, below, and round me. At last I was quiet. I opened my eyes—I was under the snow—I felt a suffocating sensation.