248 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [April 



ditions there! As luck would have it, when within a 

 mile of our Ellef Ringnes Island camp a bear stalked 

 out from behind a berg and walked directly toward us. 

 Perhaps he was hungry, too. In such an emergency, the 

 Eskimo's instinctive thought is his rifle; mine the 

 camera. In an instant both were leveled out over the 

 backs of our leaping dogs. As the bear turned, evidently 

 mystified by our strange appearance, Noo-ka-ping-wa 

 popped him from his sledge and released his dogs. 

 Both disappeared into a large hole between the base of a 

 berg and a snowbank. Instantly my dogs plunged over 

 the bank, and as my sledge poised on the very brink, 

 giving me a view of the struggling mass, I snapped the 

 shutter and rolled to one side, exclaiming: "I got him! 

 I got him!'* With the camera clutched in one hand, I 

 grabbed at the top of the bank with the other, tearing 

 away a section and rolling ignominiously into the howl- 

 ing, yelping, fighting mass. Distance certainly does 

 lend enchantment! A polar bear has beautiful teeth, 

 and on a sunny day, mounted upon a pedestal of snow, 

 with the limitless ice-fields as a background, he is one 

 of the noblest of nature's creations — at a distance. I 

 scrambled and crawled away from this beautiful thing 

 just as rapidly as my forty-two years would permit. 

 Another shot from Noo-ka-ping-wa's .401 and there 

 was the bear, dead — the long-needed fresh meat. My 

 pleasure at the thought of it was considerably mitigated 

 by the sight of one of my dogs crawling toward me 

 on his breast and whining piteously. With one blow of 

 his great paw the bear had flattened him to the ground, 

 crushing his hindquarters and breaking his back. I 

 stroked his head and walked away. A .22 bullet ended 

 his misery. The Eskimo did what I could not do. 



