YOUTHFUL EXPERIENCES 57 



undeterred by dread of human attack, hunted 

 the clock half-round. 



Sometimes they gorged on old salmon, pre- 

 ferring their game high ; other days they fished 

 assiduously waist-deep, facing down-stream, and 

 pouncing, needle-clawed, on their victims, which 

 were always carried to a screen of bushes or 

 grass for devouring. Then, leaving the crunched 

 heads, tail-tips, and intestines, for the undertaker 

 beetles, the bears fished again. 



At a curve of the river two bears played into 

 each other's paws with the skill and adroitness of 

 human hunters. The female stood shoulder deep 

 in the centre of the stream, simulating a rock and 

 barring the way, diverting the press of fish from 

 their straight course into the claws of the male 

 bear, who gleaned the harvest in the shallows. 



For a month the run lasted. Even at its end 

 the bears, well fattened up for the long fast ahead, 

 did well enough on the hundreds of rotting salmon 

 lying on the river banks, and, later, on the remnants 

 of the piscine army who came back in twos and 

 threes, strong swimmers no longer, but dying and 

 dead, colourless and splotched with white, glorious 

 no more. 



8 



