THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 155 



dive and was startled into falling on his back in the lead, splashing 

 water over me as he fell. The water was perfectly clear and look- 

 ing around I saw him going down like a sounding lead, with his 

 feet at first uppermost, though he soon straightened out, rose to 

 the surface and scrambled up on the far side. As he was strug- 

 gling out, Storkerson gave him a second shot and a moment later as 

 he was running away a third; but the rifle was only a .30-30 and, 

 although he was bleeding profusely, the bear was making off with 

 considerable speed. For the further encouragement of the party, to 

 prove that no bear could come as close to us as this and get away, 

 I thought I had better try the Mannlicher. This shot rolled him 

 over and I took the storj'- to be ended. After I had turned away to 

 put the rifle back in the case he got unsteadily to his feet and dis- 

 appeared behind an ice cake. 



The lead had been gradually closing, and Crawford, with a rifle 

 and McConnell with a camera, were able to follow and find him 

 about two hundred yards away, trying to cross a second lead. They 

 fired several times, but when I got over he had crawled out on the 

 ice, so that one more shot was necessary. It is always so when a 

 group becomes excited — there is a hullabaloo and a fusillade of 

 wasteful shooting. One bullet near the heart does a great deal more 

 damage than a dozen badly placed, as many of these were, for some 

 were in the paws, some in the neck and some in other fleshy parts. 

 An exciting bear hunt may be interesting to read about but it is 

 a poor hunt. One properly located Mannlicher bullet is all that 

 should be necessary. 



On shore polar bears are ordinarily timid animals, afraid of 

 men, and afraid of dogs and wolves. But the behavior of this 

 visitor was typical of bears far from shore. There they have no 

 enemy to fear. Besides their own kind they are familiar on the ice- 

 pack with only three living things — the seals, on which they live, 

 the white foxes which they unintentionally provide with food but 

 which never come near enough to be caught themselves, and the 

 gulls which cry loudly and flutter about them at their meals. Zool- 

 ogists know, but it is not commonly realized by the laity, that the 

 white fox is almost as much of a sea animal as the polar bear, for 

 probably 90 per cent, of white foxes spend their winters on the ice. 

 They are not able at sea to provide their own living, so several 

 will be found following a bear wherever he goes. When the bear 

 kills a seal he eats all he wants, usually from a quarter to half of 

 the carcass. In many cases he touches none of the meat, but eats 

 merely a portion of the blubber and the skin that goes with it. 



