538 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



fire again, but his gun refused to go off. (We found later that 

 sand on the cartridge, or rather mud, prevented it entering the 

 chamber. The Winchester safety device — the pin under the trigger 

 guard — therefore prevented the hammer from falling when the trig- 

 ger was pulled.) As I feared the bear getting into the water — he 

 was almost there — I fired again, this time hastily, hitting him in the 

 rump, without serious immediate effect. As he gave a side view I 

 put a third bullet through the heart — altogether pretty poor shoot- 

 ing. Had I been depending on myself alone I would probably have 

 chosen my opportunities better. 



"The tactics pursued by the bear were excellent seal-hunting 

 tactics, but he showed poor judgment in taking no warning from 

 our talk which was in ordinary conversational tones, or from our 

 tent and strange gear. Had Charlie not happened to see him and 

 had we all been indoors, even though not asleep, I have no doubt 

 he would have had one of our dogs before he realized it was not 

 a seal and before we had time to get a hand on a gun, though we 

 always have the guns at the tent door. Evidently he was trav- 

 eling along the lead, swimming, and it seems clear no ordinary 

 basking seal would, by anything but accident, have discovered him 

 before he was between it and the water. He was fat, which spoke 

 well for his success as a hunter. Probably a two-year-old bear." 



Though the substantial middle of Findlay Land or King Chris- 

 tian Island on the map had disappeared, I had no doubt that there 

 was land in the direction where Osborn had dotted in his discov- 

 eries. Heading south we traveled in that direction for twenty- 

 five or thirty miles and I have never seen traveling conditions 

 worse. In some cases the dogs had to swim continuously as much 

 as half a mile at a time, towing the sledge behind them. I had to 

 walk ahead picking a trail and especially carefully now, for there 

 were holes in the ice underneath into which the dogs would have 

 swum as readily as where there was bottom. Part of the time 

 the water was shallow enough so that the men could ride but at 

 other times they had to wade so as to allow the sled to float and 

 thus prevent our gear from getting wet. The stray ice islands here 

 and there were worse than the water. We would no sooner be up 

 on one than we had to plunge into the next water channel, and 

 there was always the same danger of the sled sliding sidewise and 

 being upset. The narrow channels were the worst except when they 

 were so very narrow as to be jumpable for the dogs and bridgeable 

 with the sled. With a fourteen-foot sled an eight or ten-foot 

 channel was the worst possible, for then the sled would take a dive, 



