622 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



from the north and helped us along. We were carrying skis, partly 

 for possible use in the early spring when crusted snow overlies 

 water that fills all the low places of the ice, although they were 

 mainly of value as part of the frame of our sled-boat. I now put 

 them on and found I could almost sail along before the strong wind, 

 and the sleds were speeded so that the men could ride as much as 

 they liked and we made excellent progress — twenty-seven miles in 

 seven or eight hours. As yet there was no water on the ice after 

 the land lay a mile behind. 



Many of the birds that intended to inhabit Lougheed Island 

 had already arrived and relays of others kept flying over us north- 

 ward. Tracks in the snow soon showed that we had once again 

 come into bear country. In two days we received a visit. We 

 had gone to sleep with a rifle lying at the tent door, as always. I 

 was awakened by the barking of the dogs, stuck my head out and 

 saw a bear coming at a gallop towards Emiu's team, which were 

 strung out at six-foot intervals along a forty-foot rope. We could 

 see from the snow later that the bear had been following our trail, 

 and it seemed plain that when he was about a hundred and fifty 

 yards off he saw the sleeping dogs and took them for seals basking 

 along a tide crack. Apparently his opinion was not easily changed, 

 for the dogs were tugging against their tie ropes and barking 

 loudly, behaving as no seal ever did, and still he was running to- 

 wards them as hard as ever. He was not much over fifty yards 

 from them when I saw him, and about twenty-five yards when, 

 half-blinded by the glare of the snow after the dark tent, I fired. 

 The bullet struck in the shoulder, breaking the bone. The bear's 

 momentum was so great that he turned a somersault and rolled 

 more than half of the remaining distance towards the dogs. A 

 second shot went only an inch or two from the heart but the bullet 

 did not expand and he ran off on three legs. It had been one of 

 the mishaps of the spring which I have neglected to mention that 

 cur expanding-bullet cartridges were most of them left behind, 

 steel-point ones having been substituted by mistake. We had filed 

 the points off these so as to convert them into a sort of expanding 

 bullet, but this did not always work. But it was only three or 

 four hundred yards the bear was able to go before he had lost 

 so much blood that he collapsed. 



