154 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



they had broken in their journeys to and fro from their lairs. 

 It was evident that they had fed on the mass of carrion for a 

 long time, and that it was their habit to come out at night and 

 return to their hiding-places in the day. So at evening we 

 brought from the ship, which lay in the offing, such guns as we 

 had, two fowling-pieces, one a heavy duck gun, and a rifle, and 

 the three of us lay in wait. We knew that our station should 

 be down the wind from the heap of carrion, but the stench there 

 was intolerable; we therefore hid in a clump of beech about 

 sixty yards to windward, trusting that the bears would not be 

 able to note the little smell of man in the air full of other odor. 

 After we had endured mosquitoes for some hours, the long 

 northern twilight began to verge into night and we could hear 

 bears in plenty coming through the bushy upland and swamp 

 ground which lay behind the beach. We soon saw what seemed 

 to be a dozen standing on a low bluff beyond the dead whale, 

 when with the wind full of stench from it, they found suspicion 

 of danger. They were more than a hundred yards away, and 

 in the faint light impossible targets. The only thing to do was 

 to wait ; and wait we did, until at last one big fellow braved it 

 and came on for his supper. We agreed to close on him and at 

 the word to stop and fire. My comrades did as planned, but 

 failed to hit because there was no chance to aim in the dark- 

 ness. Being fairly well trained, I instinctively held until the 

 brute in his surprise lifted up his head, so that running near I 

 gave him an ounce ball and a lot of buckshot; this felled him. 

 Knowing from tradition that the proper thing was to cut his 

 throat, I set about the task, which proved difficult, for the neck 

 seemed to be made of hickory withes. While I was bunglingly 

 about the business, the brute recovered and managed in some 

 way not clear to me to roll me over and fall on top of me, so that 

 I was well rammed down upon the gruesome mass of whale. All 

 the while I was trying to get at his interior with my good knife, 

 but although in the fiction which makes up our tales of hunt- 

 ing this is always easily done, the actual doing is really hard. 



