MORE DAYS OF ROAMING AND SPORT 299 



calculating carefully the heights of bliss to which he 

 had attained. Then, with a sideway tilt to give his 

 arm greater length, he began to fish again. 



For half an hour or more I must have watched him, 

 so fascinated was L Suddenly he brought up his paw 

 with no fish in its grip and raised his head, looking 

 furtively from side to side, seeing nothing, suspecting 

 all. The wind had veered ever so little and the dread 

 human scent had reached those delicate nostrils. 

 " Trudge, pack, and begone ! " counselled the war- 

 dens of the wild. With a shufile he backed off his 

 log and on all fours went off plantigrade-fashion into 

 the dim forest. 



Then I reconnoitred his position, and by the polish 

 on the tree stem and odd fish heads in varying stages 

 of decomposition I gathered that this was a favourite 

 backwater of Bruin's. I tried again and again to catch 

 the furry fisherman at work — at dawn next day Cecily 

 and I waited for three hours — but he never returned. 

 He was wary and fished elsewhere, or else the berries 

 and the fruit and the lichens and the bark of the 

 bounteous forest satisfied him, to say nothing of the 

 larvae of the white ants, whose hills we often found 

 tossed hither and thither by the bears who seek the 

 combs in the lower galleries, which they obtain by the 

 force of suction method, as they gather honey from 

 the wild bees. 



Though we saw many bears in the Kouban district, 

 we rarely saw them distinctly, and we met none in good 

 coat. Perhaps had we really sought him out we might 

 have found a worth-bagging specimen. There's nothing 



