ARCTIC HUNTING 19 



sloop killed or captured fifty bears in the locality. When a 

 bear is discovered on the ice by the look-out in the crow's-nest, 

 a 'fangstbaad' is lowered, and the hunt begins. It is often 

 but a tame affair. If one of the hunters can manage to show 

 himself between the mairi body of the ice or land and his quarry, 

 the bear will generally take to the water, when he may be pur- 

 sued and dispatched at leisure, for he is not a fast swimmer, 

 although a powerful one. The carcase of a bear, unlike that 

 of the walrus or seal, always floats. Among rough old pack or 

 on ' hummocky ' fast ice, however, the affair assumes a more 

 sporting turn, as the bear must then be carefully stalked amid 

 the ice lumps, either by boat or on foot, great attention being 

 paid to the direction of the wind ; for Ursus viaritiimis is one 

 of the keenest-scented animals in creation, and if he once winds 

 the hunter, the chase may be abandoned unless there is a 

 chance of driving him into the water. The chief danger of 

 such a hunt is from the ice, which is liable to be ' working,' or 

 which, in the case of bay ice, may be rotten in places at the 

 season of the year when most of the hunting is done. In 

 many cases a man should not venture on a floe or big sheet of 

 bay ice to chase or intercept a bear without a pair of Norwegian 

 snow-shoes and a 'hakkepik,' and should be careful also in 

 stepping on to the ice from a boat, as the edge is often under- 

 mined by the action of the water, and will break beneath his 

 weight, although to the eye it looks as solid as the rest of the 

 block. 



There is another phase of hunting. When the darkness of 

 an Arctic winter has settled down on the ice fields, wrapping 

 some ice-bound crew in its pall, then one of the few excitements 

 which is granted to these men, left out of the light and 

 warmth of the world, is the silent coming of some old white 

 bear. 



Early one December morning, when wintering on Danes 

 Island, we heard bears about a mile away among the loose 

 ice near Amsterdam Island. The men judged that the cries 

 were made by a cub which was being punished by its mother 



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