CHAPTER XXV 



I CONTINUE these bear-shooting notes this evening, 

 Friday, llth July. I know it is evening from a faint 

 blush of pink on the snow that is just perceptible ; 

 without this I would have lost all idea of time, for since 

 yesterday it has been all bear-hunting and no sleep. Now 

 we have a bear alongside, all alive-o ! He is tied with a 

 rope and is swimming just like a man, hard astern, trying to 

 tow our little whaler from the floe-edge ; and he roars every 

 now and then in angry disgust, and then turns up his hind 

 quarters and dives and swims a few strokes under water, 

 only to be pulled up again on the rope or lasso. He can swim 

 apparently without fatigue for many hours, occasionally 

 taking a dive as deep as the lasso will allow him. We hope 

 to get him to our Edinburgh Zoological Park, where he will 

 be much appreciated, especially by myself and other artists 

 and children and seniors. 



He is the last of six bears in twenty-four busy hours. Don 

 Luis Velasquez and Don Jose Herrero each got their first 

 bears, one after the other, but unfortunately both were in 

 the water. Don Jose's, the last, led us a very far chase over 

 miles of floe and ice-covered sea. 



The most fascinating part of the day was watching the 

 bear's abandon of movement and joy as it did its evening 

 saunter over the floes, utterly oblivious of our presence and 

 probably full of young seal fat and joy ; when it came across 

 the stem of a drifted pine it was as good as a circus. How 

 it joked with the pine log, on its back on the snow, played 

 the guitar with it, caressed it, then spurned it in disdain 

 with its great soft hind foot, only to take it up in its teeth 

 again to wave it slowly about. In the middle of this solitary 

 play, however, the bear's seventh sense told it there was 

 something impending and he left his cherished stick and 

 paddled off leisurely down wind and floe then he got the 



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