POLAR BEAR AT HERALD ISLAND 123 



down and was about to kill him with a bite in the head 

 when Nansen shot her. Then the two cubs peeped over 

 a hummock to see what the prospects for a meal were. 



Various travelers have remarked that the meat is 

 good if not too well grown. My own appreciation of the 

 fat, oily flesh of summer was perhaps not sufficiently 

 whetted by starvation to join in this chorus of praise. 

 But at least it tasted better than walrus. 



In the afternoon, about three o'clock, when Collins 

 was watching, he sighted a female and cub on a good- 

 sized floe about a mile square. But they did not wait 

 for Lovering, Elting and Kleinschmidt to reach them 

 in the kayaks. They traveled at a tremendous pace, 

 straight across the floe away from us, never stopping. 

 The mother went first and the cub followed her without 

 lagging a bit behind. 



The hunters came back and we went around the ice 

 field as fast as possible in the schooner. We had fol- 

 lowed them by eye to the farther water's edge and when 

 we got around the floe it was a close question if they had 

 crossed the lead there and gotten away among the hiun- 

 mocks of the next field beyond, for they could not be 

 seen. At last Frank, the sailor, made them out very 

 near the far edge of the water, swimming fast. After 

 them we put the ship and overhauled them. Lovering 

 and Elting stood in the bow. As the big one climbed out 

 of the water less than one hundred yards away Lovering 

 creased her on the back. She snapped at the scratch. 

 His second and third went into the rump and loins, and 

 down she went. The cub hesitated and then went ofi" 

 and into the water beyond the narrow pan. Elting shot 

 it through the head with his Ross, and the soft bullet 

 did not much hurt the skin, though it wrecked the skull. 

 It also was a female. 



