286 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



stores, so ordinary rules of ammunition economy did not apply. 

 Shooting with a rifle in half darkness must always be a matter of 

 chance and the w^olves escaped, though one left a trail of blood, 

 perhaps the one originally fired at. 



We now proceeded with both of us holding the harness of the 

 greatly excited dogs, and about a cjuarter of a mile from a creek 

 mouth where we expected to find good camping snow, a bear 

 walked out from shore and lay down near a big cake of ice about 

 two hundred yards from the land. Natkusiak turned the sled 

 over on its side again and went after the bear while I restrained 

 the dogs. I had seen one bear on top of a forty-foot cutbank 

 and another at the foot of it about half a mile away, but I could 

 not leave the team until Natkusiak had killed his bear. One shot 

 did it and then I righted the sled and let the dogs make their own 

 way to Natkusiak awaiting them beside the bear, while I turned 

 aside to follow the ones I had seen on the land. Meantime three 

 other bears came scampering from the shore, going past Natkusiak 

 about three hundred yards away. He fired a dozen shots but 

 missed on account of the darkness. As the bears were running over 

 the ice I could see their outlines only faintly and could not see their 

 legs at all. This meant that although Natkusiak was only about 

 half as far from them as I he had no good chance for aiming, as he 

 only caught glimpses of them as they appeared and disappeared 

 between the hummocks. I followed on the land for a little way, 

 but the snowstorm thickened and the pursuit turned hopeless. 



Of course we realized that some special local thing had at- 

 tracted the bears and wolves, and that it could scarcely be any- 

 thing but a whale carcass. We built our snowhouse right by the 

 dead bear, while foxes, white and ghostlike in the half dark, cir- 

 cled around inspecting us. We must have seen dozens, and had 

 there been bright daylight we should probably have seen a hun- 

 dred. That evening we merely skinned the bear, waiting for day- 

 light to look for the whale. 



It was not difficult to find it. About two hundred yards from 

 the camp the snow was thick with fox tracks and there were dozens 

 of holes where they had been burrowing through a snowdrift down 

 to the carcass. Some of the foxes ran away when we approached, 

 but others stood their ground at a distance and a few barked at us. 

 We could have shot them but preferred not to injure their value 

 as scientific specimens or as furs. 



Natkusiak was in his element. Although we had been just set- 

 ting out on what was intended for a long journey I changed the 



