130 PARTIAL WATER TRESPASSERS. 



so firm a hold of the slippery ground that there is no 

 difficulty in intercepting and killing the seal. 



The reader will now see why the colour of this 

 water-loving bear should be white. If, during one of 

 its brief intervals of wakefulness, the seal were to espy 

 a dark object floating in the water, its suspicions would 

 at once be excited, and it would make off to a place of 

 safety before it could be captured. But, at a little 

 distance, the white body of the Polar Bear looks just 

 like a lump of floating ice, and the seal, therefore 

 suffers it to approach, being in ignorance of its true 

 character. It is in the approach by water that the 

 bear's chief difficulty lies, for, as we have seen, if he 

 can only manage to interpose between the seal and the 

 water, the fate of the destined prey is assured, unless 

 it happens to be near a hole in the ice. 



It is rather a remarkable fact that the Esquimaux 

 seal-hunters have borrowed from the Polar Bear two 

 modes of catching the seal. One mode is by imitat- 

 ing the method of approach to the sleeping seal, the 

 hunter lying flat on his face, and hitching himself along 

 gradually during the short naps of the animal. So 

 skilful are the men at this work that they will often 

 contrive to kill the seal even though it should be close 

 to a hole in the ice. The animal has mostly strength 

 enough to plunge through the hole, but is retained by 

 the rope attached to the harpoon. 



The second mode is that of catching the young seal 

 in the igloo, which has been described on page 64. 



The bear manages to find out by its sense of smell 

 the exact position of the igloo. It then goes to a little 

 distance, leaps with all its weight on the igloo so as to 



