HOW WE HUNT POLAR BEARS 23q 



again behind a hummock where it would be invisible. If 

 the animal was traveling, I should presently see it passing 

 over some open space. I watched for a while but saw 

 nothing. Evidently then the bear had merely made a 

 short move and had gone to sleep behind a hummock. 



I knew that when I got down on the sea ice it would be 

 difficult to keep my bearings. The winter storms had 

 broken the ice badly and it was heaped up in a chaos 

 of hummocks that had the angular outline of very rugged 

 mountains, although the highest peaks were no more than 

 forty or fifty feet. When you get down among such ice, 

 it is almost as if you were in a forest. You can see the 

 neighboring hummocks and the sky above you, but you 

 get no good view of your surroundings. When you climb 

 to the top of even the highest crags of ice, you get a 

 view of the tops of all the other crags, although here and 

 there a little ice valley may open. But the mountains 

 are so much higher than the ice that a man out on the 

 ice can always get a view of them by climbing on a 

 hummock. I accordingly memorized the mountains care- 

 fully so that by glancing back at them occasionally and 

 keeping certain peaks in line I would be able to travel 

 straight out upon the ice in the direction where the bear 

 had disappeared. 



Once certain of having my bearings right, I put my 

 field glasses in their case and ran as fast as I could down 

 the slope, for it was possible the bear might get up any 

 time and move on. When I had traveled out on the ice 

 about the estimated distance, I climbed on a hummock 

 and spent some time looking around but saw nothing. 

 The campaign now was to move from hummock to hum- 

 mock for, say, a quarter of a mile until I felt sure that I 

 had passed on beyond the bear. I would then begin 



