out of the question ; for their clogs were all 

 dead, and their few guns were out with the 

 young men, who before the advent of the 

 iceberg had taken their lives in their hands 

 and gone up the coast sealing in a stout 

 little schooner. So Tomah, taking his otter 

 skins, started back for his own camp. 



As his custom was in a strange place, 

 Tomah first climbed the highest hill in the 

 neighborhood to get his bearings. The blun- 

 dering iceberg seemed to him a grim joke, 

 more grim than the joke on himself which 

 had left him after a forty-mile tramp without 

 pork or tobacco or warm stockings. He was 

 watching the berg with silent, Indian intent- 

 ness when a mass of overhanging ice crashed 

 down on the rocks. Something stirred in 

 a deep cave suddenly laid open ; the next 

 instant his keen eyes made out the figure 

 of a huge white bear standing in the cave, 

 rocking his head up and down as the smell 

 of the village drifted out of the harbor into 

 his hungry nostrils. 



Tomah came down . . ^ , 

 from the hill to leave S '.-■-"" 



301 



/f&fwoc/r of 

 Ift e Icebergs 



