METAPHYSICS OF BEAR HUNTING. 861 
that, or it'll run me crazy, sure enough! Ha! ha! thig is 
a funny joke! what a laugh I'll have with the fellows when 
we all get together again! Oh! they have all hid as I have 
done, and we will all meet out there at the mouth of the 
gorge after awhile ! 
Pooh! the Fates merely mean to try my nerves! Curse 
that moaning! I must go down and kill that bear. Pity to 
kill him, too; it’s a sort of companionship! Doleful friends 
we'll be! Confound it, if it wouldn’t whine so piteously I 
could stand it! Pshaw! the fellows will be here directly, and 
what will they say to find I have been so unmanned by a 
little silence, that I could not finish a wounded bear, when I 
came all this way to hunt it? So down I went! The great 
monster, I found, was too far gone to be savage. He merely 
stared at me through half-closed eyes, then tossed his head 
about, gaped his jaws, and moaned. I went close up to him. 
I wanted him to show fight and excite me. It looked like 
cold-blooded murder to kill him so, and we the only live 
things near: but he wouldn’t notice me. 
His back was broken, and he had enough to occupy him. 
Wouldn’t it be merciful to put him out of pain? Yes! but 
who’s going to be merciful to me when I’m starving, after 
my ammunition gives out! I felt jealous of the bear’s good 
luck, in having me there with a large knife to kill him at 
once ! 
All my logic wouldn’t do. Sophise as I might, the awful 
conviction was settling about my brain that the party had 
been hopelessly scattered, and that I was left alone, with 
no experience to guide me back, and no hope of getting 
back on foot if I had possessed experience. But it wouldn’t 
do to let this feeling gain the ascendant. I must have 
something to employ me. They might come yet. 
So, I deliberately split the bear’s skull open with my 
bowie-knife, and went to work very formally to dissect him. 
I managed to protract this operation to such a length, that, 
