r 
THOSE THREE FELLOWS HAD A NARROW ESCAPE. 467 
“ After a \vliile be came; and wlien he heard what it 
was all about, and saw the butter, his eyes sparkled, and 
he rubbed himself, as if he already had it in him. lie 
just warmed it a little to make it run, and then set to 
work. At noon he had drank it all and W'as asleep in 
the sun, ■with the butter running from his pores in the 
shape of greasy perspiration.” 
“Ugh! horrible!” exclaimed a disgusted voice: “what 
* beasts they must be! Are they fit for any thing hut to , 
drink butter and sleep?” 
“Yes; they drink 'whale-oil almost as well, and fight 
bears much better than you or I could. Yon were speak- 
ing of your encounter with a bear up the coast the other 
day: had one of these Tongouse been there instead ot 
your three fellow’s with their clubbed guns, he w’ould not 
have got away as he did. Those three fellow’s had a nar- 
row escape: — you don’t know hoio narrowL TTad not the 
bear been frightened by the outlandish noises you made in 
rushing to the rescue, he wotild have made short w'ork of 
them. You might as well expect to stun a whale by hit- 
ting him over the head wdth a boat-hook, as to stop a bear 
wdth a clubbed musket. You should have had a Tongouse 
there: they do not know^ what fear is. They attack the bear 
single-handed, wdth a long knife as their only weapon, and 
always wdn the battle unless he runs. They are generous 
as w'cll as brave. Their mode of w’arfare you wall doubt- 
less look upon as foolishly liberal. They always hunt with 
this knife, — wdiich, wdth the liandle, is from three to four 
feet long, — and if they come upon a bear asleep, instead 
of killing him at once, they catch him by his wool, give 
him a shake to w^ake him up, and then step back out of hia 
