THE WORLD OF ICE. 109

when a Polar bear walked leisurely out from behind
a lump of ice, where it had been regaline itself on a
dead seal, and sauntered slowly out towards the
icebergs seaward, not a hundred yards in advance of
them.

“Hallo! look there! what a monster!” shouted
Fred, as he cocked his musket and sprang forward.
“ What’ll you do, Tom, you’ve no gun ?”

“ Never mind, I'll do what I can with the hammer.
Only make sure you don’t miss. Don’t fire till you
are quite close to him.”

They were running after the bear at top speed
while they thus conversed in hasty and broken
sentences, when suddenly they came to a yawning
crack in the ice, about thirty feet wide, and a mile
long on either hand, with the rising tide boiling at the
bottom of it. Bruin’s pursuers came to an abrupt
halt.

“ Now, isn’t that disgusting ?”

Probably it was, and the expression of chagrin on
Fred’s countenance as he said so evidently showed
that he meant it; but there is no doubt that this
interruption to their hunt was extremely fortunate,
for to attack a Polar bear with a musket charged
only with small shot, and a geological hammer, would
have been about as safe and successful an operation
as trying to stop a locomotive with one’s hand.
Neither of them had yet had experience of the
enormous streneth of this white monarch of the

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rozen. Regions and his tenacity of life, although both