When the bear bent his head to nose over his kill, the boys quietly placed their rifles to their shoulders and took aim. Then followed a tense moment while they waited for a movement that would expose the bear’s most vulnerable points. At seventy-five yards they could not miss.
Slowly the bear picked up the seal in his jaws and paused an instant, seeming undecided as to what was the most comfortable place in which to enjoy his meal. Then two rifles cracked almost as one, and the great beast dropped to his belly, the seal falling from his jaws. Dick fired again swiftly, but Sandy jerked ineffectually at the reloading lever of his rifle. His gun had jammed in his haste.
A rattling growl came from the throat of the stricken polar bear, and with an angry lunge, the great brute started for the point from which the bullets had come. Dick fired three more times in quick succession, and a hundred feet from them the bear at last dropped and began to struggle.
Dick was about to echo his chum’s triumphant cry, when an ominous growl from behind them froze the very blood in their veins with terror. As one they whirled about. Down the slope to the shore ice charged another polar bear, almost a replica of the one they had just shot. The beast was roaring its rage and was headed straight for the two young hunters.
“Run for your life!” cried Dick, “it’s the bear’s mate!”
As fast as they could run Dick and Sandy set off along the shore ice, exceeding all previous records. They could hear the rattle of the bear’s claws on the ice as it came on in pursuit, and with each second the angry growls sounded nearer.
Presently, Sandy began to fall behind in the race. Frantically, Dick urged him on, slackening his own pace to equal that of his slower chum, and while he ran like a frightened deer, all Dick’s narrow escapes ran through his mind in swift succession, for he believed that he and Sandy were doomed at last.
In a last desperate effort to save himself and Sandy, Dick determined to make a stand with the last two cartridges in his rifle. It was a plan born of despair, he knew, for two shots at a running target hardly could stop a beast of such massive strength and vitality and in such a ferocious mood.