"We found that the bear I had wounded held straight down the valley, as was easily told by the red streak he left behind him on the snow. The other two turned to the right, and ran over in the direction of the old narwhal.
"Following the red streak, we came soon down to the beach; and then climbing over the rough ice which the tide had piled up, we were quickly upon the frozen sea, hurrying on as fast as we could go. Indeed, no feeling of fear ever crossed our minds; for the great quantity of blood that the bear left behind him somehow or other went to convince us, without much reflection, that the bear must be dead, and that we should presently come upon him.
"While hurrying on at this rate, our spirits received as sudden a check as they had on a previous occasion; for we did at length come upon the bear, sure enough, and, forgetting all our courage immediately, we wheeled about in great alarm, and ran back towards the hut as fast as we could go.
"Finding, however, that we were not pursued, we turned about again; and, proceeding more cautiously this time, we came, in a little while, in sight of the bear again, very near where he was before; but now he was clearly by no means a formidable enemy; for he was going along very slowly, and making a crooked track, as if he was drunk. Directly he fell over; and, in a little while afterwards, we went up to him, and found him dead,--having bled to death from the wound I had given him.
"You may easily imagine how rejoiced we were; for now we had an enormous supply of food, and a fine bear-skin besides; so I lost no time in unlashing the knife-blade from the end of 'Old Crumply,' and with this we began to butcher him. It was a very cold and tedious operation; but we got through with it at last, and then, burying all of the flesh in the snow except a small piece that we wanted for supper, we returned to the hut, dragging the skin after us, the Dean whistling, all the way, 'Bonaparte crossing the Alps,' which he had picked up, as he told me, from a Frenchman in Havana.
"While we were coming up the valley towards the hut, in this lively state of mind, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said: 'Suppose, Hardy, the other two bears have taken a notion to come back'; and he was right; for we came presently in sight of one of them, very near the hut, and making directly for it. As soon as he saw us, however, he ran away. So we took a good laugh at his expense, and, thinking the other one must be near him, though not in sight, we proceeded on our way. Fortunately, however, before seeing the bear, we halted long enough to secure the knife-blade again on the end of 'Old Crumply'; and it was well that we did this, for, when we arrived at the broken wall where the bears had made their way out, much to our surprise, we came right upon the other bear, close up to the mouth of the hut, busy swallowing a duck. This was the smallest of the three bears, and he could not have been more than a year or so old. No sooner did he hear us than he, like the other one, became alarmed; but, seeing us in the road by which he had entered, he did not try to escape in that way, nor did he appear to have the least idea that he had only to charge upon us to see how quickly he would clear the passage; for, instead of doing this, he instantly rushed forward, and plunged into our hut, no doubt thinking that would lead to a place of safety.