Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/177

 while Arthur and Roy reached rather hurriedly for their guns.

"You can't do any thing with him from here," said Joe.

"And if we paddle for the shore he will see us and take to his heels," added Roy.

"Why who—what are you going to do to him?" stammered Ralph.

"We'd be glad to shoot him if we could," replied Joe. "He's no dog. He's a half-grown bear."

Tom and his cousins, of course, asked a good many questions with their lips and more with their eyes, but Joe and his two friends were too busy to answer them. They made all haste to raise their anchors, and then pulled rapidly but silently toward the shore, all the while keeping a close watch over the movements of the bear, which was wandering listlessly about, now and then stopping to look into the water or to sniff at a log, as if he were hunting for something he had lost. Tom and his cousins thought he looked too small for a bear, but as he did not walk or act like a dog or any other animal they had ever seen at large, they were