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114 nose. Meanwhile Johansen had struggled to his legs, and when I fired had got his gun, which was sticking out of the kayak hole. The only harm done was that the bear had scraped some grime off Johansen's right cheek, so that he has a white stripe on it, and had given him a slight wound on one hand; Kaifas has also got a scratch on his nose. Hardly had the bear fallen, before we saw two more peeping over a hummock a little way off—cubs who, naturally, wanted to see the result of the maternal chase. They were two large cubs."

I was once similarly stalked by a bear that watched its chance for a long time, while I was busy attending to some baited traps lowered in the sea, through a hole in the ice, three-quarters of a mile from the shore where the encampment was. Fortunately, by the vigilance of one of my comrades, Armitage, the bear was detected when within a hundred yards of his prey, and, finding he was discovered, made off. The remarkable swimming powers of the bear were exhibited well on this occasion, for he took to the water and began to swim towards an island that was twelve miles distant. A bear is, in fact, just as much at home in the water as on the ice, and often, if it comes to a large pool of water in the floe, a bear will swim across rather than take the extra trouble of walking round.