Page:The white czar; a story of a polar bear (IA whiteczarstoryof00hawk).pdf/169

 cage due to the weight of the bear and the top of the cage, but that was no hardship to him. But the clumsy cage did not keep facing the seas as did the motor boat a mile away, so when it came into the trough, the water was four feet deep instead of two. Even so it would have gone rolling over and over but that the great shaggy beast inside trimmed it and steadied it just as cleverly as a man would have a fractious canoe.

The art of balancing he was master of. He had learned it by sailing for miles upon rocking cakes of ice. What brute cunning could do to keep the cage right side up and from swamping, he could be trusted to do. But gradually it water soaked and came up from the wettings in the trough of the sea less and less buoyantly. Finally the water in the cruel cage was up to the bear's sides. Truly his plight was getting desperate. At last when the water came up to his shoulders and he even had to swim a few strokes occasionally in the cruel cage, Eiseeyou's prophecy seemed about to be fulfilled. It certainly looked as though he would sleep in the Atlantic. Meanwhile the motor-boat