t is?"

"Pretty late, I suppose. It was afternoon, I know, when we started, and
we must have been out a good while now. What time is it?"

"Just two o'clock in the morning!"

"What! do you mean to say it was _yesterday_ when we started, and that
we've been walking all night, and got into _to-morrow morning_ without
knowing it?"

"Even so, Fred. We have overshot our time, and the captain is signalling
us to make haste. He said that he would not fire unless there seemed
some prospect of the ice moving, so we had better run, unless we wish to
be left behind; come along."

They had not proceeded more than half-a-mile when a Polar bear walked
leisurely out from behind a lump of ice, where it had been regaling
itself on a dead seal, and sauntered slowly out towards the icebergs
seaward, not a hundred yards in advance of them.

"Hallo! look there! what a monster!" shouted Fred, as he cocked his
musket and sprang forward. "What'll you do, Tom, you've no gun?"

"Never mind, I'll do what I can with the hammer. Only make sure you
don't miss. Don't fire till you are quite close to him."

They were running after the bear at top speed while they thus conversed
in hasty and broken sentences, when suddenly they came to a yawning
crack in the ice, about thirty feet wide, and a mile long on either
hand, with the rising tide boiling at the bottom of it. Bruin's pursuers
came to an abrupt halt.

"Now, isn't that disgusting?"

Probably it was, and the expression of chagrin on Fred's countenance as
he said so evidently showed that he meant it; but there is no doubt that
this interruption to their hunt was extremely fortunate, for to attack a
Polar bear with a musket charged only with small shot, and a geological
hammer, would have been about as safe and successful an operation as
trying to stop a locomotive with one's hand. Neither of them had yet had
experience of the enormous strength of this white monarch of the Frozen
Regions and his tenacity of life, although both were reckless enough to
rush at him with any arms they chanced to have.

"Give him a long shot--quick!" cried Singleton.

Fred fired instantly; and the bear stopped, and looked round, as much as
to say, "Did you speak, gentlemen?" Then, not receiving a reply, he
walked away with dignified indifference, and disappeared among the
ice-hummocks.

An hour afterwards the two wanderers were seated at a comfortable
breakfast in the cabin of the _Dolphin_, relating thei