hing,
racing, whirling, and grinding chaos of ice-cakes, churning in an
angry flood and hurrying blindly to the Falls. In the centre of his
own floe the woodsman sat down, the better to preserve his balance. He
bit off a chew from his plug of "blackjack," and with calm eyes
surveyed the doom toward which he was rushing. A mile is a very short
distance when it lies above the inevitable. The woodsman saw clearly
that there was nothing to be done but chew his "blackjack," and wait
on fate. That point settled, he turned his head to see what the bear
was doing.

To his surprise, the animal was now a good fifty yards farther
up-stream, having evidently been delayed by some vagary of the
struggling ice. He was now sitting up on his haunches on a floe, and
staring silently at the volleying cloud which marked the Falls. The
woodsman was aware of a curious fellow feeling for the great beast
which, not five minutes ago, had been raging for his life. To the
woodsman, with his long knowledge and understanding of the wild
kindreds, that rage and that pursuit now appeared as lying more or
less in the course of events, a part of the normal savagery of Nature,
and no matter of personal vindictiveness.

Now that he and his enemy were involved in a common and appalling
doom, the enmity was forgotten. "Got cl'ar grit, too!" he murmured to
himself, as he took note of the quiet way the bear was eyeing the
Falls.

And now it seemed to him that the trampling roar grew louder every
second, drowning into dumbness the crashing and grinding of the ice;
and the volleying mist-clouds seemed to race up-stream to meet him.
Then, with a sickening jump and turn of his heart, a hope came and
shook him out of his stoicism. He saw that his ice-cake was sailing
straight for a little rocky islet just above the fall. Two minutes
more would decide his fate,--at least for the time. He did not trouble
to think what he would do on the island, if he got there. He rose
cautiously and crouched, every sinew tense to renew the battle for
life.

Another minute fled away, and the island was close ahead, wrapped in
the roar and the mist-volleys. A cross-current seized the racing
ice-cake, dragging it aside,--and the man clenched his fists in a
fury of disappointment as he saw that he would miss the refuge after
all. He made ready to plunge in and at least die battling. Then fate
took yet another whim, and a whirling mass of logs and ice, colliding
with the floe, f