up, standing, clinging, and balancing on the glassy edges of ice, and
hopping and leaping from cake to cake. Cracks, crevices, and jagged
holes opened ten, fifteen, and twenty feet sheer down all about us. A
single misstep would send us head-foremost into them.

"I say," exclaimed Capt. Mazard, barely saving himself from a tumble,
"this is a devil of a funny place for a bear-hunt! No chance for rapid
retreats! It will be fight bear, or die!"

The place where the bears had stood when old Trull had fired was back
fifteen or twenty rods to the right. We worked off in that direction,
getting occasional glimpses of the water down in the deep holes, and
stopping once to pull Corliss out of a wedge-shaped crevice into which
he had slipped. Arriving on a big broad cake,--which, for a wonder,
lay flat side up,--we paused to reconnoitre.

"Don't see any thing of 'em," said the captain.

"Gone, I'll bet my musket!" said Kit disappointedly. "More'n a league
away by this time, I'll warrant you."

"Doubt if the old man touched 'em!" said Hobbs.

"Guess he suspected as much!" laughed the captain. "Perhaps that was
why he wouldn't come."

"But we haven't half searched yet!" exclaimed Wade, pushing out along
the edge of a tilted-up fragment, and jumping across to another.

As he jumped the ticklish cake tipped, slid back, and toppled over
into a great chasm to the right with a tremendous crash and
spattering,--for there was water at the bottom,--Wade barely saving
himself. Almost at the same instant, I thought I heard a low growl not
far off.

"Hark!" exclaimed Kit. "Wasn't that the bear?"

"Sounded like one!" muttered the captain. "Down among the ice!"

"May be wounded down there," said Kit. "Crawled in under the ice."

"Spread out round here, boys," cried the captain, "and peep sharp into
the holes!"

I knew we were near where the bullets from the howitzer had hit; for I
saw several of them lying down in the cracks, flattened by striking
against the ice: and, a few rods farther on, Weymouth and I came to a
large irregular hole sixteen or seventeen feet deep, along the bottom
of which we saw the bones of some fish.

"This is the very place where they were when we first saw them," said
Weymouth. "Ten to one they've crawled into some of those big cracks."

We pitched down a loose junk of ice, and again heard a growl: though
just where it issued from was hard telling; for the broad faces of the
cakes, set at all angles,