ckly had
they come and so unexpectedly; or, at the least, the dogs seemed like
howling wolves, and the man a wild man of the frozen ocean, clothed in
wild beasts' skins.

[Illustration: A Race for Life.]

"We called to the man to stop; we shouted, 'Come here, come here!' and
then again, 'Come back, come back!' as loud as we could shout, waving
our caps, and throwing up our arms, and running in a frantic way; but
not the slightest notice would he take of us, not one instant would he
stop, but upon his course and purpose he kept right on, pushing after
the running bear, without appearing to give us even a single thought. We
could not doubt that he had seen us, we were so near to him.

"On went the bear, on after him went the dogs and sledge and man. More
impatient grew the dogs, louder called the man to his excited team, and
the Dean and I ran after, shouting still, as we had done in the
beginning. We came soon upon the sledge track, and followed it at our
greatest speed.

"At length the cries of the dogs grew indistinct, and then died away at
last entirely, and the man's voice was no longer heard; and that which
had come so suddenly soon became but a dark moving speck upon the great
white frozen sea, as it had first appeared; but after it we still
followed on.

"Then the moving speck faded out of sight, and everything around was
still and cold and solemn and desolate as before. Yet still we ran and
ran.

"I said as desolate as before. But O, it was a thousand times more
desolate now than ever,--as the night is darker for the lightning flash
that has died away, or a cloudy noon is colder for a single ray of
sunshine that has broken through the vapors.

"Yet on and on we ran and ran, until we could run no more.

"And then we laid us down upon the snow and wept, and bemoaned our hard,
hard fate; but no word was spoken. The disappointment was too great for
words; and, after a short rest in the chilly air upon the frozen sea, we
wandered slowly back to our poor hut; and after many weary hours we
reached it, not so much alive as dead,--for through miles and miles of
heavy snow we had run after the sledge, and through these same miles we
had trudged back again, with the cruel disappointment rankling in our
hearts, and with no hope to buoy us up.

"Strange--was it not?--that at no period of our life upon the desert
island were we so unhappy as we were that day,--never so utterly cast
down, never so broken-spirited, n