the steaks were rather tough, you may guess. The little
bears, playful like, were running about round me, while the old bear was
grumbling away outside, thinking maybe that his wife had taken a drop
too much, and couldn't get up. All of a sudden I heard a great
hullabaloo, and several shots were fired, and down came the old bear as
dead as a door nail in front of the cave.

"Among other voices, I recognised that of Abraham Coxe. `My poor mate
is killed, and eaten by the bears,' says he; `but I may as well have his
knife, and his baccy-box and buttons, if they ain't eaten too.'

"`No, I ain't eaten nor dead either, you cowardly rascal, and I hope a
better man nor you may have my traps when I do go,' I sings out, for I
was in a towering rage at being deserted.

"At first the people were going to run away, thinking it was my ghost
that was speaking; but when I sang out again, and told them that I was a
living man, some of them took courage, and came and dragged the two old
bears out of the way. At last I crawled out, followed by the young
cubs, to the great astonishment of all who saw us. To make a long story
short, this was the way how the people had come to my rescue. When Coxe
ran away, not knowing where he went, he ran right into the village,
which was all the time close to us. When the villagers heard what had
happened, they all came out to have a shot at the bears, not expecting
to find me alive. They seemed very glad I had escaped, and carried me
back in triumph to the village. As it was through our means they got
two bears and a number of cubs, they treated us very kindly, and pressed
us to stay with them. When, however, we found that we should never
reach America by going over the mountains, and as we had no fancy to
spend a winter in this outlandish sort of a place, seeing that the
summer wasn't very pleasant, we judged it best to go back to our ship
and give ourselves up. We got three dozen a-piece, which I can only say
we richly deserved, and neither of us ever attempted to desert again.
`Let well alone,' I used to say. `If I do get away, I shall only find
myself before long on board another ship, and worse off than before,
probably.'"

Jerry's advice was very sound. Many a man deserts to obtain an
uncertain good, and finds, when too late, that he has secured a certain
ill.

Those truly were pleasant evenings at our quiet little house. I wish
that I could recollect all old Jerry's stories I