ost a cry, "Marian! Quick!" she seized Marian by
the arm and dragged her around an ice-pile.

"Wha--what is it?" whispered the startled Marian.

"Bear!"

* * * * * *

At this very moment, on another section of that same vast floe, Phi lay
flat on his stomach, his eye traveling the length of his rifle barrel.
His brow was wrinkled. He moved uneasily, as a gambler moves who would
risk all on one throw of the dice but does not quite dare.

He shook the benumbed fingers of his right hand, then gripped the rifle
once more. His forefinger was on the trigger. He had arrived at a
crisis. He was half starved and freezing. For three days now he had
wandered over the vast expanse of ice-pans that covered the waters of
Bering Straits. During that three days he had secured only two small
birds, dovekies they were, birds who linger all winter in the Arctic.
These he had shared with Rover.

From the moment the snow-fog had settled down upon him and the break in
the ice-floe had blocked his way so effectively, he had wandered about
without knowing where he was going. The ice-floe constantly drifting,
first this way, then that, may have carried him east, west, north,
south. Who could tell where? Who could guess his position on the
surface of the ocean at the present moment?

A brown seal was the cause of his excitement now. The seal, lying
asleep upon the ice-pan before him, must weigh something like seventy
pounds. This was meat enough to last him and his dog many days.

He was not a good shot and knew it. He had wandered over the ice-floes
of the ocean at times with a rifle under his arm, yet never before had
he stalked a seal. Only the grimmest necessity could have induced him
to do so now. There was something altogether too human in those
bobbing brown heads as they appeared above the water or lifted to gaze
about them on the ice. But now his need and the need of the dog
demanded prompt action.

Two things made a perfect shot a necessity: The seal was sleeping
beside his hole; if he was not killed instantly he would drop into the
hole and be lost to the hunter. And this was the last cartridge in the
rifle. The two birds had cost him four shots. The seal must be
secured by his last one. There seemed a certain irony about a fate
which would allow him to waste his ammunition on small birds, then
offer him such a prize as this with only one shot to win.

He knew well enough