, while the cub
learned the new and interesting business of using his legs.

Along the shore the massive ice was still unbroken for miles out; but
where the currents and tides and storms had begun to vanquish it, and
the steel blue waves were eating into it hour by hour beneath the
growing sunlight, there the life of the north was gathering. Sea-birds
clamoured, and mated, and dived, and flew in circles, or settled in
flickering gray and white masses on every jutting promontory of black
rock. Along the blue-white ice-edge seals basked and barked, their soft
eyes keeping incessant watch against the perils that always lurked about
them. Huge bulks of walrus wallowed heavily in the waves, or lifted
their tusked heads menacingly to stare over the ice.

[Illustration: "SOME INEXPERIENCED SEAL HAD BEEN FOOLISH ENOUGH TO LIE
BASKING CLOSE BESIDE AN ICE-CAKE"]

Amid this teeming life, which the returning sun had brought back to
the ice-fields, the old she-bear, with her cub close at her heels, moved
craftily. She lurked behind piled-up ice-cakes, crept from shelter to
shelter, and moved as noiselessly as a wraith of snow on the hair-tufted
pads of her great feet. Sometimes her tireless hunting was promptly
rewarded, particularly when some inexperienced seal had been foolish
enough to lie basking close beside an ice-cake large enough to give
cover to the cunning hunter. Sometimes her sudden rush would take
unawares a full-fed gannet half-dozing on a rocky ledge. Sometimes a
lightning plunge and sweep of her armed paw would land a gleaming fish
upon the ice, a pleasant variation to the diet of red-blooded seal-meat.
And presently, as the long sunlight gathered warmth, and the brief,
swift heat of the Arctic summer approached, rushing down upon the ice as
if it knew how short must be its reign, the melting of the snow on
sheltered slopes and southward-facing hollows uncovered a wealth of
mosses, and lichens, and sprouting roots, most grateful to the bears'
flesh-wearied palates.

But not always was foraging a matter so simple. The mother bear had two
great appetites to supply, her own, and that of the vigorous youngster
beside her, who kept draining unremittingly at her sources of vitality
and strength. Sometimes the seals were unusually alert and shy, the
birds vituperative and restless, and the fish obstinate in their
preference for the waters far offshore. At such times, if there were no
greening hollows near by, where she