might make a bloodless banquet, the
old bear would call to her aid those great powers of swimming which made
her almost as much at home in the water as the seal itself. Marking some
seals at rest by the edge of some far-jutting, naked ice-field, where
there was no possibility of her creeping upon them unobserved, she would
slip into the water in the seclusion of some little cove, and swim
straight seaward, swimming so low that only the tip of her muzzle was to
be seen. This moving speck upon the waters was not conspicuous even to
the keenest and most suspicious eyes. It might pass for a fragment of
ice with seaweed frozen into it, or for a bit of floating moss, save for
the fact that it moved steadily through the dancing of the waves, paying
no heed to tide or wind. As the seals were not expecting danger from the
direction of the sea, they were not inclined to scrutinize a thing so
insignificant as that steadily moving speck among the waves. Arriving
within well calculated distance of the unsuspecting baskers on the
ice-field, the old bear would fill her lungs, sink beneath the surface,
and swim forward with all speed. At the very edge of the ice she would
rise up, lunge forward, and strike down with her savage paw the nearest
seal, before any of them had time to realize the direction from which
death had burst upon them.

The old bear's triumph, however, was not always so complete. On one day
in particular she was confronted by an experience which almost left her
cub without a mother. The cub, watching solicitously from behind a
jagged hummock of ice, received a lesson which never faded from his
mind. He learned that in the wilds one must never let himself become so
absorbed in any occupation as to forget to keep a watchful eye for what
may be coming up behind one's back.

It was on one of the lean days, when all game was wide awake and the
lichen-beds far away. On the jagged ice off the mouth of an inlet lay
two walrus calves sunning their round, glistening sides while their
mothers wallowed and snorted in the water beside them. The old bear eyed
the calves hungrily for a minute or two. Then, ostentatiously turning
her back upon the scene, she slouched off inland among the hummocks and
rocks, the cub lurching along contentedly beside her.

Once hidden from the view of the walruses, she quickened her pace till
the cub had to struggle to keep with her, swung around the head of the
inlet, and crept stealthily down the