t, with a force that knocked
the wind out of him, and bore him, clawing and biting passionately, back
to the surface. His blows, of course, were delivered blindly, but one
struck home just above the narwhal's sinister little eye, wiping it out
of existence.

As the bear got his head above water, he choked and gasped, swimming
high for a few seconds in the struggle to recover his breath. Realizing
now to the full how dangerous an adversary he had challenged, he knew
that every second he remained at the surface was a deadly peril. But, at
first, the breath would not return to his buffeted lungs. With his nose
high in air he gave a longing look away across the tumult of the
journeying host, across the tranquil white water beyond, to the low,
desolate shore with its dirty ice-cakes. For the moment, he wished
himself back there. Then, as he regained his breath, and his great,
bellows-like lungs resumed their function, his courage and his fighting
fury also returned. The red light of battle blazed up again in his eyes,
and wheeling half-about with a violence that sent the water swirling and
foaming from his mighty shoulders and hurled a score of salmon upon each
other's backs, he dropped his head to dive once more into the fight.

The narwhal, for his part, had fared badly in that last encounter. With
one eye blinded, his head badly clawed, and the tough cartilage about
his blow-holes torn deeply by his adversary's teeth, he was bewildered
for the moment. But he was not daunted. His sluggish blood only boiled
to a blacker fury. Never before had he met anything like serious
opposition. The colossal sperm-whale, undisputed lord of the ocean,
never came into these cold northern waters; and the huge, blundering
whalebone whales he despised. He had transfixed and slaughtered the
helpless calves of this species under the very fins of their gigantic
but timorous mothers. He had pierced seals, and even, once, a walrus.
Terribly armed as he was, and swift, and powerful, he had never yielded
way to any other inhabitant of his cold and glimmering world.

For a few moments of agitated confusion, flurried by the pain of his
wounds, he swam straight ahead, just below the salmon. Then, recovering
his wits, he turned in a rage and looked about, with his one remaining
eye, for the bear. At first, unable immediately to readjust his vision,
he could not locate him; but presently, staring up vindictively through
the straight-swimming, blue and