h all
but gone, he was so fortunate as to gain a particularly tough and
massive floe which withstood all the storm's assaults. It was almost a
young berg in its dimensions and solidity; and in its centre, crouched
in a crevice, the bear felt, for the first time since the uproar began,
something like a sense of security.

The drift of the current had by this time carried the ice so far south
that the unchanging light of the Arctic day was left behind. Each night,
for a little while, the sun dipped from sight below the naked horizon.
For three days the great floe voyaged on through unrelenting storm,
riding down the lesser ice-cakes, and taking the waves with ponderous
lurch and slide. Little by little the lesser ice disappeared, till the
great floe rode alone. Then the wind died down; and last of all the
waves subsided. And the bear found himself sailing a steel-blue,
sparkling, empty sea, under a cloudless sky and a sun that burned with a
warmth he had never known.

It was now came the terrific trial of hunger to the young bear. For days
together he had no taste of food, no comfort to his throat but the
licking of the ice and lapping of the fresh water in the pools. Once
only did he taste meat,--a blundering gannet which alighted within a
foot of his motionless head and never knew the lightning doom that smote
it. This made one meal; but no more birds came, and no seals appeared,
and no fish came near enough for the bear to have any hope of striking
them. Day by day he grew thinner and weaker, till it was an effort to
climb the slopes of icy domain; and day by day the floe diminished, till
it grew to be a race between the ice and the animal, as to which should
first fade back into the elements.

But here fate intervened to stop this unnatural rivalry. By this time
the ice had drifted down into the track of occasional ships; and one
day, as a tramp steamer was passing near the floe, some one on deck
discerned the crouching bear. The sea was calm, and the captain in a
mood of leisure; so a boat was lowered and the crew set out for a bear
hunt.

Having heard much of the ferocity of the polar bear, the men went well
armed and full of excitement. But the reception which they met disarmed
them. Too hopeless for fear, or hate, or wonder, the despairing animal
turned upon them a look of faint appeal which they could not
misunderstand. With a not unnatural distrust of such amenability they
lightly bound and muzzled him, and