took him aboard ship. There the cook
admitted him to his special favour, gave him a little warm broth, and
gradually, by careful dieting, coaxed him back to health.

[Illustration: "SOME ONE ON DECK DISCERNED THE CROUCHING BEAR."]

The young bear, as soon as he recovered himself, became the admiration
of the whole ship's company. His coat was rich and fine, its whiteness
tinged with a faint golden dye. His teeth and claws were perfect, and in
the small, inscrutable eyes with which he followed the business of the
ship gleamed an unusual intelligence. Nevertheless, though he showed no
ill-temper, no one, not even his kind attendant the cook, could
penetrate his impregnable reserve. To each individual who approached him
he showed complete indifference, while, on the contrary, his interest in
whatever was going on seemed unfailing. Chained to an iron stanchion
near the galley, he would stand swaying from side to side and swinging
his narrow, snake-like head for hours. But nothing that took place, alow
or aloft, escaped his keen observation. His indifference was plainly not
stupidity, so every one on the ship, from the captain down, regarded him
with vast respect. When at length, after a quiet voyage, the ship
reached port, this respect was enhanced by the price which he commanded
from the directors of the zoological gardens.

Now began for the young bear a life which, after the first annoying
novelty of it had worn off, almost broke his spirit by its cramped
monotony. His iron cage was spacious,--for a cage,--and built under the
shadow of a leaning rock; and a spring-fed pool at the base of the rock
kept the heat of the southern summer from growing utterly intolerable.
But the staring, grinning crowds which passed endlessly before the bars
of his cage filled him with weary rage; and day by day a fiercer
homesickness clutched at his heart. The food which his keeper gave him
he ate greedily enough, but through some inexplicable caprice he scorned
the peanuts which the crowd kept throwing to him through the bars. He
saw the other bears, in neighbouring cages, devour these small, dry
things and beg for more; but he would have none of them. He was
ceaselessly irritated, too, by the noisy sparrows which would flit
impudently within a foot of his nose; and once in a while the stroke of
his inescapable paw would descend upon one of them, easing for the
moment his sense of injury. Such small trophies he would eat with a
relish wh