fifteen
feet, and they were congratulating themselves that at least half of the
work was accomplished, there was a sudden collapse. The whole thing had
caved in and carried down the platform and all to a distance of eight or
ten feet. Nobody was badly hurt. The two men who were in the bottom at
the time, busily filling up the leather bucket, were hit with some of
the falling logs and nearly buried in the avalanche of snow that seemed
to them to come from every quarter above them. Those who had tumbled in
were more scared than hurt. The difficulty now was to get the men out,
as the sides were so light and yielding.

"Use the dogs to do it," said Frank. And quickly a strong rope was tied
to an empty sled and it was let down to the first man. A strong dog-
train was attached to the other end of the rope.

"Marche!" was shouted, and away went the dogs, and soon there emerged
one of the men who had fallen in. Quickly was he rescued, and speedily
this operation was repeated until the dogs had dragged out all therein
imprisoned.

All this work had gone for nothing. Some other plan must be devised.
Half a day's work gone and nothing to show for it. This was rather
discouraging.

"What is to be tried next?" was asked by several.

"Dinner is next," said Mr Ross. And so away they hurried back to camp,
and there, while eating their well-earned meal, they talked over the
next attempt, and decided to go down where the ravine ended out on a
level place and there begin tunnelling.

When they came back and examined the spot, and measured the drift, they
found that in order to get low enough to reach the bears they would have
to tunnel at least two hundred feet. This meant a lot of heavy work.
But they were there to get those bears, and were bound to succeed. At
first they dug away the snow like a deep trench, until they reached a
place where it was too deep to be thrown out, and then the work of
tunnelling really began. To their delight, they found when they had
gone some way in, that the pressure of the immense mass of snow upon the
lower portion had so packed it that it would not require supports, as
has already been referred to.

They worked in relays with their big shovels, and cut the snow out in
great pieces, which were dragged away by the dogs as fast as the sleds
could be loaded.

That evening, when they stopped work, they estimated that they had cut
about half the way into the bears' den. Then they retu