"In a little I sat down, and, putting up the collar of my coat--for the air was beginning to bite sharply--I meditated on the chances of our life. It did not seem that we had much more than one chance in a hundred, yet the hundredth chance was indubitably worth the risk--better than inaction, and better than the suicide which would inevitably come with the weakening brain, after another winter such as that we had just passed through.
"Meditating so, I heard a noise behind me, and, turning, found myself almost face to face with a great she-bear, with two cubs of the year running gambolling about her. I had not even so much as a fish-spear with me. With my heart leaping like the piston-rod of an engine, I sat as still as though I had been a pillar of ice carved out of the hummock. The cubs
