In order to proceed with intelligence I had need to formulate my plan. What should I do? Do?—I would simply row my boat to Outlet river, dress myself in the bear-skin suit and waddle into the settlement to make my observations. This sounded simple enough, but reason told me I should blunder no little as a bear and appear none too real in the role. I must practice, I thought as my first sane conclusion, but my second was still more rational—I would work the trick in semi-darkness only, when my features would be rendered somewhat indefinite by the shadows. Should I go there in the early morning, or should I try the game in the twilight of evening? In the morning, I meditated, the light increases rapidly, and my man might be asleep; daylight could readily overtake me while I was crawling about to get my bearings. Clearly the evening would be the better time. Well, then, the sooner the business began the sooner I should know what was what. I decided to be present in the camp of the Blacks that very day, when the sun should have disappeared behind the hills. CHAPTER XXXV A FELLOW HUMAN Greatly relieved to have something to do—something which might be about to furnish a turning point in all this unnatural existence of mine in the wilds, I set off for the boat at an early hour of the afternoon. Once started on the expedition, I was in a fever of haste to be about it and to try my new conclusions with fortune. The skull of the bear had been boiled free of everything suggesting meat. When a mile away, down the lake I replaced this heavy thing in the skin and sewed the hide roughly about it to give the head a natural appearance. Then along the edges where I had been obliged to cut the pelt to get it off, I made a series of holes, into which I laced the cords, provided for the purpose, intending to draw them tight when the costume was properly adjusted about me. Having nothing more to prepare, I rowed leisurely for two hours, when I went ashore, near the mouth of the outlet, and tried my disguise. This business discouraged me greatly. I was able to get the neck portion fastened about my head, in such a manner that I could see easily, and the body of the skin about my chest and waist, but my arms and legs were too long for the paws and legs of the bear, while the body part was longer than my trunk. Altogether I was about the most extraordinary looking freak to be found in the jungle, when I had done my utmost to make the costume fit. I should quite have appreciated the use of several mirrors at this stage of my make-up, in order to see if sundry portions were on straight, but was denied this pleasure, having failed to provide myself with various articles of the toilet. It was only by crawling and lolling about on the ground, on knees and elbows that I was enabled to convince myself that I looked the slightest bit like the creature whose part I had essayed to perform.