right at the fleshy part of his heart, but the bear dodged at the flash, and rared up, and the balls went into his two hind legs, just by the jynt, one into each, and broke the thigh bones smack off, so that he went right down aft, on the ice, thump, on his hind quarters, with nothen standen but his fore legs, and his head riz up, a growlen at the captin. When the old man see him down, and tryen to slide along the ice to get his revenge, likely, thinks he to himself, thinks he, I might as well get up and go and cut that ere creter’s throat. So he tuk out his knife and opened it. “But when he started to get up, he found, to his astonishment, that he was fruz fast to the ice. Don’t laugh: it’s a fact; there an’t no doubt. The water, you see, had been round him a smart and long while, whilst he was waiten for the bear, and it’s wonderful cold in them regions, as I was sayen, and you’ll freeze in a minit if you don’t keep moven about smartly. So the captin he strained first one leg, and then he strained tother, but he couldn’t move ’em none. They was both fruz fast into the ice, about an inch and a half deep, from knee to toe, tight as a Jersey oyster perryauger on a mud flat at low water. So he laid down his gun, and looked at the bear, and doubled up his fists. “‘Come on, you bloody varmint,’ says the old man, as the bear swalloped along on his hinder eend, comen at him. “He kept getten weaker, tho,’ and comen slower and slower all the time, so that at last, he didn’t seem to move none; and directly, when he’d got so near that the captin could jist give him a dig in the nose by reachen forrard putty smart and far, the captin see that the beast was fruz fast too, nor he couldn’t move a step further forrard no ways. Then the captin burst out a laughen, and clapped his hands down on to his thighs, and roared. The bear seemed to be most onmighty mad at the old man’s fun, and set up such a growlen that what should come to pass, but the ice cracks and breaks all around the captin and the bear, down to the water’s edge, and the wind jist then a shiften, and comen off shore, away they floated on a cake of ice about ten by six, off to sea, without the darned a biscot or a quart o’ liquor to stand ’em on the cruise! There they sot, the bear and the captin, just so near that when they both reached forrards, they could jist about touch noses, and nother one not able to move any part on him, only excepten his upper part and fore paws.” “By jolly! that was rather a critical predicament, Venus,” cried Ned, buttoning his coat. “I should have thought that the captain’s nose and ears and hands would have been frozen too.”