ADRIFT ON AN ICE-BERG
No sooner had Mother White Bear seen the Eskimo turn to pursue her
than she started running back over the ice floe, urging the fat cub to
follow.
Sitka raced as best he could, but his fat forelegs were so much shorter
than his hind legs that he stepped on his own feet and fell, and rolled
this way and that. Again and again he fell, till Mother White Bear came
back and tried to carry him by the scruff of the neck. But he was too
heavy for that now. And all the time the little brown man was coming
closer. At last the Eskimo raised his spear to hurl it at Sitka.
Mother White Bear had just come to the top of a steep, slippery place
on the ice-floe where it sloped to the sea.[1] In desperation, the
great, furry mother took wee Sitka in her almost human forearms, and
sitting down at the top of the slide, coasted straight down the ice-pan
into the white-capped waves. By the time the Eskimo had climbed to the
top of the slide, where he could see what had become of them, they were
swimming rapidly away, the cub holding fast to his mother’s tail.
[1] Note--A polar bear seen on the broken ice off Wrangel Island was
seen to climb to the top of an uptilted ice-pan, lay down on his side,
and pushing himself off with one hind foot, coast down head foremost
to the water thirty of forty feet below, states E. W. Nelson in a
publication of the National Geographic Society.
Another time he saw a mother bear shelter her cub from flying bullets
by taking him between her fore legs and swimming away with him.
Even then the little brown man could have thrown his spear and struck
them, but Mother White Bear, suspicioning as much, made a dive under a
floating cake of ice. They came up on the other side, where he could
not see them, their noses just barely out of water,--and there they
waited till long after the little brown man had given up and gone back
to the whale hunt.
There followed delightful days on Egg Island, as they called the rocks
on which they had found the eider ducks. It rained a good deal, but
they did not mind. The days were getting longer now. There were only
a few hours of darkness between sunset and sunrise. The ice of inland
rivers was thawed through in spots, where the Eskimos had chopped holes
to catch salmon. Mother White Bear would sit all day at one of these
salmon holes, watching for the big red fish. When she saw one, biff!
would go her fore arm, claws out like five ivory fish hooks, to nab the
slippery fellow. Then how she did feast! Sitka watched every move she
made, because by and by he, too, wanted to be a mighty fisherman.
One day she took him to visit Seal Rocks. From far away they could hear
the dog-like barking of the queer creatures, as they lay basking in the
noonday sun. Now and again one would come swimming along with a fish in
his jaws, clambering up on the rocks with his flippers.
Long ago, when the world was young, Mother White Bear told Sitka, the
seals all lived on land, and had legs, but they found it so much easier
to get their food from the sea that they became expert swimmers. That
meant that Mother Nature had to flatten their fore-legs into flippers,
with webbed fingers, so that they could use them as paddles, as a fish
does his fins. Their hind legs she turned into flappers that they could
hold snug together and use, like a fish’s tail, to steer with. This
makes it hard for them to get about on land, and Sitka thought it was
the funniest sight in the world to see them humping themselves along
over the rocks. But they were wonderful at swimming and diving and
catching fish.
Mother White Bear would not swim too near Seal Rocks today, however,
because the great bull seals, the fathers and grandfathers, were there
to protect the little ones. And my, how those old bulls did bark at
them! For they feared that Mother White Bear might like the flavor of
baby seal. Nearly every cow-seal had a baby with soft, woolly white
fur, though when it grew up it would be brown and tan. Mother White
Bear would have liked to take Sitka a little nearer, but though the cow
seals were not much bigger than big dogs, the bulls were almost as huge
as herself. That, she told the inquiring cub, was because every bull
had to protect at least a dozen cows and their babies. The young bulls
are killed for their skins, and that makes the numbers uneven.
The seals had all been South for the winter. In May the bull seals had
returned to the islands, swimming through the icy water so fast that
the cows could not keep up with them. For several weeks the bulls had
held contests, and fought among themselves to see who was strongest,
and who should have the best home sites on the islands. In June their
mates had come, and almost the same day, the seal pups had been born.
It is still cold in Alaska in early summer, but the seals have such
thick fur--these Alaska seals--that they do not mind. Of course the
best deep sea fishing cannot be found so near shore, and the mother
seals often had to swim for miles to find food. Then they would come
back and nurse their babies. By fall the little ones would be able to
fish for themselves, and they would all go South for the winter.
The two bears next swam past some rocks where they saw a herd of huge
fat walruses. These leather-skinned old fellows, who looked as if they
might be second cousins to the seals, had great tusks that curved from
their jaws to the very ground. Sitka was terribly afraid when he saw
those ivory tusks. But his mother only laughed and bade him watch and
see what they did with their ferocious-looking weapons. Then she led
him over the rocks, past the lazy, lubberly creatures, who eyed them
stupidly, to where one old fellow was busy just off shore. To Sitka’s
immense surprise, the monster was digging clams with his tusks. He had
quite a pile of them waiting for his supper.
Sitka watched with twinkling eyes till the old fellow’s back was
turned. Then he made a dash to see what those clams were like. My, how
that walrus roared at him! He made for him with his tusks, but Sitka
dodged to one side too quickly for his clumsy lunge.