Chapter III: 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.