other stump. As Cinnamon looked he
saw the man point something at him (yes, unquestionably, the dreadful
thing we had heard of--the thunder-stick--with which man kills at long
distances), and in a moment there was a flash of flame and a noise like
a big tree breaking in the wind, and something hit his leg and smashed
it, as we could see. It hurt horribly, and Cinnamon turned at once and
plunged into the wood. As he did so there was a second flash and roar,
and something hit a tree-trunk within a foot of his head, and sent
splinters flying in every direction.

Since then Cinnamon had been trying only to get away. His foot hurt him
so that he had been obliged to lie down for a few hours in the bushes
during the morning; but now he was pushing on again, only anxious to go
somewhere as far away from man as possible.

While he was talking, my mother had been licking his wounded foot, while
father sat up on his haunches, with his nose buried in the fur of his
chest, grumbling and growling to himself, as his way was when he was
very much annoyed. I have the same trick, which I suppose I inherited
from him. We cubs sat shivering and whimpering, and listening
terror-stricken to the awful story.

What was to be done now? That was the question. How far away, we asked,
were the men? Well, it was about midnight when Cinnamon was wounded,
and now it was noon. Except the three or four hours that he had lain in
the bushes, he had been travelling in a straight line all the time, as
fast as he could with his broken leg. And did men travel fast? No; they
moved very slowly, and always on their hind-legs. Cinnamon had never
seen one go on all fours, though _that_ seemed to him as ridiculous as
their building houses of chopped trees instead of making holes in the
ground. They very rarely went about at night, and Cinnamon did not
believe any of them had followed him, so there was probably no immediate
danger. Moreover, Cinnamon explained, they seldom moved far away from
the streams, and they made a great deal of noise wherever they went, so
that it was easy to hear them. Besides which, you could smell them a
long way off. It did not matter if you had never smelled it before: any
bear would know the man-smell by the first whiff he got of it.

All this was somewhat consoling. It made the danger a little more
remote, and, especially, it reduced the chance of our being taken by
surprise. Still, the situation was bad enough as it stood, for the