he butt-end of R----'s rifle. The shock removed R----'s glazed cap from
his head, and it fell, bounding from the rock, close to Bruin's nose.
Mistaking, no doubt, this ingenious covering for R----'s especial skull,
the bear, infuriated, flew at it impetuously, and seizing it in his
mouth, shook it as an angry dog would have shaken a rag.

The blood was now fastly trickling down his tongue, which hung from his
mouth, and through his side at every pulsation, spouted, smoking, the
warm element of life. Gradually, slowly, yet reluctantly, his head
drooped towards the ground, and, faint from loss of blood, the animal,
tottering from side to side, sate, weakened as he was, upright on his
haunches, showing his teeth, and growling until the coagulated blood,
accumulating in his throat, would make him cough, and threatened
suffocation.

Descending from the rock, we came near to the dying creature, and,
striving to reach one of us, he lifted his paw, and, as he did so, lost
his balance, and tumbled over on the earth. Although, as we supposed, on
the point of death, the gallant brute still growled, and attempted to
rise again and renew the fight, but complete exhaustion denied what his
courage prompted.

The Norwegians now reappeared, and one of them knelt down to remove
R----'s cap from the bear's clutches; but the undaunted Bruin, as if
desirous of giving his countryman a final embrace, seized him round the
neck, and drew him tightly to his clotted breast. We were, of course,
alarmed a second time for the man's safety, and by great exertions tried
to release him from his perilous condition; but our efforts were not a
little crippled by the legs of the Norwegian, which he flung violently
about at every possible tangent; and one arm, moving with the rapid
oscillating motion of a steam-engine, brought the fist in sharp contact
with the other Norwegian's chest, and threw him, head over heels, into
the identical pool whence he had himself but lately escaped.

The accident was so ludicrous, that in the ecstasies of mirth, we forgot
the man lying prostrate and kicking in the arms of the bear; until, by
dint of his own exertions, he released himself, and, standing upright
before us, showed his face plastered from forehead to chin, and ear to
ear, with a multitude of withered leaves, which adhered to the blood he
had borrowed from the animal's wounds.

The poor bear was now dead; and, behaving bravely as he did to the last,
we could