or small game with his gun, and for large game with the
spear or knife. The large game was nothing less than the Siberian bear,
a formidable and ferocious animal, in size equaling its fellow of the
frozen seas. Peter Strogoff had killed more than thirty-nine bears--that
is to say, the fortieth had fallen under his blows; and, according to
Russian legends, most huntsmen who have been lucky enough up to the
thirty-ninth bear, have succumbed to the fortieth.

Peter Strogoff had, however, passed the fatal number without even a
scratch. From that time, his son Michael, aged eleven years, never
failed to accompany him to the hunt, carrying the ragatina or spear to
aid his father, who was armed only with the knife. When he was fourteen,
Michael Strogoff had killed his first bear, quite alone--that was
nothing; but after stripping it he dragged the gigantic animal's skin to
his father's house, many versts distant, exhibiting remarkable strength
in a boy so young.

This style of life was of great benefit to him, and when he arrived
at manhood he could bear any amount of cold, heat, hunger, thirst, or
fatigue. Like the Yakout of the northern countries, he was made of iron.
He could go four-and-twenty hours without eating, ten nights without
sleeping, and could make himself a shelter in the open steppe where
others would have been frozen to death. Gifted with marvelous acuteness,
guided by the instinct of the Delaware of North America, over the white
plain, when every object is hidden in mist, or even in higher latitudes,
where the polar night is prolonged for many days, he could find his way
when others would have had no idea whither to turn. All his father's
secrets were known to him. He had learnt to read almost imperceptible
signs--the forms of icicles, the appearance of the small branches of
trees, mists rising far away in the horizon, vague sounds in the air,
distant reports, the flight of birds through the foggy atmosphere, a
thousand circumstances which are so many words to those who can decipher
them. Moreover, tempered by snow like a Damascus blade in the waters of
Syria, he had a frame of iron, as General Kissoff had said, and, what
was no less true, a heart of gold.

The only sentiment of love felt by Michael Strogoff was that which he
entertained for his mother, the aged Marfa, who could never be induced
to leave the house of the Strogoffs, at Omsk, on the banks of the
Irtish, where the old huntsman and she had live