rections, leaving the Eskimo women in charge of
the camp.

The Captain headed one party, Chingatok another, and Leo with Benjy a
third, while a few of the natives went off independently, in couples or
alone.

"I was sure Alf would get into trouble," said Benjy, as he trotted
beside Leo, who strode over the ground in anxious haste. "That way he
has of getting so absorbed in things that he forgets where he is, won't
make him a good explorer."

"Not so sure of that, Ben," returned Leo; "he can discover things that
men who are less absorbed, like you, might fail to note. Let us go
round this hillock on separate sides. We might pass him if we went
together. Keep your eyes open as you go. He may have stumbled over one
of those low precipices and broken a leg. Keep your ears cocked also,
and give a shout now and then."

We have said that the island was a low one, nevertheless it was
extremely rugged, with little ridges and hollows everywhere, like
miniature hills and valleys. Through one of these latter Benjy hurried,
glancing from side to side as he went, like a red Indian on the
war-path--which character, indeed, he thought of, and tried to imitate.

The little vale did not, however, as Leo had imagined, lead round the
hillock. It diverged gradually to the right, and ascended towards the
higher parts of the island. The path was so obstructed by rocks and
boulders which had evidently been at one time under the pressure of ice,
that the boy could not see far in any direction, except by mounting one
of these. He had not gone far when, on turning the corner of a cliff
which opened up another gorge to view, he beheld a sight which caused
him to open mouth and eyes to their widest.

For there, seated on an eminence, with his back to a low precipice, not
more than three or four hundred yards off, sat the missing explorer,
with book on knees and pencil in hand--sketching; and there, seated on
the top of the precipice, looking over the edge at the artist, skulked a
huge Polar bear, taking as it were, a surreptitious lesson in drawing!
The bear, probably supposing Alf to be a wandering seal, had dogged him
to that position just as Benjy Vane discovered him, and then, finding
the precipice too high for a leap perhaps, or doubting the character of
his intended victim, he had paused in uncertainty on the edge.

The boy's first impulse was to utter a shout of warning, for he had no
gun wherewith to shoot the brute, but f