hild first, and with seemingly no effort, dashed it,
with a blow of its massive paw, a dozen feet away, where it lay quiet.
Turning to follow, the brute was met by Rowland.

The bear rose to his haunches, sank down, and charged; and Rowland felt
the bones of his left arm crushing under the bite of the big,
yellow-fanged jaws. But, falling, he buried the knife-blade in the
shaggy hide, and the bear, with an angry snarl, spat out the mangled
member and dealt him a sweeping blow which sent him farther along the
ice than the child had gone. He arose, with broken ribs, and--scarcely
feeling the pain--awaited the second charge. Again was the crushed and
useless arm gripped in the yellow vise, and again was he pressed
backward; but this time he used the knife with method. The great snout
was pressing his breast; the hot, fetid breath was in his nostrils; and
at his shoulder the hungry eyes were glaring into his own. He struck for
the left eye of the brute and struck true. The five-inch blade went in
to the handle, piercing the brain, and the animal, with a convulsive
spring which carried him half-way to his feet by the wounded arm, reared
up, with paws outstretched, to full eight feet of length, then sagged
down, and with a few spasmodic kicks, lay still. Rowland had done what
no Innuit hunter will attempt--he had fought and killed the
Tiger-of-the-North with a knife.

It had all happened in a minute, but in that minute he was crippled for
life; for in the quiet of a hospital, the best of surgical skill could
hardly avail to reset the fractured particles of bone in the limp arm,
and bring to place the crushed ribs. And he was adrift on a floating
island of ice, with the temperature near the freezing point, and without
even the rude appliances of the savage.

He painfully made his way to the little pile of red and white, and
lifted it with his uninjured arm, though the stooping caused him
excruciating torture. The child was bleeding from four deep, cruel
scratches, extending diagonally from the right shoulder down the back;
but he found upon examination that the soft, yielding bones were
unbroken, and that her unconsciousness came from the rough contact of
the little forehead with the ice; for a large lump had raised.

Of pure necessity, his first efforts must be made in his own behalf; so
wrapping the baby in his coat he placed it in his shelter, and cut and
made from the canvas a sling for his dangling arm. Then, with knif