r paws like the arms of a windmill. If she missed her
aim, not daring to pursue one dog lest the others should harm the cub,
she would give a great roar of baffled rage, and go on pawing and
snapping, and facing the ring, grinning at them with her mouth stretched
wide.

"When the men came up the little one was perhaps rested, for it was able
to turn round with its dam, no matter how quick she moved, so as to keep
always in front of her belly. The five dogs were all the time frisking
about her actively, tormenting her like so many gad-flies. Indeed they
made it difficult to take an aim at her without killing them. But Hans,
lying on his elbow, took a quiet aim, and shot her through the head.
She dropped and rolled over dead, without moving a muscle.

"The dogs sprang towards her at once; but the cub jumped upon her body
and reared up, for the first time growling hoarsely. They seemed quite
afraid of the little creature, she fought so actively, and made so much
noise; and, while tearing mouthfuls of hair from the dead mother, they
would spring aside the minute the cub turned towards them. The men
drove the dogs off for a time, but were obliged to shoot the cub at
last, as she would not quit the body.

"Hans fired into her head. It did not reach the brain, though it
knocked her down; but she was still able to climb on her mother's body,
and try to defend it, her mouth bleeding like a gutter-spout. They were
obliged to despatch her with stones."

After skinning the old one they gashed its body, and the dogs fed upon
it ravenously. The little one they _cached_ for themselves against
their return.

This little fight quite knocked up Hans the Esquimaux; Morton therefore
advanced alone, in the hope of being able to get beyond a huge cape that
lay before him. On reaching it, the grand sight of an _apparently
boundless ocean of open water_ met his eye. Only "four or five small
pieces" of ice were seen on the glancing waves of this hitherto unknown
sea. "Viewed from the cliffs," writes Dr Kane, "and taking thirty-six
miles as the mean radius open to reliable survey, this sea had a
justly-estimated extent of more than 4000 square miles."

Here, then, in all probability, is the great Arctic Ocean that has been
supposed to exist in a perpetually fluid state round the pole, encircled
by a ring of ice that has hitherto presented an impenetrable barrier to
all the adventurers of ancient and modern times. There were se