down flat upon his belly, making himself as small and inconspicuous as possible, and scanned the sea beyond the ice with savage, hopeful eyes. He knew at once that that bite was the work of a seal, of a seal killing eagerly, this way and that, among swarming victims, without stopping to gather in the booty.
That seal and his fellows, their hunger glutted, might presently come out upon the floe to bask and doze in the sunshine.
Soundlessly as a cloud-shadow, and almost as unnoticeably, the bear twisted and crawled his way out to the edge of the bright floe, and flattened himself down between two hummocks. As soon as he was motionless, he seemed to melt from view, so perfectly did he match himself to his surroundings. The keenest, most suspicious eye would have had to look twice or thrice before detecting, among the greyish and yellowish blurs upon the shadowy whiteness, the outlines of that sinister form and snaky, black-snouted head. The point of blackness, instead of betraying its owner, had the effect of making his faint outlines less conspicuous and diverting the eye from them. Here he lay rigid as if frozen into the ice, hoping that one of the expected seals would emerge close before him, within reach of the lightning stroke of his armed paw. If not, then he would wait till the seals had floundered out upon the floe, inter-
