The Great Bear

2009-03-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Great Bear

One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Düsseldorf, as Gerard was walking like one in a dream, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung his crossbow with glittering eye."Hush!" said he, in a low whisper that startled Gerard more than thunder.

Gerard grasped his axe tight, and at the same moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his crossbow went to his shoulder, even as he jumped. Twang! Went the metal string; and after an instant’s suspense he roared, "Run forward, guard the road, he is hit! he is hit!"

Gerard darted forward, and as he ran a young bear burst out of the wood right upon him; finding itself intercepted, it went upon its hind legs a snarl, and though not half grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another and it lay groveling, with Gerard hacking it.

"Hallo! Stop! You are mad to spoil the meat."

"I took it for a robber," said Gerard, panting. "I mean, I had made ready for a robber, so I could not hold my hand."

"Ay, these chattering travelers have stuffed your head full of thieves and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear thou my crossbow."

"We will carry it by turns, then," said Gerard, "for ’tis a heavy load: poor thing, how is blood drips. Why did we slay it?"

"For supper, and reward the Baillie of the next town shall give us."

"And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves it as ours love us; more than mine does me."

"What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month, and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of clothyard shafts t'other day; and died like Julius Caesar, with his hands folded one his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?"

Said he, "We have killed one of God’s creatures that was all alone in the world-as I am this day, in this strange land."

"You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked at so, or not anther bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in forest nor battlefield. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pikemen should turn them to a row of milk-pails; it is ended, to Rome thou goest not alone, for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. Some honest Burgundian shall go with thes as far as Lyons; and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor thou has dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I can trust thee by ship to Italy, which being by all account the very stronghold of milksop, thou wilt there be safe; they will hear thy words, and make thee their duke in a twinkling."

Gerard sighed. "In sooth I love not to think of this Düsseldorf, where we are to part company, good friend."

They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to lend him a bolt. "I have often shot whit a long bow, but never with one of these!"

"Draw thy knife and cut this one of the cub," said Denys slyly.

"Nay, nay, I want a clean one,"

Denys gave him three out of his quiver.

Gerard strung the bow and leveled it at a bough tat had fallen into the road at some distance. The power of the instrument surprised him; the short but thick steel bow jarred him to the very heel as it went off, and the swift steel shaft was invisible in its passage; only the dead leaves, with which November had carpeted the narrow road, flew about on the other said of the bough.

"Ye aimed a thought too high," said Denys.

Gerard did not answer, for his ear was attracted by a sound behind them. It was a peculiar sound, too, like something heavy, but not hard, rushing softly over the dead leaves. He turned round with some little curiosity. A colossal creature was coming down the road at a bout sixty paces’ distance.

He looked at it in a sort of calm stupor at first, but the next moment he turned ashy pale.

"Denys!" he cried. "Oh, God! Denys!"

Denys whirled round.

It was a bear as big as a cart-horse.

It was tearing along with its huge head down, running on a hot scent.

They very moment he saw it Denys said in a sickening whisper:

Oh! The concentrated horror of that one word, whispered hoarsely, whit dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like a sudden stroke of lightning in the dark-the bloody trail, the murdered cub, the mother upon them, and it, Death.

All this in a moment of time. The next, she saw them. Huge as she was, she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair brisling with rage): she raised big as a bull’s, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them, scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.

"Shoot!" screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot, useless.

"Shoot, man! Ten thousand devils, shoot! Too late! Tree! tree!" and he dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to first tree and climbed it, Gerard the same one his side, and as they fled, both men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.

With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragment at the foot of his tree; but bear stopped a moment at the cub.

Without taking her bloodshot eyes off those she was hunting, she smelt it all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that is was dead, quite dead, She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever heard, nor dreamed to be nature, and flew after Denys. She reared and struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.

Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great piece out of it with a crash reared again, dug her claws deep into the bark, and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.

Denys’ evil start had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to spring to. There was none; and if he jumped down he knew the bear would be upon him ere hr could recover the fall, and make short work of him. Moreover, Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and his blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.

"My hour is come," thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long knife, and clenching his teeth, prepared to job the huge brute as soon as it should mount within reach.

Of this combat the result was not doubtful.

The monster’s head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses of hair. The man was going to sting the bear, and the to crack the man like a nut.

Gerard’s heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend’s mortal danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down his tree in a moment, caught up the crossbow, which he had dropped in the road, and running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear’s body with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain, and turned its head irresolutely.

"Keep aloof!" cried Denys, "or you a dead man." "I car not;" and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it fiercely into the bear, screaming, "Take that! Take that!"

Denys poured a volley of oaths at him. "Get away, idiot!"

He was right: the bear, finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind her, slipped growling down the tree, rending tree and climbed it swiftly. But while legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground, the bear came rearing and struck with her for paw, and flew a piece of bloody cloth from Gerard’s hose. He climbed and climbed; and presently he heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He looked, and by a series of convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.

Then he looked round panting.

The bear was mounting the tree one the other side. He heard her claws scrape, and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not being very quick, she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main stem.

Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him or found by scent she was wrong; she paused; presently she caught sight of him. She eyed him steadily, then quietly descended to the fork.

Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It was stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature this: it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it came.

Gerard looked wildly down. He was feet from the ground. Death below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible from. His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless, fascinated, tongue-tried.

The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man; he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.

As in a mist he heard a twang; he glanced down; Denys, white and silent, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang, but crawled on. Again the crossbow twanged, and the bear snarled, and came nearer. Again the crossbow twanged; and the next moment the bear was close upon Gerard, where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end eyes starting from their sockets, palsied. The bear opened her jaws like a grave, and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it stuck its sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch shook Gerard forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear’s straining paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up , up , till he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped loudly close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate. The ponderous carcass rent the claws out of bough, then pounded the earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below *, and the very next instant a cry of dismay, for Gerard had swooned, and without an attempt to save himself rolled headlong from the perilous height.

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