away from the ship. I forget what they went out in the boat for, but I
suppose the captain of the ship sent them out for something. They were
rowing along in the boat, and they came close to an iceberg. They saw
something alive on the iceberg, but they could not make out what it
was: they did not know but it was a man. But they came a little nearer
to the great ice-hill, and they soon found out what sort of a thing
there was on it. _Splash_ something went into the water; and in a
minute a great white bear jumped into the boat, as wet as a drowned
rat.

Well, the sailors thought they had got to die, sure enough. What could
they do? The first thing that they thought of, was to try to kill the
bear with their oars. But they soon gave that up. They saw that the
bear was too large and strong to be killed in that way. The next thing
they thought of doing, was to jump into the water. But they knew they
would die if they did that. What should they do? "I wonder which of us
the old fellow will take first," one of the men said to the other.
Each of them had his oar ready, so that when the bear made a spring at
them, he would get his ears boxed pretty sharply. That was all they
could do.

Well, the bear did not seem to be at all in a hurry. The first thing
he did, after he got into the boat, was to shake himself as hard as he
could, to get the water out of his coat. After that, he walked slowly
to one end of the boat, just as if he was quite at home there, and lay
down upon a coat which one of the men had brought along, and went to
sleep.

The sailors saw then that all they had to do was to row the bear to
the shore. So they went to work. When they got to the ship, the