to the thirty-ninth bear, have succumbed to the fortieth.

Peter Strogoff had, however, passed the fatal number without even
a scratch. From that time, his son Michael, aged eleven years,
never failed to accompany him to the hunt, carrying the ragatina
or spear to aid his father, who was armed only with the knife.
When he was fourteen, Michael Strogoff had killed his first bear,
quite alone--that was nothing; but after stripping it he dragged
the gigantic animal's skin to his father's house, many versts distant,
exhibiting remarkable strength in a boy so young.

This style of life was of great benefit to him, and when he arrived
at manhood he could bear any amount of cold, heat, hunger, thirst,
or fatigue. Like the Yakout of the northern countries, he was
made of iron. He could go four-and-twenty hours without eating,
ten nights without sleeping, and could make himself a shelter
in the open steppe where others would have been frozen to death.
Gifted with marvelous acuteness, guided by the instinct of the Delaware
of North America, over the white plain, when every object is hidden
in mist, or even in higher latitudes, where the polar night is
prolonged for many days, he could find his way when others would
have had no idea whither to turn. All his father's secrets were
known to him. He had learnt to read almost imperceptible signs--
the forms of icicles, the appearance of the small branches of trees,
mists rising far away in the horizon, vague sounds in the air,
distant reports, the flight of birds through the foggy atmosphere,
a thousand circumstances which are so many words to those who can
decipher them. Moreover, tempered by snow like a Damascus blade
in the waters of Syria, he had a frame of iron, as General Kissoff
had said, and, what was no less true, a heart of gold.