into a dense grove of young spruce, and as the hunter reached the edge
it charged fiercely out. He fired one hasty shot, evidently wounding the
animal, but not seriously enough to stop or cripple it; and as his two
companions ran forward they saw the bear seize him with its wide-spread
jaws, forcing him to the ground. They shouted and fired, and the beast
abandoned the fallen man on the instant and sullenly retreated into the
spruce thicket, whither they dared not follow it. Their friend was at
his last gasp; for the whole side of the chest had been crushed in by
the one bite, the lungs showing between the rent ribs.

Very often, however, a bear does not kill a man by one bite, but after
throwing him lies on him, biting him to death. Usually, if no assistance
is at hand, such a man is doomed; although if he pretends to be dead,
and has the nerve to lie quiet under very rough treatment, it is just
possible that the bear may leave him alive, perhaps after half burying
what it believes to be the body. In a very few exceptional instances men
of extraordinary prowess with the knife have succeeded in beating off
a bear, and even in mortally wounding it, but in most cases a
single-handed struggle, at close quarters, with a grisly bent on
mischief, means death.

Occasionally the bear, although vicious, is also frightened, and passes
on after giving one or two bites; and frequently a man who is knocked
down is rescued by his friends before he is killed, the big beast mayhap
using his weapons with clumsiness. So a bear may kill a foe with a
single blow of its mighty fore-arm, either crushing in the head or
chest by sheer force of sinew, or else tearing open the body with its
formidable claws; and so on the other hand he may, and often does,
merely disfigure or maim the foe by a hurried stroke. Hence it is common
to see men who have escaped the clutches of a grisly, but only at the