An hour’s sharp climb brought the party almost to the brow of the hill, from which they hoped to see the sun rise for the first time for nearly five months.  Just as they were about to pass over a ridge in the cliffs, Captain Guy, who had pushed on in advance with Tom Singleton, was observed to pause abruptly and make signals for the men to advance with caution.  He evidently saw something unusual, for he crouched behind a rock and peeped over it.  Hastening up as silently as possible, they discovered that a group of Polar bears were amusing themselves on the other side of the cliffs, within long gunshot.  Unfortunately not one of the party had brought fire-arms.  Intent only on catching a sight of the sun, they had hurried off unmindful of the possibility of their catching sight of anything else.  They had not even a spear; and the few oak cudgels that some carried, however effectual they might have proved at Donnybrook, were utterly worthless there.

There were four large bears and a young one, and the gambols they performed were of the most startling as well as amusing kind.  But that which interested and surprised the crew most was the fact that these bears were playing with barrels, and casks, and tent-poles, and sails.  They were engaged in a regular frolic with these articles, tossing them up in the air, pawing them about, and leaping over them like kittens.  In these movements they displayed their enormous strength several times.  Their leaps, although performed with the utmost ease, were so great as to prove the iron nature of their muscles.  They tossed the heavy casks, too, high into the air like tennis-balls, and in two instances, while the crew were watching them, dashed a cask in pieces with a slight blow of their paws.  The tough canvas yielded before them like sheets of paper, and the havoc they committed was wonderful to behold.

“Most extraordinary!” exclaimed Captain Guy, after watching them for some time in silence.  “I cannot imagine where these creatures can have got hold of such things.  Were not the goods at Store Island all right this morning, Mr. Bolton?”

“Yes, sir, they were.”

“Nothing missing from the ship?”

“No, sir, nothing.”

“It’s most unaccountable.”

“Captain Guy,” said O’Riley, addressing his commander with a solemn face, “haven’t ye more nor wance towld me o’ the queer thing in the deserts they calls the mirage?”

“I have,” answered the captain, with a puzzled look.

“An’ didn’t ye say there was somethin’ like it in the Polar Seas, that made ye see flags, an’ ships, an’ things o’ that sort when there was no sich things there at all?”

“True, O’Riley, I did.”

“Faix, then, it’s my opinion that yon bears is a mirage, an’ the sooner we git out o’ their way the better.”

A smothered laugh greeted this solution of the difficulty.