The effect upon the minds of the two youths, who were probably the first to gaze upon those wondrous visions of the Icy Regions, was tremendous.  For a long time neither of them could utter a word, and it would be idle to attempt to transcribe the language in which, at length, their excited feelings sought to escape.  It was not until their backs had been for some time turned on the scene, and the cape near the valley of red snow had completely shut it out from view, that they could condescend to converse again in their ordinary tones on ordinary subjects.

As they hastened back over the ice-belt at the foot of the cliffs, a loud boom rang out in the distance and rolled in solemn echoes along the shore.

“There goes a gun,” exclaimed Tom Singleton, hastily pulling out his watch.  “Hallo! do you know what time it is?”

“Pretty late, I suppose.  It was afternoon, I know, when we started, and we must have been out a good while now.  What time is it?”

“Just two o’clock in the morning!”

“What! do you mean to say it was yesterday when we started, and that we’ve been walking all night, and got into to-morrow morning without knowing it?”

“Even so, Fred. We have overshot our time, and the captain is signalling us to make haste.  He said that he would not fire unless there seemed some prospect of the ice moving, so we had better run, unless we wish to be left behind; come along.”

They had not proceeded more than half-a-mile when a Polar bear walked leisurely out from behind a lump of ice, where it had been regaling itself on a dead seal, and sauntered slowly out towards the icebergs seaward, not a hundred yards in advance of them.

“Hallo! look there! what a monster!” shouted Fred, as he cocked his musket and sprang forward.  “What’ll you do, Tom, you’ve no gun?”

“Never mind, I’ll do what I can with the hammer.  Only make sure you don’t miss.  Don’t fire till you are quite close to him.”

They were running after the bear at top speed while they thus conversed in hasty and broken sentences, when suddenly they came to a yawning crack in the ice, about thirty feet wide, and a mile long on either hand, with the rising tide boiling at the bottom of it.  Bruin’s pursuers came to an abrupt halt.

“Now, isn’t that disgusting?”

Probably it was, and the expression of chagrin on Fred’s countenance as he said so evidently showed that he meant it; but there is no doubt that this interruption to their hunt was extremely fortunate, for to attack a Polar bear with a musket charged only with small shot, and a geological hammer, would have been about as safe and successful an operation as trying to stop a locomotive with one’s hand.  Neither of them had yet had experience of the enormous strength of this white monarch of the Frozen Regions and his tenacity of life, although both were reckless enough to rush at him with any arms they chanced to have.