“We oughter look up some huntin’,” he continued.  “Locker’ll begin to show bottom b’fore long.  Sweeny, wouldn’t you like to kill suthin?”

“I’d like to kill a pig,” said Sweeny.

“Wal, guess we’ll probably come acrost one.  They’s a kind of pigs in these deestricks putty nigh’s long ’s this boat.”

“There ain’t,” returned Sweeny.

“Call ’em grizzlies when they call ’em at all,” pursued the sly Glover.

“They may call ’em what they plaze if they won’t call ’em as long as this boat.”

Fortune so managed things, by way of carrying out Glover’s joke, that a huge grizzly just then snowed himself on the bank, some two hundred yards below the boat.

After easily slaughtering one bear, the travellers had a far more interesting season with another, who was allured to the scene by the smell of jerking meat, and who gave them a very lively half hour of it, it being hard to say which was the most hunted, the bruin or the humans.

“Look a’ that now!” groaned Sweeny, when the victory had been secured.  “The baste has chawed up me gun barrl loike it was a plug o’ tobacky.”

“Throw it away,” ordered Thurstane, after inspecting the twisted and lacerated musket.

Tenderly and tearfully Sweeny laid aside the first gun that he had ever carried, went again and again to look at its mangled form as if it were a dead relative, and in the end raised a little mausoleum of cobble-stones over it.

“If there was any whiskey, I’d give um a wake,” he sighed.  “I’m a pratty soldier now, without a gun to me back.”

“I’ll let ye carry mine when we come to foot it,” suggested Glover.

“Yis, an’ ye may carry me part av the boat,” retorted Sweeny.

The bear meat was tough and musky, but it could be eaten, must be eaten, ind was eaten.  During the time required for jerking a quantity of it, Glover made a boat out of the two hides, scraping them with a hunting knife, sewing them with a sailor’s needle and strands of the sounding-line, and stretching them on a frame of green saplings, the result being a craft six feet long by nearly four broad, and about the shape of a half walnut-shell.  The long hair was left on, as a protection against the rocks of the river, and the seams were filled and plastered with bear’s grease.

“It’s a mighty bad-smellin’ thing,” remarked Sweeny.  “An who’s goin’ to back it over the portages?”

“Robinson Crusoe!” exclaimed Glover.  “I never thought of that.  Wal, let’s see.  Oh, we kin tow her astarn in plain sailin’, ‘n’ when we come to a cataract we can put Sweeny in an’ let her slide.”

“No ye can’t,” said Sweeny.  “It’s big enough, an’ yet it won’t howld um, no more’n a tayspoon’ll howld a flay.”

“Wal, we kin let her slide without a crew, ‘n’ pick her up arterwards,” decided Glover.