That was all he remembered for a time.

When he awoke he was smarting with pain on every inch of his huge bulk, for the men had cut away his hide with its glorious white hair and carried it with them to a distant ship.

Above him circled thousands of his friends the gulls, wondering if their benefactor were really dead and it was proper to eat him.  But when they saw him raise his head and groan and tremble they knew he still lived, and one of them said to his comrades: 

“The wolves were right.  The king is a great magician, for even men cannot kill him.  But he suffers for lack of covering.  Let us repay his kindness to us by each giving him as many feathers as we can spare.”

This idea pleased the gulls.  One after another they plucked with their beaks the softest feathers from under their wings, and, flying down, dropped then gently upon the body of the King of the Polar Bears.

Then they called to him in a chorus: 

“Courage, friend!  Our feathers are as soft and beautiful as your own shaggy hair.  They will guard you from the cold winds and warm you while you sleep.  Have courage, then, and live!”

And the King of the Polar Bears had courage to bear his pain and lived and was strong again.

The feathers grew as they had grown upon the bodies of the birds and covered him as his own hair had done.  Mostly they were pure white in color, but some from the gray gulls gave his majesty a slight mottled appearance.

The rest of that summer and all through the six months of night the king left his icy cavern only to fish or catch seals for food.  He felt no shame at his feathery covering, but it was still strange to him, and he avoided meeting any of his brother bears.

During this period of retirement he thought much of the men who had harmed him, and remembered the way they had made the great “bang!” And he decided it was best to keep away from such fierce creatures.  Thus he added to his store of wisdom.

When the moon fell away from the sky and the sun came to make the icebergs glitter with the gorgeous tintings of the rainbow, two of the polar bears arrived at the king’s cavern to ask his advice about the hunting season.  But when they saw his great body covered with feathers instead of hair they began to laugh, and one said: 

“Our mighty king has become a bird!  Who ever before heard of a feathered polar bear?”

Then the king gave way to wrath.  He advanced upon them with deep growls and stately tread and with one blow of his monstrous paw stretched the mocker lifeless at his feet.

The other ran away to his fellows and carried the news of the king’s strange appearance.  The result was a meeting of all the polar bears upon a broad field of ice, where they talked gravely of the remarkable change that had come upon their monarch.

“He is, in reality, no longer a bear,” said one; “nor can he justly be called a bird.  But he is half bird and half bear, and so unfitted to remain our king.”