It was too ghastly a thing to watch inactive.  Already every man’s knife was in his hand, and three men were crouching for a spring, when the chief swept them back with a stern gesture.

“Attacking thus, you can reach no vital part,” he reminded them.  And he shouted to the struggling man, “Feign death! you can do nothing without your weapon.  Feign death.”

It appeared to Alwin that to do this would require greater courage than to struggle; but while the words were still in the air, the man obeyed.  His hands relaxed their hold; his head fell backward on the ground; and he lay under the shaggy body like a dead thing.  The black muzzle poked curiously about his face, but he did not stir.

After a suspicious sniff, the victor appeared to accept the truth of his conquest.  Exactly as though he said, “Come!  Here is one good job done; what next?” he got up with a grunt, and, rising to his hind feet, stood growling and rolling his fiery little eyes from one to another of the intruders in the brush.

“If now one could only hurl a spear at his heart!” murmured the sailor at Alwin’s shoulder.  But the difficulties of path-finding through an unbroken thicket had kept the men from cumbering themselves with weapons so unwieldy.

Leif spoke up quickly, “There is no way but to trust to our knives.  Since I am superior to any in strength, I will grapple with him first.  If I fail, which I do not expect, I will preserve my life as Lodin is doing; and the Fearless One here shall take his turn.”

Alwin was too wild with delight to remember any-thing else.  “For that, I thank you as for a crown!” he gasped.

Even as he stepped out to meet the foe, Leif smiled ironically.  “Certainly you are better called the Fearless than the Courteous,” he said.  “It would have been no more than polite for you to have wished me luck.”

Anything further was drowned in the bear’s roar, as he took a swift waddling step forward and threw out his terrible paws.  Even Leif’s huge frame could not withstand the shock of the meeting.  His left hand caught the beast by the throat and, with sinews of iron, held off his foaming jaws; hut the shock of the grappling lost him his footing.  They fell, clenched, and rolled over and over on the ground; those terrible hind feet drawing up and striking down with surer and surer aim.

Alwin could endure it no longer.  “Let me have him now!” he implored.  “It is time to leave him to me.  The next stroke, he will tear you to pieces.  I claim my turn.”

It is doubtful if anyone heard him:  at that moment, swaying and staggering, the wrestlers got to their feet.  In rising, Leif’s hold on the bear’s throat slipped and the shaggy head shot sideways and fastened its jaws on his naked arm, with a horrible snarling sound.  But at the same moment, the man’s right arm, knife in hand, shot toward the mark it had been seeking.  Into the exposed body it drove the blade up to its hilt, then swerved to the left and went upward.  The stroke which the chisel-shod paws had tried for in vain, the little strip of steel achieved.  A roar that echoed and re-echoed between the low hills, a convulsive movement of the mighty limbs, and then the beast’s muscles relaxed, stiffening while they straightened; and the huge body swayed backward, dead.