"Be ready, Anvik!" warned his mother.
The side of the igloo gave way! A dreadful struggle followed. There
was a chorus of barks and growls and screams. The bear fought
desperately. The struggle and the falling snow partially wakened the
father and son, but they were stupidly useless. The dogs attacked
the bear's back. Anvik, watching his chance while the bear was
repelling the dogs, drove a harpoon into the animal. The bear
savagely thrust at the lad, but the dogs leaped up and Anvik's
mother drove her harpoon into the enemy. As well as he could in the
darkness, Anvik chose his opportunity, and as he had seen older
Eskimos do, skillfully avoided the attacks the bear strove to make
upon him, till at last he managed to drive the sharp spear to the
animal's heart.
All was over at last. The shrieks, the growls ceased, and the dead
bear lay among the ruins of the igloo.
The next day Anvik stayed away from school to help build a new
igloo. His father and Tanana did not talk much, from the time when
they laid the blocks of extremely hard snow in a circle till the
time when the inwardly-slanting snow walls had risen to the topmost
horizontal block that joined the walls. But, once during the
building, when the three workers had taken great flat shovels, made
of strips of bone lashed together, and were throwing loose snow
against the sides of the new igloo to protect its future inhabitants
from the cold, the father stopped, and turning to Tanana said:
"My heart is ashamed! The hot water made us forget to hide the way
to the igloo, and when the bear came to kill my wife and children,
the hot water made us sleep.
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