Frederick Whishaw - Boris the Bear-Hunter

The moment at which I propose to introduce my readers to Boris the Bear-Hunter came very near, as it happened, to being the last which my hero was destined to spend upon this earth. Great hunter as Boris was, there is no doubt about it that on this particular occasion he met his match, and came within measurable distance of defeat at the hands—or rather paws—of one of the very creatures whose overthrow was at once his profession and his glory.

It happened many a year ago—about two hundred, in fact; and the scene of Boris's adventure was an exceedingly remote one, far away in the north of Europe, close to Archangel.

Boris Ivanitch was a peasant whose home was an outlying village near the large town just mentioned. He was a serf, of course, as were all his fellows at that time; but in consequence of his wonderful strength and courage, and of his aptitude for pursuing and killing every kind of wild beast and game, he was exempt, by favour of his lord, both from taxation and from the manual labour which the owner of the soil could have exacted from him. In a word, Boris was employed to keep the country clear, or as clear as possible, of bears and wolves, which, when left to themselves, were at that time the cause of much danger and loss to the inhabitants of that portion of the Russian empire.

Boris performed his duties well. There was no man, young or old, for hundreds of miles around who could compare with this young giant in any of those sports or competitions in which the palm went to the strongest. Tall and muscular beyond his years—for he was but nineteen at this time—lithe as a willow, straight as a poplar, Boris excelled in anything which called into play the qualities of activity and strength. Had he lived in our day and attended an English public school, he would undoubtedly have come to the front, whether on the cricket or the football field, on the running path or on the river. But being debarred from the privileges of English schoolboys, Boris was obliged to expend his energies in those exercises which were open to him, and which alone were familiar to the people of his country—snow-shoeing, hunting, swimming, and similar sports natural to the livers of a wild, outdoor life in a scarcely civilized land.

It was early summer-time, and the woods, or rather forests, about Archangel were in their fullest heyday of life and beauty. Hundreds of square miles of pine trees were the principal feature of the landscape, dotted here and there by a patch of cultivated land, or watched over by a tumble-down village nestling beneath the shadow of the forest. Oats and wheat, now fast ripening, waved in the soft air of June, and told of peace and plenty for those who took the trouble to till the generous soil for a living. The prospects of the crops around Dubinka, Boris's village, appeared at first sight to be promising enough—the rye was tall and nearly ripe, and the oats were doing capitally; but had you asked the peasants, the owners of the crops, they would have told you, with the lamentations common to the Russian peasant, that God had certainly been very good to them and sent them a fine harvest, but that the devil had spoiled all the good work by sending two large bears to eat up and trample down the fruits of the field, and to ruin the poor peasants. Ivan's field was half eaten up already, they would have said, and Andrey's would go next. And Boris couldn't find the bears, or he would soon give them "something in their stomachs better for them than the peasants' oats;" but there was no snow, and Boris could not track them without it, though he had been after the brutes for a fortnight and more.

This was all true enough—indeed, Boris was "after them" at the present moment, though to look at him you would scarcely have thought it; for the hunter was busily engaged strolling lazily through the forest, picking and enjoying the beautiful wild strawberries which covered the ground in profusion. He had propped his bear-spear against a tree, and was at the moment some distance from the weapon—tempted away from it against his usual habit by the peculiar lusciousness of the fruit, which was warm from the sun, and very delicious.

Even strawberry eating palls at length upon the satiated palate, and Boris began to think that he had had enough. He would now resume, he thought, his search for those marauding bears who had broken into the village corn-fields and destroyed the peace of the poor peasants. So he picked one more handful of the strawberries, crammed them into his mouth, sighed, glanced regretfully at the delicious fruit at his feet, and finally raised his head to look for his bear-spear. As he did so, he became aware of a huge form standing close at hand, some ten yards away, showing its teeth, and quietly watching his movements. It was a bear!

Boris's first feeling was one of great joy at meeting his enemy at last; his second was one of dismay as he realized the want of his trusty spear.

It must not for a moment be supposed that Boris was alarmed by the situation. If any one had told him that he was in a situation of peril, he would have laughed aloud at the very idea of such a thing. His regret was caused solely by the fear that, being unarmed, he might lose the opportunity of doing business with that bear upon this particular occasion, and would probably have to find him again before settling accounts.

Hoping to catch sight of his spear, and to reach it before the bear could make off, Boris backed slowly towards the place where he thought he had left the weapon. Bruin did not, as he had expected, give a loud roar to show his enemy that he was an awful fellow if he liked, and then straightway turn and run. On the contrary, the brute advanced towards the hunter, growling and showing certain very large and business-like teeth. Then Boris felt that it would be well to find that spear of his as quickly as possible, for he had no other weapon about him, and the bear appeared to be very much in earnest. So the hunter turned and ran, with the bear at his heels.

At first Boris rather enjoyed the chase. It would be an amusing story to tell at the village when he arrived there with the bear's skin. How the peasants would all laugh, and how they would sing and make merry in the evening over the downfall of their enemy! Boris could afford to tell a good story about himself and a bear, even though the laugh had been on the bear's side to begin with, if he produced the skin of the bear at the same time.

Yes, if . But the growling of the brute sounded rather close at his ear, and Boris was forced to dodge in and out between the tree trunks in order to avoid capture.

As the moments passed, and he grew more and more out of breath, Boris longed eagerly for the welcome sight of his bear-spear. Once or twice the bear had so nearly collared him that he bethought him that he must devise some plan by which to gain a little breath. A roar and a rush from behind at this moment, together with the loss of a considerable portion of the tail of his shirt, which, being worn outside the trousers, Russian fashion, had fluttered in the breeze, made it plain that there was no time to be lost. He must take to a tree and gain time. So Boris pulled himself together, put on a mighty spurt, and was five feet up the stem of a pine tree just as Bruin reached the foot of it, and rose on his hind legs to follow him aloft.

Up went Boris and up went Bruin, both fine climbers, and both scrambling and puffing as though their very lives depended upon their agility, as indeed was the case so far as concerned one at least of them. Quick as he was, Boris was nearly caught. He had barely time to climb along a branch and let himself fall to the earth, when the bear was already upon the same bough and looking down after him, meditating as to whether he too should drop to the ground or adopt the slower and safer course of climbing down again by the trunk, as he had come up. Luckily for Boris the discretion of that bear prevailed over his desire to save time, and he decided upon the slower method of descent. This decision gave Boris a moment or two of breathing time, which he sadly required.