The man was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the
man like a nut.
Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal
danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down
his tree in a moment, caught up the crossbow, which he had dropped in
the road, and running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body
with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain, and turned
its head irresolutely.
"Keep aloof!" cried Denys, "or you are a dead man."
"I care not;" and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it
fiercely into the bear, screaming, "Take that! take that!"
Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. "Get away, idiot!"
He was right: the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind
her, slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she
slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while
his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground, the bear came
rearing and struck with her fore paw, and out flew a piece of bloody
cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed, and climbed; and presently he
heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He
looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards
at a slight angle: he threw his body across it, and by a series of
convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.
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