Then he looked round panting.
The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws
scrape, and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not
being very quick, she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main
stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him, or
found by scent she was wrong: she paused; presently she caught sight of
him. She eyed him steadily, then quietly descended to the fork.
Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It
was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature
this: it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it
came.
Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death
below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible
form. His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless,
fascinated, tongue-tied.
As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous
thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret: the Vulgate, where it
speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps--Rome--Eternity.
The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man;
he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.
As in a mist he heard a twang; he glanced down; Denys, white and silent
as death, was shooting up at the bear.
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