Chapter XXVI: Part II (1)

For four years the game in Virginia, all undisturbed, increased and multiplied at an astonishing rate. There was no shot to be had in the Confederacy, and the only way an ardent sportsman, when home on furlough, could take a shy at the game, was to hammer out from a leaden bullet long, square blocks, and then cutting off the ends with a knife, to use a brick to roll these bits on the floor until each pellet became round enough for use. It would take a man a day, and exhaust all his patience, to make one pound of shot; and he would naturally be very chary about using his ammunition, and rarely pull a trigger except when certain of his game. In most sections of Virginia to fire a gun was a dangerous pastime, for what with raids, irruptions, incursions and forays, the people were in a state of siege, and the report of a firearm was as likely as not to be followed by a bullet from some traveling soldier, prowling bushwhacker, or passing cavalryman, thrown just for good luck in the direction of the sound. Then, if it should happen that a raid was in progress, the shot would attract the videttes and scouts, and the luckless gunner would find himself in hostile hands; and if too old or too young for military service, he might consider himself lucky if he were allowed to depart minus his fowling-piece and dog.

In the mountains of Virginia the wild turkeys were more numerous than they ever were before, the various bivouacs furnishing them in winter with an ample supply of food, while, best of all, they were allowed to feed unmolested. The water-fowl on the Potomac kept up their ratio of increase, for except the officers of the gunboats patrolling up and down the river, none dared to fire a gun. There were hunters of men in those times scattered along the banks, as well as floating on the bosom of the blue water. The explosion of a sportsman’s gun, and its smoke, might serve as an admirable target for the boatswain of an iron-clad with a crew nearly dead with listlessness and _ennui_, and glad to get an excuse to blaze away at anything.

In the fall of 1865, those Virginians who loved sporting, and had the good luck to return to the homes of their youth with their arms and legs intact, had a rare and royal time among the fur and feather, and a moderate shot would return in the evening and show such a bag as the result of the day’s sport as would last the family for a week. A couple of sportsmen living about ten miles from Culpeper Court House, Virginia, killed, in one day, eighty-four rabbits and fourteen wild turkeys. If a gunner can start even half a dozen cotton-tails now in a long day’s tramp he considers himself fortunate, and he won’t see a wild turkey in a season’s shooting. I well remember a hunt that I had in the autumn of 1865, just after the war ended. It was a perfect day in November, with the morning mists still hanging around the tree-tops. I had borrowed a double-barrel from one friend, and a good, staunch pointer named “Josh” from another. I climbed the fence of an orchard, and put the dog out in a huge field near Warrenton Junction, where portions of both armies had often encamped. Josh had not gone seventy-five yards before he came to a dead stand, and with beating heart I advanced and hied him on. As the birds rose I let fly both barrels, and--did not touch a feather! Loading up, I again sent Josh careering over the stubble. In ten minutes he had pointed a covey, and I again emptied the gun with the same result as before. If ever a dog’s face expressed contempt Josh’s was surely the one. His dewlaps curled up, and he absolutely showed his teeth, whether in anger or derision I never found out. The third time I approached a covey that Josh had cornered in a big patch of briers, and two more loads were sent harmless as Macbeth’s sword “cutting the intrenchant air.” This was enough for that disgusted dog. He sneaked off, and I never laid my eyes upon him again.

It was no great matter, the birds were so plentiful that I had merely to walk up and down the field, and I banged away most lustily. All in vain! I could not touch one. I fired with both eyes open, then with one shut, and still no partridge lingered on that account. I became superstitious and fired with both eyes shut. I doubled the charges, until I swept that meadow with leaden pellets, as a field is cleared by grape-shot. But there were no dead. At last, in my despair, I would shoot even if the bird was half a mile off. I went home that evening, after shooting away about ten pounds of shot, with one solitary partridge in my game-bag, and this bird, when I flushed him suddenly, was so scared that he flew from the edge of the field across a fence and against the trunk of a black-jack tree with such force as to knock himself silly, and before he could hustle himself away I had jumped the fence and wrung his neck.

There was apparently enough fur and feather in Virginia just after the war to supply the whole of America with small game, but in one decade the state of the case was completely altered. First came the invention of the breech-loader, which enables one to shoot all day without intermission. The game stood but little chance against these machines of perpetual destruction. But worse even than the breech-loader was the old army musket, loaded with a handful of shot, with a lately enfranchised freedman behind the big end of it. The darkey is a nocturnal prowler, as much so as a ’coon or ’possum, and his prowls through meadow, woods and fallow cause him frequently to stumble on the wary turkey that forgets his cunning as he struts around preparatory to flying to his roost, generally a dead limb on a lofty tree. He bags many a molly cotton-tail loping down the road to get his evening drink at the branch. But it is when “our friend and brother” catches sight, in the shades of the evening, of a flock of partridges settling in some field for their night’s rest, that he becomes dangerous. It is then that the old army musket is converted into a terror, and when its muzzle bears upon the whole covey squatted in a space that can be covered by a bandana handkerchief, and its contents are turned loose, every bird will be either killed or crippled.

The freedman’s musket, battered and patched though it be, must look down upon the handsome, resplendent breechloader as a great orator does upon the garrulous, loquacious youth who talks upon every subject at any time, and at any length, while he only opens his mouth to make knock-down arguments, or to utter words of great import that thrill and convince. When the reverberating roar of that old A. M. was heard, it was safe to bet that something that did not come from the barnyard would fill the shooter’s iron pot that night.

A weather-beaten old darkey said to me once: “It dun cos’ me nearly five cents to load that air musket, countin’ powder, caps, shot and everythin’, an’ I ain’t gwine to let er off ’less I knows I’se sartin to make by de shot.”

The baybird-shooting in the summer, and the duck-shooting outside the Virginia capes, was at its zenith some fifteen years ago. Then, too, the canvas-back, that king of water-fowl, before whose name the gourmand bows in homage, still lingered in the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, but now it is nearly extinct. A sportsman may gun for a whole winter in the bay and not kill half a dozen “canvas-backs,” but, if a good shot over the decoys, he can count on the kind known as the “red-head”--and if he knew how to pull out a few feathers, as does the professional pot-hunter, he could easily follow that gentleman’s example and sell them at fancy figures for “canvas-backs,” which in another decade will be as utterly annihilated as the dodo. Still, great is the culinary _chef’s_ art, and if he can, by the magic power of his sauces, herbs and seasonings, pass calf’s head off for green turtle, and the skillpot for diamond-back terrapin stew, then nobody is hurt. His patrons enjoy it just the same, and to the average man the red-head duck tastes as well with his champagne as its incomparable relative.

Fifteen years ago--even ten years--many an amateur would pack his trunk with ammunition, and taking steamer for Old Point Comfort, disembark there, and after a few hours’ wait at the Hygeia Hotel, proceed on his way to the eastern shore of Virginia by crossing the Chesapeake Bay. Or he would go outside the capes, and stop at Cape Charles, or Cobb’s Island. Once at his objective point, he could be certain in the right season of having his fill of shooting every day at the baybirds. They were so plentiful that all along the Virginia Broadwater every oyster-bar or mud-flat would be covered with them, and all the shooter would have to do would be to make a blind out of sea-grass, place his decoys around him, and then try his hand on singles, doubles and flocks, striking them on the turn, while a hundred pair of yellow-legs, or willet, would not be considered anything out of the way. As it is now--well, the finest shot in the country could not kill that many snipe in a week, simply because they are not there to kill. The vast flocks of robin-snipe that tarried in their migrations along the shores of the Chesapeake and the Broadwater of the Atlantic coast have entirely disappeared. The curlew still haunt their favorite places, but have become so wary that neither blind nor decoys can lure them, except, indeed, at the earliest dawn of day, before their eyes are wide open. Half a dozen curlew, between sunrise and sunset, in the blinds, is something for a sportsman to be proud of, for no crow is keener-eyed, more suspicious, and keeps a sharper lookout than these birds. Fifteen years ago I have often killed from thirty to fifty from sun to sun, at Smith Island or Cape Charles, but now one has to load his shell with No. 3 shot to bring down the high-circling, distrustful curlew.

The willet is still fairly plentiful. They lay their eggs and rear their young in the neighboring sea-meadows, and though preyed upon by crabs, snakes and raccoons from the time the egg is laid until the bird is able to fly, they still hold their own. They are such sociable birds that whenever a flock of snipe is fired into, one of the dead is almost certain to be a willet.

The ox-eye, another variety of the snipe family, is found in abundance on the shores and sea-meadows, and they owe their preservation, like the sandpipers, to their insignificant size. There are no birds in existence that keep so close together when on the wing as these ox-eyes. A large flock resembles a solid mass, and dire is the destruction that a double-barrel makes as it pours forth its contents of No. 8 shot at point-blank distance and strikes them on the turn. I asked old Nathan Cobb, of Cobb’s Island, which is outside the Virginia capes--a pot-hunter of half a century’s experience, who has grown independent from the proceeds of his gun--what was the greatest number of snipe he had ever killed by one discharge of his double-barrel.

“Wal,” said Nathan, with his Eastern Shore drawl, “I was out gunning one spring, about thirty years ago, and had a No. 8 muzzle-loader that would hold comfortably six ounces of shot. I ran in on a solid acre of robin-snipe on the beach, and fired one load raking them as they fed, giving them the other barrel as they rose. I picked up three hundred and two.”

I next asked him the greatest number of brant he had ever killed in one day over the decoys, with single shots.

“I bagged,” he answered, “about ten years ago, one hundred and seventy brant, and nearly every one of them was a single shot.”

I can easily believe this, for I have shot in blinds with many sportsmen, at redhead, shufflers, black duck and brant, and I never yet saw amateur, professional, or pot-hunter, whose aim was so unerring and deadly at the flying ducks as Nathan Cobb’s. I do not believe this score has ever been beaten in this country.

At the present day this same story of the disappearance of the waterfowl on the Virginia coast and along the Capes becomes dreary from repetition. It does not pay the sportsman to go to Cobb’s Island now. I spent three seasons there in the winter, during the “Eighties,” and found that the brant were so wild that they would not stool. Then I went to Cape Charles, just outside the Capes, and, though it is a most inaccessible place, the brant would not come near the decoys.

Two winters ago, I tried Currituck Sound, and found palatial club-houses open all about that noble sheet of water. Some of these houses are so splendid in appointment that when you glance around the elegantly furnished rooms, with their damask curtains, Brussels carpets and open grates where the anthracite is piled high, it is impossible to imagine that just outside roll the dark waters of the Sound, while miles upon miles of barren sea-meadows, marshes and swamp separate the house from civilization. All of these club-houses are owned by Northern men--rich in world’s gear, of course--men who count their incomes by thousands, where ordinary bread-winners of the professions count their earnings by tens. Think of having in the magazine of a club-house thirty thousand dollars in guns! Gordon Cumming, starting for a ten years’ game hunt in the jungles of Africa, or Stanley, setting out to fight his way through the “Dark Continent,” with countless hordes of savage “Wawangi” disputing his passage, never had that amount invested in weapons--and all to kill the wary geese and swift-flying ducks.

Even with such perfection of outfit--with guns of every imaginable make from the 12 to the 4 bore, and trained gunners to oversee every arrangement, the clubmen were talking gloomily about the sport fast deteriorating. Pot-hunters, “duck pirates,” countrymen, freedmen--all who lived or robbed along the shores of the Sound had their shy at the ducks, day in and night out, and such a fusillade was never heard since Burnside stormed and carried Roanoke Island, some miles below, in the glinting spring days of 1862. I found good enough sport on the private point of a friend who lived on a large farm by the shores of the Sound. Still the birds were thinning rapidly.

Last winter’s experience with Currituck made me determine never to go to that spot again for sport. I do not think I overstate matters when I say that wildfowl-shooting on the finest grounds in the world is doomed. Gone are the vast flocks, decimated are the swans and geese that were so plentiful in certain localities even three short years ago, and indigo blue are the rich sportsmen who quaff their champagne in silence and puff moodily at their twenty-five cent cigars as they think of the meagre bags they have made, and how matters, now so bad, are always getting worse, thereby proving the old saw which saith “Nothing can be so bad that it cannot be made worse.” The club men should, however, be glad that the snipe will always be with them.

For keen trading, guileless equivocation and general deviltry commend me to the “cracker” of the North Carolina Coast. He could discount the Jersey Yankee upstairs and down-stairs. The typical specimen is slab-sided and always thin; I never met a fat one yet. Their complexion shows that they have wrestled for years with “chills,” and their cheeks are as yellow as a newly-pulled gourd; they drawl in their speech, look at you with half-shut eyes, are afraid of neither man nor devil, have no hero-worship in their composition, and are as familiar with the captain of a yacht as with the roustabout. They are as keen as a brier, despite their listless, indifferent air, and to them more than any other cause is due the extermination of the wild fowl in Currituck Sound. They cleaned out the wild geese by setting steel traps on the bars. What they did not catch they frightened away.

Mr. William Palmer, the superintendent of the Palmer Island Club, states, moreover, that the number of sportsmen who come to Currituck to shoot has increased twenty-five per cent., while the natives have crowded the Sound with their blinds, and every male “cracker” who can hold a gun straight is on the watch.

It is true that there are stringent State Laws against the illegal killing of wild fowl, and also a close season. If these rules were enforced there would be first-class shooting in Currituck Sound for years to come, but the laws seem to be completely ignored; there is not even a pretense of observing them. The law makes a strong provision against a gun being fired at a duck after sunset, but there are numbers of murderous, greedy natives who have their skiffs hid in the woods and swamps in which are the huge ducking guns already referred to. Every hour during the night can be heard the sullen boom of these swivels floating across the waters, and the true sportsman, as he listens to the echoing roar, can only grind his teeth with rage, for he knows what a slaughter is going on, and how the survivors will take wing and abandon the Sound for good and all.

But the worst remains to be told. As if steel traps and big guns were not enough to destroy the wild fowl, the ingenious natives make fires on the banks of the creeks that run through the marshes, and, as the ducks float in ricks up to the illuminated waters, the ambushed assassin gets in his deadly work. Unless the sportsmen who own the club-houses on the Sound, by concerted action and vast outlay, can prosecute the offenders, then “Othello’s occupation’s gone.”

My own idea is that these clubs are too exclusive. They should make it a point to cultivate the _entente cordiale_ with the sportsmen of the State of North Carolina, and thus, by gaining their co-operation, they could induce the State authorities to take stringent action against the law-breakers. Unless this is done the sporting code will remain a dead letter as far as Currituck is concerned. The people shrug their shoulders when the subject is mentioned and say, “Those fancy Northern sportsmen don’t want a North Carolinian to kill a North Carolina duck in North Carolina waters,” and so on, and so on. Had I the arranging and the forming of a game protective association of the club men in Currituck, I would extend a pressing and standing invitation to every member of the Legislature and every officer of the State Government to make the club-houses their own, and the Governor and his staff should be kidnapped every winter, and be made to enjoy the gilt-edge sport of the “Yankee” clubs.

Seeing in a State paper that the Light-house Board intended to abandon the Pamlico (N. C.) Light-house, I applied to the Treasury Department to turn it over to me for a “shooting box.” This was done, and I hope to have some good sporting in the future.

Southward the sportsmen must make their way, and find more inaccessible spots than Currituck to establish club-houses. This being the case, the topography and charts of the regions lying south of Currituck become interesting to the handlers of the gun. Four miles across the mainland is that grand sheet of water, the Albemarle Sound, some fifteen miles wide. Though this sound cannot compare with Currituck for the number and variety of its waterfowl in past years, at the present time it is filled with the birds that have been driven by night-shooting away from Currituck to find safer quarters there. Undoubtedly there will, in the next few years, be erected many club-houses in Albemarle Sound. Some twelve miles as the crow flies across the peninsula, another sheet of water is encountered. This is the Crotan Sound, apparently of about the area of Currituck. There is an abundance of waterfowl here, and but few, if any, club-houses, which will, however, soon follow.

Ten miles southward, across a swampy, barren pine country, there appears the largest and grandest sound of all, the Pamlico. I have no data to furnish the exact size, but the steamer travels over 100 miles before it arrives at Pamlico Point light, at the spot where the Pamlico River enters the Sound. Here is the home and haunt of the swan, and, as they have been but comparatively little hunted, they furnish fine sport to those who have their own yachts and plenty of time. There are no spots at Currituck that can afford more exciting sport or show a greater abundance of all kinds of waterfowl than Pamlico Point, Porpoise Point, about five miles distant, or Brant Island, some twelve miles away. The inaccessibility of the place prevents the shore pot-hunters from disturbing the game, and the “duck murderer,” with his night-shooting, has not yet put in an appearance.

The water of Pamlico Sound is neutral to the taste; sometimes fresh, again decidedly saline, but, for most of the time, it is simply brackish. This condition arises from the fact that the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers pour fresh waters into its area, while New Hatteras and Oregon inlets and Core Sound admit the salt waters of the ocean. This mixture of fresh, brackish and salt waters in a common receptacle naturally attracts every variety of waterfowl. The red-head and shuffler haunt the mingling of the fresh-water rivers with the Sound waters, while the black duck, mallard, and that king of aquatic birds, the gamest of all--the brant, stay in the vicinity of Oregon Inlet. In my opinion, within a few years Pamlico Sound is destined to be the greatest sporting-ground in the country, and the costly and expensive club-houses at Currituck will be discounted by the new ones at Pamlico Sound.

How long it will be before the breech-loader in the hands of the natives and the swivel gun, killing in the night, will drive the wild fowl out of that extensive region is a question that none can answer. Many sportsmen who have been forced southward and still southward during the past years in quest of game hope that Pamlico Sound will furnish winter sport to last them at least the balance of their days.

MR. PERKER’S BEAR; OR, MR. BEAR’S PERKER?

BY PRESIDENT BATES.

Since his marriage with Effie Cameron, Mr. Perker has greatly improved in many respects. In his attire, his wheel, and his general style, Mr. Perker still retains his proud pre-eminence as the pink of fashion of the club. Taken all in all, he is the nattiest wheelman that ever sat on a saddle. But now it is a chastened and refined glory. The little “loudness,” indicative of an ambition soaring after effects not quite attainable, which formerly marred Mr. Perker’s brilliancy at times, has given place to a subdued chasteness, suggesting that he could be still more elegant if a rival should appear. Plainly he exhibits evidences of being toned by feminine taste.

Mr. Perker still clings fondly to his bicycle gun, but nowadays he keeps it in the barn. Mrs. Effie will not permit it to be brought into the house. I mention this for the tranquilization of visiting wheelmen, so that they need not hesitate to accept an invitation to one of the elegant lunches with which Mrs. Effie is wont to regale the club and its guests on occasions. And pilgrim wheelmen, who have read ~Outing~ in former years, do not need to be assured that Mrs. Effie Perker is an altogether charming hostess, and one of the prettiest and most warm-hearted Scotchwomen that ever made a home happy.

Former readers of ~Outing~ also know that Mr. Perker’s remarkable dog, Smart, gave promise in his puppyhood of becoming one of the most intelligent animals in the country. In fact, he achieved wide notoriety in his early career. He is now famous for sagacity and accumulated wisdom. As a bicycle hunting dog he is not only peerless, but the founder of a new race--bicycle hunting dogs--a species of dog not hitherto known; and several clubs have obtained specimens of his progeny.

When Mr. Perker was required by the firm to whose interests he devotes his talents to visit a settlement upon the northern coast of Lake Michigan, upon business that would occupy him for two or three weeks, he determined to take with him his dog, his bicycle gun and his wheel. Mrs. Perker protested mildly; but yielded sweetly upon hearing Mr. Perker’s solemn promise not to hunt wildcats. For a woman whose girlhood was spent in the frontier wilds of Canada, Mrs. Perker entertains a singular apprehension of wildcats--all on Mr. Perker’s account. Of course, he is a hero in her wifely estimation; but she does not consider him a wildcat hero. And she has very little faith in Mr. Perker’s bicycle gun, or in the tried courage and sagacity of Mr. Perker’s dog Smart, as against wildcats. She mingled with the packing of Mr. Perker’s clean linen a loving remonstrance against hunting wildcats; and she mixed with Mr. Perker’s toothbrush and razor a tender warning against being led by “that fool, Smart,” into danger. Mr. Perker solemnly promised, with his parting kiss, to take good care of himself. And he meant it.

When Mr. Perker left the city, in Southern Michigan, the spring was well advanced. The roads had dried and were ridable, while the trees were beginning to show yellow-green buds. When, however, he arrived in the Northern woods, the snow still lingered in patches in the dim shades of the pine and hemlock forests, and ice clung to the shores of the lake. The rivers and brooks had cleared themselves, but were still in spring flood. The sharp frosts at night were followed by warm, sunny days, and occasionally by a day that remained cold enough not to melt the surface frost. There was no chance to ride except along the lake shore, where the sloping sands had frozen smoothly and were firm when their surface was unmelted. At various distances from the shore, generally ten to thirty rods, ice-banks, in some places twenty feet high, had formed in the shoal water, from great fields of drifting ice being driven upon the coast by the winter gales, and breaking and piling up their shore edges. Between the ice-banks and the shore sands the ice was reasonably flat, with a top surface of roughly frozen snow. Wherever a swollen river discharged into the lake, its freshet had cut an open channel through the flat ice and through the ice-banks, though the ice-banks still furnished bridges by which to cross the channels of the smaller streams.

At that season of the year there was little hunting, for most game was protected by the game-laws. To be sure the open spaces of water were visited by flocks of wild fowl flying northward, and there were rabbits in the woods, and of them Mr. Perker bagged a few. But, as of old, his hunter’s soul longed for larger game, and only his solemn promise to Effie prevented his joining the settlers in their wildcat hunting. There were wolves in the woods--large gray wolves. But it requires good hunting to get sight of one of these wary prowlers; and Mr. Perker had not the time to take long tramps into the swamps where they kept their lairs. The bears had also come out from their winter sleep, and almost every day Mr. Perker heard of their slaughter. But bears require skilled hunting, unless one happens upon a specimen by accident. If there was any one thing more than another that Mr. Perker longed for it was a bear. He ached for the glory of killing a bear. A bearskin, captured by his own hand, would elevate him several degrees in the estimation of the club and would greatly enhance the reputation of his bicycle gun. But the days of his sojourn in the wilderness were waning fast, and an encounter with a real live bear still remained the thing “he long had sought and mourned because he found it not,” as the hymn-book feelingly remarks. What made his disappointment more bitter was the fact that everybody in the settlement freely conceded that Smart undoubtedly possessed all the faculties and qualities of a good bear dog, except that of finding a bear. Smart, with his master, had made the acquaintance of every dead bear brought into the settlement, but the live bears perversely avoided his distinguished society.

Bears have provokingly peculiar ways. When you arm yourself with rifle, axe, knife and dog, and go hunting expressly for bear society, every bear in the woods hangs out a sign, “not at home,” and declines to be interviewed. When you particularly prefer not to be disturbed in your solitude, as your gun is at home, and you forgot to bring either axe or knife, and your dog is a mile off, rushing around after fugacious rabbits, then is the time that the largest and savagest, and most impudent of all bears is most apt to thrust himself upon your attention, with alarming indications of begging for a chew.

Mr. Perker had reached the last day of his stay in the settlement. It was a fine but cold Sunday. There was a moderate northwest wind swaying the dull evergreen tree-tops and ruffling the gray-blue waters of the lake, but in the woods and along the shore, sheltered by the bordering pines and hemlocks, the air was still and just cool enough not to melt the surface of the frozen sand. Five miles up the shore lived a man with whom Mr. Perker had done business for the firm. Mr. Perker desired to call upon him once more, not really on business, but to show him attention and leave a good impression. This man had a thirteen-year-old boy who, during a visit to a city the previous summer, had seen cowboys perform in a circus, and this had fired his youthful spirit with ambition to lasso something. Mr. Perker thought to win the heart--and custom--of the father by making the boy a present of a lasso. To this end he bought a suitable rope, thirty-six feet long. On one end he had a sailor make a Turk’s-head knot, to prevent its slipping through the grasp. On the other end was the lasso loop. But, lest the ambitious youth should accidentally strangle his younger brother, or his father’s favorite calf or pig, the sailor put a knot in the rope so that the loop could close sufficiently to hold but not to choke. The rope was stretched and limbered with oil and wax, making it a very good lasso for a boy, and strong enough to hold a mule.

Mr. Perker would not go a-hunting on Sunday--he never did. There was, however, no service till evening, so he determined to ride along the beach on his wheel, make the visit, return in time for the service, and start for home on Monday morning. He coiled the lasso and tied it with a thread, so that he could easily carry it on the head of his wheel, and though he did not take his bicycle gun, Smart, of course, accompanied him. The beach sand proved hard and moderately smooth, so that the riding was fair. He was in good spirits, having succeeded well in his business, and at peace with the world, and had no thought of seeing game of any kind.

He had gone nearly half-way, and was riding quietly and comfortably along, minding his own business, when he was startled by seeing a large bear come out of the woods, ahead of him, and walk down to the shore, where it turned and went leisurely forward, evidently not having seen him.

Smart, as was his habit, was--very sagaciously--somewhere else when he was wanted to put himself in danger. If Smart had reasoned that he did not know that his master would meet a bear but, in case his master should meet a bear, it would be a great deal safer for him to be absent, he could not have acted with shrewder wisdom. At that moment he was a quarter of a mile behind in the woods, enjoying himself greatly, trying to ram himself down a woodchuck’s hole, at the bottom of which, his wise nose informed him, a woodchuck either was or recently had been. He was sternly resolved to have that woodchuck out, if it took all day. So now and then he would pull out his head to bark, by way of signaling his master for help, and then ram it down the hole again, so that the woodchuck couldn’t get out without running down his yawning throat.

In the absence of Smart, Mr. Perker conceived a brilliant scheme for the capture of the bear. He would lasso the beast, and then call Smart, whom he supposed to be somewhere close at hand. So breaking the thread that kept the coils of the rope together, he opened the loop, slipped the knotted end under his right thigh, and drew it around the saddle behind him, holding the knot in his left hand, and then pedaled rapidly toward the unconscious and innocent forest monarch, the rubber-tired wheel making no noise. As he was an excellent rider, he could have done this without using either hand; but he kept his left hand, with the knotted end of the lasso in it, upon the handle-bar.

He was almost upon the bear, stealing silently upon his prey, when the bear caught a glimpse of him over his shoulder. Instantly the bear wheeled about, reared upon his hind legs, exhibited a frightfully open countenance and spread claws, at least three inches long, in a way that betokened a warm welcome. At the same time every hair on the animal’s body seemed to bristle with fury, and it snarled in a blood-curdling baritone voice, which would have made a fortune for an opera star villain.

Mr. Perker was not entirely prepared for this reception. It had not occurred to him that his advances toward a familiar acquaintance would be met in that way. He hastily concluded not to intrude. But not having his right hand upon the handle-bar, in a position to put down the break, it was a great deal easier to wish to stop than to accomplish it. Therefore, he simply stood on the pedals, and they pitched him headlong over the handles, right at the bear, like heaving a bag of bran off a wagon.

It was now the bear’s turn to be astonished. He had not calculated upon any such method of assault. He was prepared for a fair fight; but he wasn’t used to having men thrown at him, all doubled up in a wad. “Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble.” But _that_ shape!--well, he was the scaredest bear probably ever seen upon the coast of Lake Michigan. He was so scared that he didn’t have presence of mind enough to run into the woods; but, with a loud snort of panic, he scattered the frozen sand straight down the beach.

In falling Mr. Perker somehow gave the lasso loop such a flirt that it went over the head of the bear and drew about his neck, when he started to run. Mr. Perker did not intend to do it, and the bear ought not to have laid it up against Mr. Perker. It was purely an accident--a liberty with a stranger that Mr. Perker would not have taken under such circumstances, if he could have helped it. In fact he couldn’t have lassoed a bear by the neck if the bear hadn’t been surprised by his header, for a bear on guard is as practiced a boxer as can be found, and one can no more get a noose about his neck than one can over a man’s neck with his hands and arms free to fend it off. As it was, however, the bear was caught; and, as he ran, the knot of the rope caught under the bicycle saddle, and that machine was dragged, rattling, bounding, banging and glittering after the flying brute, adding to his panic, like a tin-pan tied to a dog’s tail.

Mr. Perker scrambled to his feet quicker than he ever did before in his life. His first instinctive impulse was to ascertain if he was still alive, with none of his members missing. Having discovered that he was all there, his next impulse was to run after his beloved wheel, which he did, shouting like a lunatic for “Smart! Smart!” This did not tend to lessen the fright, nor diminish the speed of the bear--quite the contrary.

About twenty rods ahead a small brook had cut a channel through the flat ice with its spring flood, but the ice-banks were still intact a dozen rods from the shore, compelling the outflowing flood to find a channel beneath them. When Mr. Perker first formed the scheme to lasso the bear he had counted upon this open water to stop the animal in case he ran that way. Now he expected the bear to either turn into the woods or else go around the open mouth of the brook on the ice-bank. But, as may be guessed, Mr. Perker was not familiar with bears. This bear, frightened half out of his wits by the bicycle clattering at his heels at the end of the rope, didn’t turn at the brook. On the contrary he plunged into it and swam across, no doubt with the notion that his mysterious pursuer could be stopped by the icy water. Clambering out on the ice on the opposite side, as soon as he got the length of the rope from the brink the bicycle caught under the ice and anchored him. This the more easily because the ice upon which he stood was glassy smooth from the recent overflow, and gave his claws no hold, let him strain, and yank, and dig in his toes and swear as savagely as he might.

Seeing this Mr. Perker hurried faster and shouted louder, doing his best to get around the end of the open channel by way of the ice-bank. He was afraid that the rope would break or be gnawed off and let his beloved wheel sink where the water was probably twenty feet deep. Coming around the head of the channel, he ran along the edge of the ice to get between the bear and the water, and haul up the bicycle. If he could recover his wheel he would be willing to let the bear go. Meanwhile he kept shouting for Smart. On his approach the bear redoubled his efforts to break away, but in vain. Mr. Perker reached the spot and managed to loosen his wheel from its hold under the ice by pulling on its handle-bar. It naturally came up out of the water with a jerk that upset Mr. Perker with great violence, jamming one of his feet between the spokes as he fell.

The bear now set off again, plunging and snarling, this time toward the woods, only a hundred feet away, dragging Mr. Perker by the foot, flat on his back. In hopes of stopping the procession, Mr. Perker flopped over upon his breast, and tried to dig his hands into the ice. No go. He only skinned his hands. As he struck the rougher ice it felt hot from friction, and he turned over again on his back. But it was equally hot that way. When he struck the sand, it seemed red-hot. It was like being drawn over a rasp. Luckily the sand was only a few feet wide, the woods coming down at this point almost to the shore. Here the bear turned slightly, and in a moment Mr. Perker’s free leg went on one side of a small tree, while his caught leg went on the other side. The tree did not break nor his leg pull out by the roots, though Mr. Perker thought for a moment that it would, and the procession was anchored again. By way of backing the anchor Mr. Perker threw his arms about the tree and hugged it with all his might, while he yelled for Smart.

The frightened bear, after a few frantic tugs, became convinced that he could not get away. Then he turned upon the prostrate and yelling Perker with dire intent; but the instant the strain slackened on the rope, Mr. Perker was able to kick, and a single kick freed his caught foot. Before he could rise, however, the bear would have been upon him but for an interruption. That interruption was from Smart who came tearing around the ice-bank and charged bravely to the rescue of his imperiled master.

Finding that the woodchuck--if there was any woodchuck in the hole--evidently intended to stay there, Smart paused in the work of excavation, and sat down to reflect and catch his breath. The instant he was thus quiet he heard the far-off voice of his master calling him in a manner that indicated urgency. Smart ran after his master at full speed, and coming to the spot where Mr. Perker first encountered the bear, stopped as if he had run against something. His nose whispered “bear!” to his brain. The hair on his back bristled. Then he heard Perker shout, and set off on his track again. Coming around the open channel by way of the ice-bank he caught sight of the bear, and charged fiercely upon the unknown enemy, intending to incontinently scatter his vitals all over that part of the coast.

Attacked by the dog, the bear halted in his rush at Mr. Perker, sat up on his haunches, and bestowed a buffet upon poor Smart that rolled him over and over, a dozen feet away. Smart, though a remarkably intelligent dog, did not know much about bears; but that single cuff taught him much. He caught the general idea immediately, and rushed behind Mr. Perker for protection, while the bear rushed after him. Mr. Perker shinned up that small tree very much faster than a boy after a bird’s nest. By the time he was up his own length, spreading his legs as wide as he could, to get them higher, Smart, with admirable strategy, perceiving that the shelter of Mr. Perker’s legs was withdrawn, ran around the tree, looking for a good place to climb it also. The bear ran around after Smart. This wound the rope around the tree; and, when Smart ran off at a tangent, the bear rushing after him was brought up with such a violent jerk of the noose upon his neck that he turned end for end and hit Smart with his hind legs, like the snap of a whip, while every bone in his back cracked. The shock almost jerked Mr. Perker out of the tree, but he hung on grimly, and crawled up a few feet farther. By the time he was eight feet from the ground, however, the tree, which was only as large as a man’s leg at the bottom, began to bend over with his weight, and he could go no higher.

The dog being out of his reach, the bear now ran back at Mr. Perker, and rearing up against the tree, tried to reach him. Mr. Perker again spread his legs wide apart, and drew himself up as far as he could. The bear cautiously raised himself a little higher and managed to give one of Mr. Perker’s swaying legs a scratch that drew from him a yell of pain and fear. Then Smart rushed in and hung upon the bear’s flank, and the bear and Smart dropped upon Mr. Perker’s wheel. The bear got one foot through the spokes, and he and Smart went wildly cavorting about with the wheel, till Mr. Perker’s anguish of mind and failure of muscle let him drop with a yell upon them, knocking the bear down. He did not, however, hold the bear down. On the contrary, he executed a prompt strategic movement, and did not stop rolling over until he brought up twenty feet away. Smart followed him, with that devotion for which he is noted, and the bear followed Smart, until snubbed again by the rope.

At this moment, when Mr. Perker most needed repose, his nerves were startled by the crack of a rifle. The ball sang over his head and pierced that of the bear, who immediately turned slowly around twice, and then sank down in a heap, quivering and kicking, whereupon Smart, with renewed courage, ran in and tugged terribly at one of his ears. As soon as Mr. Perker could comprehend what had happened, he was grateful. He thought the voice of the man who ran forward and asked: “Are you hurt?” was the most welcome sound he had ever heard. He replied that he was “only just a little out of breath.” This reply, wasn’t strictly accurate. A sorrier looking object than Mr. Perker has rarely been seen on Sunday.

The man kicked Smart off the bear’s ear, and then said, looking curiously at the disconsolate Mr. Perker:

“Why! Mr. Perker! how are you?”

Perker limply took his hand, looked at him, and answered:

“Hello! Smith!”

Then he shook Smith’s hand heartily, for Smith was the identical man he was going to see. With Smith was the boy to whom Mr. Perker was taking the lasso. The boy had stood gazing in open-mouthed wonder at the lassoed bear, at Perker, and at Smart, with which sagacious beast he had already struck up a treaty of amity and mutual admiration.

Smith noticed the rope and drew it from the neck of the dead bear.

“Was a tame critter, eh?” he asked.

Perker answered with unnecessary heat: “Tame! not by a blamed sight!”

“You wasn’t trying to lead a wild bear into town with a rope, was you?” asked Smith, grinning.

“That’s what I started to do,” said Perker, seeing that honest confession was best, “but he came near leading me into his camp.”

Then Perker told the whole story, and Smith sat down and laughed till exhausted. Finally he slapped Perker on the shoulder and said, with vast soberness:

“Well, Perker, you’re the pluckiest chap I ever met! You couldn’t have hired any man about here to undertake that job for ten dollars an hour!”

And he laughed again and fell to skinning the bear, chuckling. Then the boy wanted to know what he was going to do with the rope. This reminded Perker and he gave it to him. Never was a boy so thoroughly delighted. He had a lasso that had actually lassoed and held a wild bear, and a big one at that!

Perker found his idolized wheel in a sad state. Its rim was badly buckled, and half a dozen spokes were bent, but after some straightening and tightening, with Smith’s aid, except for a wet saddle, rapidly drying, the wheel was as good as ever.

Mr. Smith proposed to cure the skin and send it to Mr. Perker, taking his city address for that purpose. This pleased Perker immensely; and they parted with mutual satisfaction.

When Mr. Perker reached the city, he limped home, and Mrs. Effie, while she tended his hurts, remarked: “Theophilus, you’re too big a fool to be trusted to go alone into the woods! And the sooner you get rid of that fool of a dog the longer you’ll be likely to dodge the Foolkiller!”

Mr. Perker did not report this observation to the Club, but Mrs. Perker’s kitchen-girl reported it to Mrs. Littleweed’s cook, and a course of pumping, by the Club wits, extracted the other facts from Mr. Perker.

This is the reason the members, when Mr. Perker proudly exhibits the bear-skin, sometimes speak of “Mr. Perker’s bear,” and sometimes of “Mr. Bear’s Perker.”

FAST ICE-YACHTS.

HOW THEY ARE BUILT, RIGGED AND HANDLED.

BY CHARLES LEDYARD NORTON.

On a rocky promontory of the Hudson River, a few miles above Poughkeepsie, there stands, half hidden by the foliage in the summer, a long, low, neatly painted structure instantly suggestive to the nautically inclined of boats and their belongings.

But there is an unaccountable lack of the familiar characteristics of such localities. Even in midsummer there are few, if any, boats anchored in the cove, or hauled up on the shelving rock that serves in lieu of a beach. Through the open doors of the boat-house one may, perhaps, see certain varnishing and rigging operations under way. There are bundles of sails, coils of rope, rows of blocks, and long, curiously curved spars resting upon racks--long enough they are to serve as topgallant-yards for an old-fashioned man-of-war, but no ordinary sailorman would see any use for them with their nautically impossible curves and angles, and their unfamiliar and unshipshape attachments of galvanized iron.

This boat-house, however, is the headquarters of a yacht club that stands easily at the head of its class in all the world; but its fleet of racers is dismantled and laid aside in summers when other yachts are in the height of their glory. This fleet goes into commission only when the floating fields of new ice are fast welded together, and the river surface is solid from the Highlands to the Mohawk.

The Hudson River is by no means the only club, though it may not unfairly be designated as the leading one. At the neighboring towns of Poughkeepsie, New Hamburg and Newburg, and up stream at Hudson, Athens, Saugerties, Albany, and elsewhere, are other associations, with fleets of yachts always eager to try conclusions with their down-stream rivals. Poughkeepsie, and its immediate vicinity, however, has always been, and is likely to remain, the headquarters for ice-yachting.

This is due to several favorable conditions, natural as well as artificial. The river narrows and becomes tortuous at the Highlands--about forty miles from the sea--and this natural obstacle largely determines the permanency of ice in the river above. In a large stream the ice rarely forms across from shore to shore in a single night. It freezes in bands and patches, which become detached from the shore and float up and down with the tide until they become jammed and frozen together. North of the Highlands, too, the average winter temperature is considerably lower than it is to the southward, and sharp frosts come earlier and stay later. The beautiful and picturesque banks, moreover, have since early colonial times proved attractive to lovers of the country, and the riverside is for many miles almost continuously occupied by residents who have abundant means and leisure for such recreations as suit them best. Again, the great harvest field of the Hudson River ice-crop finds here its southernmost limit. At this point in the stream the admixture of sea-water renders the ice more or less unmarketable, and the ice-yachtsmen are therefore not so likely to be interfered with by the armies of men who are set to work by the great companies as soon as the ice is thick enough to pay for cutting and storage.

It is proverbial that no sooner is a good surface formed for ice-yachting than it is hopelessly buried under a shroud of snow; but here again nature comes to the rescue, for the latitude is far enough south to render alternations of frost and thaw probable all through the winter. Accordingly the white surface soon becomes streaked with gray, and ere long the yachtsman looks out of a morning and sees his highway once more practicable for steel runners.

This year engineering science has arrayed itself on the side of the yachtsman, and has built two huge piers in the river at Poughkeepsie. Primarily these are intended for the new cantilever railroad bridge, but incidentally they are welcomed by the winter-sailing clubs, because they will undoubtedly keep the ice in the river longer than it has heretofore been in the habit of staying. This is highly important in their eyes, for not infrequently there are cold “spells” in March which render the ice available for good sport, provided it could be held in position long enough to be temporarily re-frozen and prevented from floating away down stream on the ebb tide.