(原版)澳大利亞語文第六冊 LESSON 46
LESSON 46 AN ADVENTURE WITH A BEAR
AN ADVENTURE WITH A BEAR
II
Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no very great height. He climbed faster than the bear, and was soon at the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to spring to. There was none; and if he jumped down, he knew the bear would be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of him. Moreover, Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and his blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.
My hour is come, thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He kneeled down and grasped a small branch to steady himself, drew his long knife, and, clenching his teeth, prepared to stab the huge brute as soon as it should mount within reach.
Of this combat the result was not doubtful. The monster's head and neck could scarce be pierced for bone and masses of hair. 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 rage. He slipped down his tree in a moment, caught up the crossbow, which he had dropped in the road, and running 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.
Keep away! 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!"
Get away! cried Denys; "she will be after you next."
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 forepaw, and out flew a piece of blood-stained 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 violent efforts worked up it to the end.
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. She crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as she came.
Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death below! Death moving slowly but surely on him in a still more horrible form! His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless, awe-struck, tongue-tied.
The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man; he saw the open jaws and blood-shot eyes coming, but in a mist.
THE BEAR WAS MOUNTING THE TREE ON THE OTHER SIDE.
As in a mist he heard a twang. He glanced down; Denys, white and silent as death, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang, but crawled on. Again the crossbow twanged, and the bear snarled and came nearer. Again the crossbow twanged; and the next moment the bear was close upon Gerard where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end, and eyes starting from their sockets.
The bear opened her jaws, and blood spouted from them as from a pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung; it stuck its claws deep into the wood; it toppled. Its claws held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch shook Gerard forward on his chest, with his face upon one of the bear's straining paws.
At this, by a violent effort, she raised her head up, up, till he felt her hot breath. Then huge teeth snapped together close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled [1] hate. The heavy carcass [2] rent the claws out of the bough, then struck the earth with a tremendous thump. She panted still, and her limbs quivered; but a hare was not so harmless, and soon she breathed her last.
—by CHARLES READE
* * *
[1] baffled: Beaten.
[2] carcass: Dead body of an animal.
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