Much to his surprise, as soon as he began to paddle Bruin began to growl, and, as he repeated his stroke, the occupant of the bow raised his note of disapproval an octave higher, and at the same time made a motion as if he would attack him. Fisher had no desire to cultivate a closer intimacy, and so stopped paddling.
Bruin serenely contemplated the landscape in the direction of the island. Fisher was also intensely interested in the same scene, and still more intensely impressed with their gradual approach to the rapids. He tried the paddle again. But the tyrant of the quarter-deck again emphatically objected, and as _he_ was master of the situation, and fully resolved not to resign the command of the craft until the termination of the voyage, there was no alternative but submission. Still, the rapids were frightfully near and something must be done. He gave a tremendous shout. But Bruin was not in a musical mood, and vetoed that with as much emphasis as he had done the paddling. Then he turned his eyes on Fisher quite interestedly, as if he were calculating the best method of dissecting him. The situation was fast becoming something more than painful. Man and bear in opposite ends of the canoe floating--not exactly double--but together to inevitable destruction. But every suspense has an end. The single shout, or something else, had called the attention of the neighbors to the canoe. They came to the rescue, and an old settler, with a musket which he had used in the War of 1812, fired a charge of buck-shot into Bruin which induced him to take to the water, after which he was soon taken, captive and dead, to the shore. He weighed over three hundred pounds.
A son of the settler who shot the bear had a frightful experience in the river many years afterward. He was engaged in Canada in the business of buying saw-logs for the American market. Coming from the woods down to Chippewa one cold day in December, at a time when considerable quantities of strong, thin cakes of ice were floating in the river, he took a flat-bottom skiff to row across to his home. This he did without apprehension, as he had been born and brought up on the banks of the Niagara, understood it well, and was also a strong, resolute man.