Happily for the dismayed and suffering sportsman, the catastrophe, though almost too painful as a joke, was soon proved to be exaggerated and unreal, by the supposed wounded seaman throwing aside the deceptive character he had assumed, and coming forward to join in the laugh against him.
It is hardly necessary to mention that the whole affair was contrived, and that, by the changing of guns, my Father had secured the well-charged one of the doctor’s, and replaced it with one abundantly furnished with powder and wadding, but devoid altogether of deadly shot.
It is seldom that practical jokes go off so well; for few persons will be content to be made the dupe for others’ entertainment. The potion, therefore, that we should not like to have given sportively unto ourselves, we should be cautious in administering to others. Manifold cases of very serious mischief, extending even to results fatal to human life, have arisen from the unfitting or unseasonable playing off of practical jokes. In the case which I have ventured to describe, however, there was little risk. The position of the author of the joke in respect to that of its subject, on the one part, and the good-natured simplicity of character of the subject on the other, afforded, together, a sufficient security against any essential mischief. Perhaps, too, where an entire ship’s company were in much depression of mind, by reason of the alarming and tedious besetment under which they were suffering, a beneficial and redeeming effect was, on the whole, realised. For the doctor himself, so far from cherishing any painful or unkindly feelings on account of the part he had unconsciously played in the little facetious drama, was too happy in being relieved from the temporarily imagined misery of having, whilst seeking sport, deprived a fellow-creature of life. So effective, indeed, did this influence react upon his feelings of anxiety, that he himself joined in the general hilarity as heartily as any of his amused shipmates.
SECTION VI.—_Taming of a Bear—Interesting Recognition._
The _Polar Bear_ is popularly known as one of the strongest and most ferocious of that class of animals which shrinks not from voluntary conflict with man. The species is often met with, sometimes in considerable numbers, upon the shores of the Arctic lands, and within the region of the ices of the Greenland sea. It not unfrequently occurs of the length of seven or eight feet, and four or five feet high, weighing as much as a small ox. Specimens whose skin measured twelve to thirteen feet in length, have been described by voyagers. The “paw of the bear,” of which there is Scriptural mention, may, in the full-grown animal, as now met with, be from seven to nine inches in breadth, and large enough to overspread two-thirds of a square foot, or more, of the snowy surface on which it treads. Hence its admirable adaptation for the region in which Providence has placed its abode.