in a hurry and couldn’t stop, for there was a thing he didn’t care about shakin’ hands with, not three rods from his tail.  He heard me, though, and took a circle round a great boulder, and the moose after him, and as he got straightened my way, I called him again, and he saw me.  He leaped onto the log and came runnin’ up to where I stood, and was mighty glad to be out of the way of them big hoofs and horns that were after him.  He was safe now, and he opened his mouth and let off a good deal of tall barkin’ at his enemy.  The moose saw us, and his fury was the greater because he couldn’t get at us.  He kept chargin’ back and forth under the log we were perched on, and if there wasn’t malice in his eye, I wouldn’t say so.

“When I first saw him, I was standin’ with the butt of my rifle on the log, my hand graspin’ the barrel, and as I caught it up suddenly to load, the string of my powder-horn caught between the muzzle and the ramrod, broke, and the horn fell to the ground.  Here was a fix for a hunter to be in.  My rifle was empty, and every grain of powder I had in the world was in the horn, fifteen feet below me, on the ground.  To go down after it was a thing I was principled agin undertaking considerin’ the circumstance of that bull moose with his great horns and the onpleasant temper he seemed to be in.  What to do I didn’t know.  I hollered and shouted at the kritter, thinkin’, maybe, that the voice of a human might scare him; but it only made him madder, and every time I hollered he charged under the log more furiously than before.  I threw my huntin’ cap at him, but he pitched into it, and if he didn’t trample it into the ground, as if it was a human, you may shoot me.  After a while, he got tired of dashin’ back and forth, under the log, and took a stand two or three rods off, and as he eyed us, shook his great horns and stamped with his big hoofs, as much as to say, ’very well, gentlemen, I can wait, don’t hurry yourselves, take your time; but I shall stay here as long as you stay up there.  And when you do come down, we’ll take a turn that won’t be pleasant to some of us.’  Crop and I took the hint and sat still, thinkin’ maybe he’d get over his pet and move off; but he did’nt lean that way at all.  He seemed to’ve made up his mind to stay there as long as we stayed on the log, be the same more or less.  We’d sat there maybe an hour, when I happened to think of a trollin’ line and some fishhooks I had in my pocket, and it came across me that possibly I might fish up my powder horn.  So tyin’ half a dozen hooks to the end of my line, I laid down on the log to angle for my powder-horn.  When I laid down, the old bull made a pass under the log, as if he expected me down there, and charged back again, as if he was disappointed in not runnin’ agin me.  But he saw ’twan’t no use, and took his old stand agin.  I dropped down the grapnel, and after a great many failures, I hooked into the string of the powder horn, and hoisted away.