’I know; ’been a bear, ‘twould a bit you,’ eh?’

‘Your customary sagacity, Tom, is not at fault.  Yes, the bear bit me.’

‘Dick,’ said my uncle, ’it strikes me, all this wouldn’t make a bad magazine article, if you’d only leave out your confounded speculations; and Tom, as your cousin says, I wish you would stick a little closer to your classics.’

‘Cousin Dick!’

‘Well, little No-no!’

‘You tell a real good story.’

‘Do I? then come and pay me for it.’

’No-o! you sha-a-ant! aeou!! there now, tell us another; tell us about the bear that bit you?’

’There isn’t much to tell about that either.  It was on a steamer, in the Gulf.  On the forecastle lay a stout oaken box, and in it—­all his troubles to come—­was a young bear.  In the top of it was an inch auger-hole, and at this small port the poor devil used to keep his eye all day so pitifully, that I had compassion on him, saw he would get etiolated, and besought the captain to let him out.

‘’Not if I know it,’ responded Dux, severely, ’he’d clear the decks in a minute!  We had one aboard once before—­a big rascal, in a cage, ’tween decks—­and one dark, stormy night, he broke adrift and stowed himself away so snug that we never found him till next day.  You may judge what a hurrah’s nest there was, every body knowing this d——­d bear was somewhere aboard, and afraid of running foul of him in the dark.  No, no, better let him alone!’

’Howbeit, I over-persuaded him.  We managed to get hold of a bit of chain fastened to his collar, bent a line on to it, gave him reasonable scope, belayed the bight, and knocked off one end of his box.  Out he bolted!  It was a change from that dark den to the glaring tropical sunshine, the blue sea foaming under the trades, the rolling masts, and the hundreds of curious eyes that surrounded him.  Sensible to the last, he tried to go aloft, but the line soon brought him up.  Down he came, and steered for’ard.  The cooks and stewards, their hands on the combing, filled the fore-hatch.  He made a dive for them, and they tumbled ignominiously down the hatchway.  We laughed consumedly.  Then he cruised aft, the dress-circle considerately widening.  He came up to me, as if knowing his benefactor by instinct, looking curiously about him, and curling and retracting his flexile snout and lip, after the manner of his kind.  Now, I had often dealt with bears, tame and semi-tame, had ’held Sackerson by the chain,’ as often as Master Slender, had known them sometimes to strike or hug, (which they always do standing,) but had never known one to bite.  So I didn’t take the trouble to move, and—­the first I knew—­the villain had me by the leg!’

‘Sarved yer right, for lettin’ on him out,’ interposed that grim utilist Jonas, our hired man.  He had entered, pending the narrative, and stood, arrectis auribus, by the door.

‘Mercy on us! didn’t it hurt?’