Tommy Trot's Visit to Santa Claus Part 6

At the sound of his distress Tommy forgot himself.

"Follow me!" he cried. "He is choking!" and not waiting even to look behind to see whether Johnny was with him, he dashed forward into the cave, gun in hand, thinking only to save Sate. Stumbling and slipping, he kept on, and turning a corner there right in front of him were the two eyes of the bear, glaring in the darkness like coals of fire.

Pus.h.i.+ng boldly up and aiming straight between the two eyes, Tommy pulled the trigger. With a growl which mingled with the sound of the gun, the bear made a spring for him and fell right at his feet, rolled up in a great ball. Happily for Sate, he lit just on top of the ball.

Tommy whipped out his knife and cut the cord from about Sate's throat, and had him in his arms when Johnny came up.

The next thing was to skin the bear, and this the boys expected to find as hard work as ever even Johnny had done; but, fortunately, the bear had been so surprised at Tommy's courage and skill in aiming that when the bullet hit him he had almost jumped out of his skin. So, after they had worked a little while, the skin came off quite easily.

What surprised Johnny was that it was all tanned, but Tommy had always rather thought that bears wore their skin tanned on the inside and lined, too. The next thing was to have a dinner of bear-meat, for, as Tommy well remembered, all bear-hunters ate bear-steaks. They were about to go down to the sh.o.r.e to hunt along for driftwood, when, their eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, they found a pile of wood in the corner of the cave, which satisfied them that at some time in the past this cave had been used by robbers or pirates, who probably had been driven away by this great bear, or possibly might even have been eaten up by him.

At first they had some little difficulty in making a fire, as their matches, warranted water-proof, had all got damp when Tommy fell into the water--an incident I forgot to mention; but after trying and trying, the tinder caught from the flint and they quickly had a fine fire crackling in a corner of the cave, and here they cooked bear-steak and had the finest dinner they had had since they came into the Arctic Regions. They were just thinking of going after the dogs and the sleds, when up came the dogs dragging the sleds behind them, and without a word, pitched in to make a hearty meal of bear-meat themselves. It seemed as if they had got a whiff of the fresh steak and pulled the sleds loose from the ice points to which they were fastened. They were not, however, allowed to eat in any peace until they had all recognized that Sate was the hero of this bear fight, for he gave himself as many airs as though he had not only got the bear, but had shot and skinned it.

It was at this moment that the Eskimo guide came back, jabbering with delight, and with his white teeth s.h.i.+ning, just as if he had been as brave as Sate. At first, Tommy and Johnny were inclined to be very cold to him and pointed their fingers at him as a coward, but when he said he had only one arrow left and had wanted that to get a sealskin coat for Tommy's mother, and, as he had the sealskin coat, they could not contradict him, but graciously gave him, in exchange for the coat, the bear-meat which the dogs had not eaten.

Having packed everything on the sled carefully, with the sealskin coat on top of the pack and the bear's fur on top of that, and having bid their Eskimo friend good-by, they turned their backs on the North Pole and struck out for home.

They had hardly started, however, when the sound of sleigh-bells reached them, coming from far over the snow, and before they could tell where it was, who should appear, sailing along over the ice-peaks, but Santa Claus himself, in his own sleigh, all packed with Christmas things, his eight reindeer s.h.i.+ning in the moonlight and his bells jingling merrily. Such a shout as he gave when he found that they had actually got the bear and had the robe to show for it! It did them good; and both Tommy and Johnny vied with each other in telling what the other had done. Santa Claus was so pleased that he made them both get in his sleigh to tell him about it. He let Sate get in too, and snuggle down right at their feet. Johnny's box-sled he hitched on behind. The dogs were turned loose. At first Tommy feared they might get lost, but Santa Claus said they would soon find their way home.

"In fact," he said with a wink, "you have not been so far away as you think. Now tell me all about it," he said. So Tommy began to tell him, beginning at the very beginning when Johnny took him on his sled. But he had only got as far as the sofa, when he fell asleep, and he never knew how he got back home. When he waked up he was in bed.

He never could recall exactly what happened. Afterward he recalled Santa Claus saying to him, "You must show me where Johnny lives, for I'm afraid I forgot him last Christmas." Then he remembered that once he heard Santa Claus calling to him in a whisper, "Tommy Trot, Tommy Trot," and though he was very sleepy he raised himself up to find Santa Claus standing up in the sled in Johnny's backyard, with Johnny fast asleep in his arms; and that Santa Claus said to him, "I want to put Johnny in bed without waking him up, and I want you to follow me, and put these things which I have piled up here on the sled you made for him, in his stocking by the fire." He remembered that at a whistle to the deer they sprang with a bound to the roof, the sled sailing behind them; but how he got down he never could recall, and he never knew how he got back home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Santa Claus said to him, "I want to put Johnny in bed without waking him up."]

When he waked next morning there was the polar bearskin which he and Johnny had brought back with them, not to mention the sealskin coat, and though Johnny, when he next saw him, was too much excited at first by his new sled and the fine fresh cow which his mother had found in her cow-house that morning, to talk about anything else, yet, when he and his mother came over after breakfast to see Tommy's father and thank him for something, they said that Santa Claus had paid them a visit such as he never had paid before, and they brought with them Johnny's goats, which they insisted on giving Tommy as a Christmas present. So Tommy Trot knew that Santa Claus had got his letter.

[Ill.u.s.tration]