"Now, keep back, all of you!" I cried. "Bears don't spring from trees,
but it will be better for you to be out of the way while I try to get
him down."
I walked up to the oak-tree, and then I found that the bear was still
firmly attached to it. His chain had been fastened loosely around the
trunk; he had climbed up to the branch and pulled the chain with him.
I now called upon Orso to come down, but apparently he did not
understand English, and lay quietly upon the branch, his head towards
the trunk of the tree. I extended my hand up towards the chain, and
found that I could nearly reach it. "Shall I give you a lift?" cried
Walter, and I accepted the offer. It was a hard piece of work for him,
but he was a professed athlete, and he would have lifted me if it had
cracked his spine. I reached up and unhooked the chain. It was then
long enough for me to stand on the ground and hold the end of it.
Now I began to pull. "Come down!" I said. "Come down, Orso!" But Orso
did not move.
"Bears don't come down head-foremost," cried Percy; "they turn around
and come down backwards. You ought to have a chain to his tail if you
want to pull him down."
"He hasn't got any tail!" exclaimed Genevieve.
I was in a quandary. I might as well try to break the branch as to
pull the bear down. "If we had only thought of bringing a bucket of
meat!" cried Percy.
"Would you mind holding the chain," I said to Walter, "while I try to
drive him down?" Of course the developed young man was not afraid to
do anything I was not afraid to do, and he took the chain. There was
a pine-tree growing near the oak, and, mounting into this, I found
that with a long stick which Mr. Larramie handed me I could just reach
the bear. "Go down!" I said, tapping him on the haunches, but he did
not move.
"Can't you speak to him in Italian?" said Genevieve. "Tame bears know
Italian. Doesn't anybody know the Italian for 'Come down out of a
tree?'" But such knowledge was absent from the party.
"Try him in Latin," cried Percy. "That must be a good deal like
Italian, anyway."
To this suggestion Mr. Larramie made no answer; he had left college
before any of the party present had been born; Mr. Walter looked a
little confused; he had graduated several years before, and his
classics were rusty. I felt that my pedagogical position made it
incumbent upon me to take immediate action, but for the life of me I
could not think of an appropriate phrase.