The Portland daily press., 1899-05-20

the mud and the water nAu pecoiho oiess
again, q school Of club or dace won!n
them AN ODD kind OF rock. Then, as they
swan past his nose, Ebenezer wouiu
dart out his head and gather them In. :.
III the fish seized was a small one, ~
made no struggle, the life being crushed
out of 1t at the first snap. 10 eat IL Eo-
euezer would not stir peg from ms
place, but, lifting his head above the sur
face-for the turtle does not eat under
water-would swallow the minnow, mas,
ticating it vigorously as IL passed hean
first through the capacious Jaws into the
long, snake-like gullet. Then he would
haul in his head and walt for the next
fish to come along. Any large hsh that
he captured, such as an eel or pickerei,
he would carry at once to the shore anu
would kill and devour IL there.
With any land creature that he tackled
Ebenezer tactics were to drag 1t INTO
deep water and drown 1t. Some twelve
years ago two fishermen. named Blake
and Nevins, casting for pickeral at the
mouth of Wilson Stream, saw across Flae
Cove q fshhawk hover above the boat
channel, and then drop straight down
ward as If to seize fish. 1t did not rise
into the air again, but they heard IL
screaming loudly, and. by standing up
in the boat, they coEld ses the hawk
struggle and beat with It's wings at the
waters surface near the mouth Of the
canal, and at last disappear from their
view behind the long grass and lilypads
They were fishing In luck just then
and SO long as the fish were biting they
did not think 1t worth while to go over
to SEQ what the matter was with the bird
Later in the day their fishing took them
into the cove and they looked for the
hawk. They found i5 floating dead at
the surface above some six feet depth OF
water, its feathers drenched and rumpled
and one leg just above the talon crushed
and torn as If 1t had been pressed in
rough wise.
On a partly sunken log not far away
Ebenezer was standing in a state OF ex-
element unusual with him, his head
and legs extended from the shell and his
eys sparkling vjoiously. A large yellow
perch, torn almost in two. lay in the
water near the mouth of the canal and
the fishermen came to the conclusion, no
doubt the correct one, that the hawk had
dropped upon the fish just as Ebenezer
seized it and that the two had fought out
q life-and-death struggle over the booty.
The turtle, his jaws locked fast TO the
hawks leg, had dragged bis enemy at
last into water sufficiently deep to drown
it and SO had ended the fight.
Five years ago when the spring fishing
began at Sebeo Lake, EbensZer was seen
once or twice by fishermen at his old
naunJ. linen canoe party PnEsihB
through the boat channel one morning.
saw ON either bank the tracks and bent
and broken bushes where a bear had
crossed it the day before going toward
Hedgehog Mountain, which rises, steep
and bris'ling, from the peninsula below
the canal. Ebenezer WAS gone and as he
never reappeared to the eyes Of man, his
passing was associated with the visit OF
the bear. The time was early in May
when bears are ravenous after the win
ter's fasting and can find little in the
woods to feed on. Fresh water fish,
CLANS and turtles never come amiss to
bear, and it was reasonable to conclude
that hungry ranger" had tished Eben-
ezer from his watery home with the view
to having his company at dinner on
shore.
The mystery was, what he had been
able to make out of him. A turtle OF or
binary size bear disposes- of by tearing
the shells apart with his testh and fore
paws, or by clutching 1t with one paw
and smashing the shells to pieces against
a rock. But it Is manifest that neither
in the case of a thirty-pound turtle with
back shell which the stroke OF a sleuge,
hammer would rebound from.
Last autumn, shortly before the COM
ing of the first SHOWS, the mystery OF
Ebenezer's fate was fully revealed. Two
hunters in n canoe, one OF them named
futile and the other the Blake previously
mentioned, landed at the base Of Hedge
hog Mountain for the purpose of climb
ing to the top in order to search the
shores of the lake and the surrounding
mountainsides with fieldglass for game.
There was no path, for this mountain Is
seldom climbed. but they found way by
which they got to the top. When near
the summit they came to the brink OF
cliff falling straight downward sheer
200 feet. At the very edge of the cliff is
a huge pine tree bent by the winds so
that the upper half of its trunk overhangs
the precipice, while its spreading roots,
curved and twisted nmong the crevices OF
tho rock, anchor the tree securely at Its
foot. On the leaning trunk they saw,
deeply imprinted, the claw marks OF a
bear which at some time had climbed 1t.
Tuttle, vino is AN adventurous fellow.
followed the claw marks up as lar AS the
tree forks, from which he could look d.
rectly down to the rocky shelf at the base
of the cliff.
II can't sabe why that bear ever
climb bed out here" he called to Blake.
but one thing I know; he didn't do it
without a reason. There's something
down on the rocks below-l0oks like "a
dinner platter. Well see what 1t is when
we go back"
When the two men went back down the
mountain they visited the base OF inc
cliff. and found out that what futile had
seen and compared to q dinner platter was
a turtle shell, the biggest that either had
ever seen. Blake, who had seen the big
turtle of Flag Cove II any times, at once
pronounced the she'll to be that of Eben-
ezer, and his opinion was verified by the
finding of the letters 4. B. X. partly
effacsd and grown apart. but still plain
to be seen, which some one many years
before had carved in the turtles back.
This was generally known as distin-
guished mark of Bbenezer--indeed, the
com bination of letters probably had sug-
gested the name that he bore-and 1t es'
tablished his identity beyond doubt.
This discovery has cleared up the mysc
terry surrounding the disappearance OF
E5enezer. The bear had surprised ana
captured him and, in default of any 9TH
er way to break the armor that protected
mis- unotuous flesh, had gone to the pains
of carrying the thirty pound turtle nearly
to the summit OF Hedgehog Mountain
in order to drop him from the cliff to the
rocks beneath The shattered frag meuts
of the under shell strewed about the spot
showed how successfully the bears device
had worked, and the upper shell, whict.
was unbroken, probably had served bruin