He hoped that an additional day and night might so add to the thickness of the ice that it would bear his weight.
He therefore shouldered his musket and again went into the woods on a hunt.

Though he saw an immense bear, and followed him for some distance, he was unable to shoot him.

After several hours' absence, he returned empty-handed.
Another morning dawned, lurid and chill, over the gloomy forest.

Again his friends entreated him not to run the risk of an attempt to return in such fearful weather.

"It was bitter cold," he writes, "but I know'd my family was without meat, and I determined to get home to them, or die a-trying." We will let Crockett tell his own story of his adventures in going back: "I took my keg of powder and all my hunting tools and cut out.