Bobby had never eaten a sea pigeon that seemed quite so small as that one, and it required a large degree of self-denial and self-restraint to observe the rule of economy which he had imposed upon himself on the evening he was wrecked. He had decided then that two sea pigeons a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, were all he could afford. For who could tell how long it might be before he would make his escape? And there were no birds or other game to be had on the island at this season, and when those he had were gone there would be hungry days to face. Though he declared to himself when picking the last bone of his breakfast that he could never possibly be any hungrier than at that very moment.

Nor could he afford a large fire in future. He calculated that he had already collected enough wood to last him, with small and carefully constructed fires, one day, and a survey of the island and its possibilities revealed the fact that all the additional fuel he could garner from the rocks would scarcely last him, even with rigid economy, another week.

While confined to his cave during the period of the blizzard he had satisfied his thirst with bits of ice. Now his fire was built close to a little hollow in the rock, and, placing snow near the fire, it melted, and the water running into the hollow settled there, and gave him drink.

And so, making the best of his resources, Bobby prepared for his siege, which he felt quite sure would end only when the bay froze and he could make his escape over the ice. A great part of the daylight hours were spent in collecting bits of wood. This kept him exercising, and kept his blood warm.

Already the sea was smoking. The freeze-up was close at hand. With each hour the merciless winter cold increased in strength. That evening when he entered his cave he closed the entrance with snow, that it might be kept warm, but nevertheless he spent an uncomfortable night, and he was glad enough to crawl out in the morning and light his fire.

That was a cheerless day. The sun shone through a gray veil, and offered little warmth. There was no more wood to gather, and to save his little stock he ran up and down upon the rocks that he might drive away the cold with exercise.

The sun was low when he lighted his evening fire, and as he prepared his sea pigeon for supper he remembered with regret that he had but one bird remaining.

"And I've been hungry ever since I've been here," he remarked to himself. "I'm half starved this minute."

He was thinking a great deal now of what he should have to eat when he reached home, and planning for this and that. And, oh, for some good hot tea!

And so, thinking, and dreading to go to his cheerless cave, he sat while his fire burned low and the sun sank from sight and the long and gloomy twilight gathered.

"I'll spare another stick or two," he said, replenishing the fire. "I can't go into that hole yet."

The fire blazed up, and the twilight grew thicker, and the fire had nearly burned out again while Bobby, dreaming of home and Mrs. Abel, and wondering where Abel Zachariah and Skipper Ed and Jimmy were, fell into a doze. Then it was that something unlooked for startled him into sudden wakefulness.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE WINTER OF FAMINE

Faintly over the waters, but quite loud enough for Bobby to hear, came a hail, and Bobby was on his feet in an instant, shouting with all the power of his lusty young lungs. Then he ran to his cave and got his gun, and fired three shots at intervals of a few seconds, and with the last shot listened tense with eagerness and excitement.

This was a signal that he and Jimmy had agreed upon. It meant, "Come! I want you," and when at home if Jimmy wished Bobby to come over to Skipper Ed's cabin, or Bobby wished Jimmy to come to Abel Zachariah's cabin, it was the way they called one another. And when the signal was heard, two shots were fired in quick succession to say, "I hear, and I will come," or two shots with an interval between, to say, "I hear you, but I can't come." Then it was the duty of the one who had fired the three shots in the beginning, whether or not his invitation had been accepted, to fire a single shot to say: "I hear you and understand."

And so it was that Bobby listened eagerly. If the hail had come from the boat returning from the seal hunt, Jimmy would surely answer.

He had but a moment to wait when two quickly fired shots rang out over the water. His excitement could scarcely contain itself as he fired one answering shot. Everything was working splendidly, after all! They were getting in from the seal hunt ahead of the freeze-up, and he was to reach home none the worse for his adventure.

Bobby was lavish now with his wood. Darkness was settling and he piled the wood upon the fire until its flames leaped up into a great blaze as a beacon, to guide the boat to a safe landing among the rocks.

And so it came to pass that Bobby was found and rescued, and he and Abel and Skipper Ed and Jimmy were glad enough to see one another again and to relate to one another their various experiences. And Mrs. Abel, mourning in the cabin, was given great joy, for she had believed that Bobby had been lost without doubt in the storm.

The seal hunt was, as Bobby had feared it would be, almost a failure. But four small seals had been killed when the storm came upon the hunters, and they were forced to retreat, that they might reach home before the sea froze. These four seals, together with what remained of the meat from the spring hunt, were the only provisions they had for the dogs until February, when they could go to the ice edge, or sena, for the winter hunt, for then the seals would be on the ice.

Even with scant rations this would be little more than half enough to keep the animals in serviceable condition, for there were a good many dogs to feed. Abel's two teams, together with an extra dog or two to fill the place of any that might be injured, numbered eighteen, while Skipper Ed kept seven. This made a total of twenty-five dogs to be provided for, and twenty-five big wolf dogs will consume a vast amount of food during a winter.

So they held a consultation, and Skipper Ed decided that he could do very well without dogs if Abel would permit him the use of a team now and again.

"Partner and I have kept dogs only these last two years, anyhow," said Skipper Ed. "Our hunting and trapping is chiefly inland, and we haven't much use for them. I don't want to see any of the dogs suffer for the want of something to eat, and if Partner is willing we'll kill them, and let you have the carcasses to feed to your teams. What do you say, Partner?"

"We'll kill them." Jimmy agreed, regretfully.

Abel also decided that it would be wise to reduce the number of his own dogs to fifteen, and thus the problem was solved.

Winter settled with almost unexampled cold, and with a succession of fearful storms. It was a winter, too, of awful hardship and privation to the people of the Coast. The Eskimos to the northward depended chiefly upon seals for their own living as well as for dog food, and with them, as with Abel Zachariah and Skipper Ed, the seal hunt was cut off by the early blizzard, and few seals were killed.

Abel and Skipper Ed, however, relied more largely upon the cod fishing, and it had been their custom for many years to barter away the fish they caught to trading schooners which visited them for that purpose at their fishing places before they returned to winter quarters. In this way they usually purchased sufficient flour and pork, tea and molasses to do them until the following spring, and when open water came again they would sail to the mission station and purchase with the furs their traps had yielded them, fresh supplies.

The attack of measles this year, however, had so interfered with their fishing that their small catch had purchased from the traders scarcely enough flour and pork and tea to last them until the new year. And so one day late in December Abel and Skipper Ed drove the two dog teams over to the Nain Mission, expecting to obtain there the supplies they needed.

"I'm sorry," said the missionary, "but I can spare you very little—almost nothing. The seal hunt was a failure with the people all down north, and they are starving, and I must take care of them. This year there are so many needy ones our stock will go only a little way. I'll divide it the best way I know how, but, God help the poor folk, it won't go far, and I'm praying God to send caribou or send seals."

"We'll get on somehow," said Skipper Ed. "The timber is back of us and we'll get rabbits and partridges, and make out. Give the Eskimos what you have. They're on barren ground and don't have the chance we have. There'll be better luck for us all by and by. Better luck."

And with only a half barrel of flour and some tea they returned to Abel's Bay to face the winter and make their fight against nature without complaint. For no truly brave man will complain when things go wrong in the game of life. And up there on The Labrador the game of life is a man's game and every man who wins must play it like a man, with faith and courage.

The weeks that followed were trying and tedious ones. Sometimes there was not much to eat, when the hunting was poor, but they thanked God there was always something.

But when February came at last there was not food enough to render it possible for them to make the long journey to the ice edge with safety. Living now was from hand to mouth. Each day they must hunt for what they would eat that day. Grouse and rabbits were the game upon which they usually relied, but Fate had cast this as one of those years when the rabbits disappear from the land as it is said they do every nine years. Be that as it may, not one was killed that winter and not a track was seen. For them to go to the ice without food was too great a risk. If they went and failed to find seals and were overtaken by a storm they would perish.

This was the condition of affairs when Bobby and Jimmy set out one cold, clear morning to hunt for ptarmigans, the white grouse of the North. Not far away was a barren hill whose top was kept clean swept of snow by the winds, and up this hill they climbed, for sometimes ptarmigans are found in places like this, feeding upon the frozen moss berries which cling to the rocks.

Bobby was in advance, and from the summit of the hill he scanned the great expanse of snow reaching away over the endless rolling country to the westward. And looking, he discovered in the distance a dark, moving mass slowly drawing down another hillside. For a moment he was speechless with joy, but it was for only a moment, and then he shouted:

"Tuktu! Tuktu! Tuktu!" (Caribou, or reindeer.)

Bobby's excited cry brought Jimmy up on a run, and when he looked and saw, he, too, shouted, and was no less excited than Bobby.

"Caribou! The caribou are coming!"

That was enough to send them back on a run for Abel and Skipper Ed and their rifles and all the ammunition they could muster, and then all four turned back to meet the caribou.

On and on came the great herd, in a far-reaching, endless mass, thousands upon thousands of them, and they were heading directly for the hill where the four eager hunters waited.

At length the mass reached them, and what followed was not a hunt but a slaughter, and when they were through more than a hundred caribou lay stretched upon the snow, and still the caribou came.

The period of starvation was at an end. Comfort and plenty had appeared at their very door.

The dogs were harnessed, and as many of the carcasses as they could use for man and dog food were hauled down, some to Abel Zachariah's cabin and some to Skipper Ed's. And bright and early the following morning Abel set out to the mission station and Skipper Ed to Abraham Moses' cabin, to bid the starving people come and help themselves and feast, and in the end not a caribou of all those that were killed was wasted.

And so it was that the Almighty looked after these children of His, and so He cares for His children even in the wild wastes of Labrador.

"Good luck! Good luck at last!" said Skipper Ed.



CHAPTER XIX

OFF TO THE "SENA"

And so it was that the famine ended. There was small variety for the table, to be sure, but there was always plenty of good venison, varied with ptarmigans, and now and again a porcupine. And after all they were able to go to the ice edge on the winter seal hunt, and a profitable hunt it proved.

Thus the years passed, and thus they were filled with ups and downs and many adventures and hard work, and withal plenty of good fun, too, to flavor them, as years are bound to be in that land of stern and active existence.

But there was always time for study, and when Bobby was in his sixteenth year he and Jimmy could boast of having read Caesar and Cicero and Xenophon, and they were delving into Virgil and the Iliad. Under Skipper Ed's tutorship Bobby had advanced as far in his studies as most boys of his age in civilization, who have all the advantages of the best schools. And Skipper Ed was proud of his progress, and proud of Jimmy's progress too, as indeed he had reason to be, for neither of them was a waster of time. There was no inducement to be laggards.

Their hearts were clean and their vision was clear. Their view was not cut off or circumscribed by the frivolous and ofttimes vicious amusements that stand as a wall around life's outlook in the town. Their view and their hope were as wide as the wilderness and the sea, rugged and stern but mighty and majestic and limitless—God's unspoiled works—and God was a living God to them.

Bobby at this age had developed into a big, husky lad. He could drive the dog team as well as Abel. He had already killed many seals, and he was an excellent hunter for his years. To Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel he was a dutiful, affectionate son. They, too, were proud of him, and looked upon him as the finest lad in the whole land, and Abel boasted that when he grew to be a man he would be the finest hunter on the coast.

It happened that early in February following Bobby's fifteenth birthday Abel wrenched an ankle so badly that he could not go about his duties, or even hobble outside the cabin door. The responsibility of providing for the little household, therefore, fell upon Bobby. And Bobby, though keenly sympathetic, was nevertheless glad of an opportunity to show his prowess.

He squared his shoulders, and regardless of cold and storm set about the work, determined to prove that he was a man in the things he could accomplish, if not in years; and he succeeded so well that he won high praise from Abel. Certainly Abel himself could not have done better with the fox trapping, which at this season was the chief employment. Bobby kept the house, too, so well supplied with rabbits and ptarmigans, through his incessant hunting, that presently there were enough hanging frozen in the porch to last till the coming of warm weather.

One evening near the end of February Bobby announced, as he entered the cabin after giving the dogs their daily feed:

"There's only enough seal meat left to last the dogs a week. I'll have to go to the sena and kill some more."

"You do not know how to do that kind of hunting," objected Abel. "It is not like hunting seals from a boat, or like spearing them through their breathing holes in the ice. Feed the dogs only once every two days, and perhaps before the meat is gone my foot will be strong enough for me to go to the sena."

"I was there with you last year," Bobby insisted. "Jimmy will go with me. He has been to the sena with you twice, and he knows how. We will be careful."

And at last Abel surrendered, for he could not long deny Bobby any reasonable thing that the lad set his heart upon, and after all Bobby had proved himself a good and careful hunter; and they needed seals.

Skipper Ed had not kept dogs since the slaughter of his team in the year of famine. He hunted and trapped more after the manner of the Indian than the Eskimo, going long journeys inland on snowshoes, and now Jimmy accompanied him. And living quite alone, as he had during his earlier years on the coast, there was no one who could have fed or cared for dogs when Skipper Ed was absent upon these trapping expeditions. It was therefore only during the two or three years preceding the year of famine, when Jimmy was old enough to care for them, and wished them, that he had a team.

Abel, on the other hand, after the manner of Eskimos, set his traps nearer the shore, that he might, so far as possible, make the rounds of them with dogs.

Abel, therefore, had constant need of dogs, and he now had sixteen fine big fellows, which so nearly resembled the great wolves of the barrens that were dogs and wolves to intermingle only the practiced eye could distinguish the one from the other. These dogs never barked, but howled with the weird, dismal howl of the wolf. And when they were hungry they were such dangerous, savage brutes that it was unsafe for a stranger, unless armed with a cudgel, to wander among them.

With sixteen dogs Abel could muster two ordinary teams of eight dogs each, or one powerful team of ten or twelve, or even the entire number.

Skipper Ed and Jimmy, when they required the services of dogs, could always borrow a team from Abel, and to repay this courtesy it was their custom to join in the autumn and spring seal hunts, and to contribute the carcasses of the seals they killed to Abel, retaining only the skins, which Mrs. Abel dressed and made up for them into boots and winter garments and sleeping bags, as needs demanded.

It was a Saturday evening when Bobby finally received Abel's consent for him to go to the sena seal hunting. He was preparing to go over, as was his custom on Saturdays, to spend the evening with Skipper Ed and Jimmy in reading and study, and when he had eaten his supper he donned his snowshoes and netsek[D] and hurried eagerly away to Skipper Ed's cabin to invite Jimmy to join him in the adventure.

[Footnote D: An Eskimo garment of seal skin, which is drawn on over the head like a shirt, and has a hood to protect the head. When this garment is made of caribou skin it is called a kulutuk, and when made of cloth, an adikey.]

"Yes, to be sure, Partner, you must go with Bobby," said Skipper Ed. "But it's going to be bleak and cold out there. It's a man's work at this season, hunting at the sena, and a strong man's work, too. Perhaps I had better go along. Then we can take two teams of dogs."

"That will be dandy!" exclaimed Bobby, "We'll have a fine time!"

"Yes, Partner, come!" urged Jimmy. "You can leave your traps for a week."

"I think I can—yes, I'll go," Skipper Ed decided. "I was never hunting at the sena but twice, though, and I've never forgotten my first experience. It was a good many years ago, before you came, Partner. I went with Abel. We had a hard time of it that year, for stormy weather came up and we nearly perished in a blizzard."

"We'll build a snow igloo" said Bobby, "and be pretty comfortable. We'll take Father's snow knives and two of his old stone lamps. We'll have plenty of seal oil to burn. You know there's no wood out there, and it isn't worth while hauling any."

"Yes," agreed Skipper Ed, "we'll need the lamps, though I don't like them. I never could get used to them, and I never liked to go too far from wood."

And so it came to pass that in the bright moonlight of Monday morning they lashed upon the two komatiks a good supply of hardtack and boiled salt pork—the only provisions that would not freeze too hard to eat—with tea, and sleeping bags, and numerous articles of equipment for their own use and comfort, and a day's supply of seal meat for the dogs.

Then the dogs were caught and harnessed, and in great excitement began to strain at the traces and howl their eagerness to be off. Oksunaes were shouted to Abel and Mrs. Abel, and Bobby, grasping the front of one komatik, and Skipper Ed the front of the other, they pulled them sharply to one side to break them loose, shouting to the teams as they did so: "Hu-it! Hu-it!" Then they flung themselves upon the komatiks, and away they dashed, down the steep and slippery incline, and off through the shore hummocks at a wild, mad gallop.

They were away to the sena, and the Great Adventure, at last.



CHAPTER XX

JIMMY'S SACRIFICE

For a little way the dogs traveled at a gallop, and Bobby and Skipper Ed had lively work while this lasted, guiding the komatiks between the ice hummocks. But it was not long before the first excitement of going upon a journey wore off, and after their manner the animals, with tails curled over their backs, settled down to a steady pulling. Now and again they came upon a ridge of ice piled up by the tide, and then it was necessary to lift at the komatiks and help the dogs.

Presently the ice hummocks were left behind and the smooth, white surface of the frozen bay stretched out before them. The snow which covered the ice had been beaten down and hard packed by the wind, and the sledge runners slid over its surface so easily that the dogs increased their pace to a steady, rapid trot.

The weather was fearfully cold. The runners of the sledge squeaked and creaked. Frost flakes on the hard packed snow glistened and scintillated in the moonlight and soon the netseks of the travelers were covered with white hoar frost, ice formed upon their eyelashes and Skipper Ed's breath froze upon his beard until presently his face was almost hidden by a mass of ice.

They ran by the side of the komatiks to keep warm, only now and again riding for a little way to rest, and as they ran or walked they chatted gaily, contemptuous of the cold, and keenly enjoying in anticipation the sport and adventure in store for them.

And so they traveled for three full hours before the first hint of daylight came stealing up over the white horizon in the southeast, and at length, very slowly, as though reluctant to show his face, and uncertain of his welcome, the sun peeked timidly over the ice field. Then, reassured, he boldly lifted his round, glowing face full into view, giving cheer and promise to the frozen world.

To the sledge traveler the dreariest hour of the day, and the hour of bitterest cold, is that immediately preceding sunrise. As though by consent our three friends during this period fell into silence, and none spoke until the sun looked out over the ice, and the frost-covered snow—each frost flake a miniature prism—was set a-sparkling and a-glinting as though the snow was thick sown with diamonds.



"Glorious! Isn't it glorious!" exclaimed Bobby, dropping by Jimmy's side upon the komatik, and removing a hand from its mitten for a moment to pick small particles of ice from his eyelashes.

Jimmy for answer drew his right hand from its mitten, and clapping it over Bobby's nose began to rub the member vigorously.

"There, now it's all right," said he, donning his mitten again after a minute or two of rubbing. "Your nose was going dead.[E] The end of it was white."

[E] Freezing.

"I never felt it," laughed Bobby. "Just look at the Skipper back there. He's a perfect image of Santa Claus!"

"Exactly!" exclaimed Jimmy, looking back at Skipper Ed. "He's exactly like the picture of Santa Claus in that old magazine you and I used to look at so much, only a good deal more real."

"If he was driving reindeers, now, instead of dogs," laughed Bobby, "and I met him with all that ice on his beard, and his netsek white and glistening with the frost that way, I'd think he had stepped right out of the old picture book."

"Good old Partner!" said Jimmy. "I think I'll drop back with him a while and keep him company."

And, dropping lightly from the moving komatik, he waited to run along for a while with Skipper Ed, while Bobby ran alone with his own sledge.

Once a lonely raven coming from somewhere out of the blank spaces alighted on the ice a quarter of a mile in advance of Bobby's team and directly in its track. The dogs saw it immediately, and in an instant they were after it at a mad gallop. Bobby threw himself upon the sledge, in high glee at the wild pace, and Skipper Ed's team, quite sure they were missing something very much worth while, set out in hot pursuit.

In seeming disregard for his safety, the raven, cocking his head first on one side, then on the other, surveyed the approaching dogs with interest, and to Bobby it seemed that the dogs would surely catch him. Old Tucktu, the leader, was apparently of the same mind and very sure of a tasty morsel, and they were almost upon him before the raven, too dignified to hurry, rose leisurely on his wings, tantalizingly near to Tucktu's nose, and flapped away another quarter of a mile to repeat, with evident enjoyment, the episode, and then, unscathed, he disappeared again into the blank spaces.

When the raven had gone and the excitement was at an end, Bobby and Skipper Ed shouted "Ah!" at their teams, and ran ahead with their long whips as the dogs stopped, to compel the panting animals to lie down and remain quiet while they straightened out the tangled traces and made merry over the rapid ride they had enjoyed. Then, extracting some hardtack biscuits from their bags, they sat on the sledges and ate their dry luncheon while the dogs jogged leisurely on again.

The sun was setting when Bobby, now well in the lead, halted his team at Abel Zachariah's old fishing place on Itigailit Island to await Skipper Ed and Jimmy. The sea, far out in the direction in which Abel had found Bobby in the drifting boat that August morning, was frozen, and a little way out from Itigailit Island the smooth ice gave place to mountainous ridges and hummocks where, earlier in the season, rough seas had piled massive blocks one upon another and left them there to freeze and catch the drifting snow. Far out beyond the pressure ridges Bobby could see a dark line which marked the edge of the sea ice and the place where open water began. That was the sena for which they were bound.

"Don't you think we'd better build our igloo here?" Bobby suggested as the others came up. "It's getting late and we can't do any hunting tonight, anyway, and perhaps there won't be any good drifts out there."

"Yes, by all means," agreed Skipper Ed. "We'll have plenty of time in the morning to go out, and if the hunting proves good, and we prefer to stay there, we can build an igloo at our leisure. If we get plenty of seals we will want to haul them in here to land to cache them, and then if the ice breaks up before we get them all hauled home, we can take them in the boat. And while we are hauling them in here from the sena we'll have a snug igloo at each end of the trail, where we can make hot tea, if we wish, and drink it in comfort."

They found an excellent drift in a spot well sheltered from the wind, and because he was taller and stronger than Bobby and a better builder than Jimmy, Skipper Ed, with a snow knife which looked very much like a sword but had a wider blade, which was straight instead of curved, marked a circle about ten feet in diameter upon the drift.

Then he cut a wedge out of the snow in the center, and with this as a beginning he carved from each side of the hole blocks of the hard-packed snow, each block about two feet long and a foot and a half wide and ten inches thick. These he placed on edge around the circle, fitting their ends close together by trimming them as he found necessary, with the knife.

Bobby and Jimmy, each with a knife, now began also to cut other slabs from a drift outside the circle, and passed them to Skipper Ed when he had exhausted his supply within the circle. They were very heavy, these blocks, and as much as the boys could manage.

When Skipper Ed had built a row of blocks completely around the circle, he trimmed the first blocks which he had placed to a wedge, that he might build his circle of blocks up in a spiral.

Each block of snow was so placed that it was braced against the one next it, and its top leaned a little inward, so that as the walls of the igloo rose each was smaller than the one preceding it, until at last a key block in the top completed the dome-shaped structure. As the house grew Bobby plastered the joints between the blocks full of snow, making its outside smooth like the surface of a snowdrift.

When Skipper Ed had finished the building, he cut a circular place through the side, close down to the bottom, and just large enough to permit him to crawl out. Now with a snowshoe he shoveled the loose snow out of the opening, and leveled the floor within.

Bobby and Jimmy in the meantime busied themselves unlashing the loads upon the sledges and unharnessing the dogs. When this was done Bobby with an ax chopped frozen seal meat into pieces for the dogs' supper, while Jimmy with the long whip kept the hungry dogs at a distance, for with the unharnessing, and preparation of their supper, they collected into bunches, and sitting on their haunches, growled and snapped at one another, each fearful that his neighbor should gain an advantage, and all the time emitted dismal, whistling whines of impatience.

Presently Bobby stepped aside, Jimmy withdrew the menace of the whip, and in an instant the hungry beasts were upon their food, gulping it down as fast as they could pick it up, a snarling, snapping, yelping mass, and there was a fight or two that the boys were called upon to mediate by beating the animals apart.

By the time the feeding was over Skipper Ed had carried the harness into the igloo and spread it evenly on the floor—for the dogs would have eaten their own harness if it had been left to them—and over the harness he laid caribou skins, and then carried in the sleeping bags and provisions. Nothing, indeed, was left outside, for nothing would have been safe from the ravenous beasts. And when the dogs were fed and all was made snug and safe the three crawled within, and closed the entrance to the igloo with a big block of snow previously provided for the purpose.

They had brought with them two of Abel's old stone lamps. These were simply blocks of stone cut in the shape of a half moon, and hollowed out, to hold seal oil.

The lamps were now placed upon snow shelves, one on either side of the igloo, and the oil from a piece of blubber squeezed into them. Pieces of rags carefully placed along the straight side of the lamps served as wicks. These were lighted and burned with a smoky, yellow flame.

When the wicks were burning well a snow knife was stuck into the wall of the snow house over each lamp, and upon these knives kettles were suspended and filled with snow taken from the wall of the igloo. One of the kettles was removed when the snow was melted, and set aside for drinking water. The other was permitted to boil, tea was made, and then the fire was put out, for already the temperature inside the igloo had become so warm that presently there would be danger of the snow dripping moisture.

"Now," said Skipper Ed, lighting a candle, for it was growing dark, "we're ready for supper. You chaps must be hungry."

"I could eat my boots!" declared Bobby.

"So could I!" exclaimed Jimmy, as he poured hot tea into Skipper Ed's and Bobby's cups and then helped himself. "I was glad enough when we decided to stop here."

"Isn't it fine and cozy," said Bobby, between mouthfuls of frozen boiled pork and hardtack. "I always find a snow igloo cozy."

"It makes a pretty good shelter," Skipper Ed admitted, "but I never did care for an igloo. I'm too much of an Indian, I suppose, for I prefer a tent and a good wood fire, with its sweet smoke odor, and the companionship and shelter of the forest."

"Oh, I think an igloo is nicer," insisted Bobby. "A tent gets cold at night when the fire goes out, and an igloo keeps fine and warm. I could live in an igloo all winter."

"You're a regular husky!" laughed Skipper Ed. "Partner and I are Indians, aren't we, Partner?"

"Yes, Partner, I like a tent better," agreed Jimmy, "but," he added, "I like our house better than a tent."

"It all depends upon what we're used to, after all," remarked Skipper Ed, "and comfort is a matter of comparison. I've no doubt that Bobby, had he never been sent adrift, and had he never found his way here, would now be living in a fine mansion somewhere, and if he had been brought here directly from the luxuries of that mansion would have found this igloo unbearable, and instead of praising its comforts, as he is, would be denouncing it as unendurable, and the good supper we have just eaten as unfit to eat. And in that case it would have been a terrible hardship for him to spend even a single night here."

"I'm glad, then, that I came away from the mansion and its finery," declared Bobby. "But I've often wondered who the dead man was that Father found in the boat with me. I've often felt strange about that, and every summer when we're here I go over and look at his grave."

"I remember you spoke of him as 'Uncle Robert,'" said Skipper Ed. "Perhaps he was your uncle."

"I wonder—and I wonder—" said Bobby. "I wonder if my real mother and father are living, and whether they have stopped feeling bad about me, and forgotten me. I—think—sometimes I'd give most anything to see them and tell them I'm happy."

Then they were silent, and presently Skipper Ed knew that the boys were sleeping. But for a long time he lay awake and thought of other lands, and the friends of his youth and the days when he lived in luxury; and he wondered if, after all, he had been one whit happier in those days, with all the fine things he had, than were Bobby and Jimmy here in this rugged land, with no luxuries whatever. "We do not need much," he soliloquized, "to make us happy if we are willing to be happy. Health and love, and enough plain food to eat and clothes to cover us, and a shelter—even a snow house—and we have enough."

Before day broke they were astir; and the sun had not yet risen when they repacked their sledges and harnessed the dogs, and drove down over the ice toward the sena. For a mile the ice was smooth. Then they came among the pressure ridges, and had to pick their course in and out for another two miles before they came at last to the open sea.

Seals were numerous on the ice edge, and on floating pans of ice, and the dogs began to strain and howl in eagerness to attack the game, and would have dashed to the very water's edge but for big hoops of walrus hide thrown over the front of the komatik, which dragged into the snow under the runners and stopped them, and when they were stopped only the menace of the long whips could induce the animals to lie quietly down.

"We're going to have a dandy hunt!" exclaimed Bobby. "Shall we go right at it, and build an igloo later?"

"Don't you think we had better build the igloo first?" suggested Skipper Ed, laughing at Bobby's eagerness. "Then when we're tired we won't have it to do, or to think about, and we'll have a shelter all ready. Let us make things ship-shape."

"I suppose you're right," and Bobby grinned.

One of the two lamps and a share of the provisions had been left in the igloo on Itigailit Island, which was to be their land base and their cache. But they had brought with them the other lamp and necessaries to make their hunting igloo comfortable. A good bank of snow was found, not too far from the ice edge, and in an hour an igloo was ready and everything stowed safely away from possible foraging by the dogs. Then the two teams, still fast in their traces, were picketed behind the ice hummocks near the igloo, for had they been set at liberty each dog would have gone hunting on his own account, and the seals would have been driven from the ice and beyond range of the guns.

Now, each armed with a rifle, and Bobby with a harpoon, they stole down toward the seals, crawling toward them, Bobby now and again emitting a "Hough! Hough!" in imitation of the coughing bark of the seals, until they approached quite near. Then, almost simultaneously, they fired, and, springing up, ran forward. Two seals had been shot clear through the head, and lay dead on the ice, but the other, though wounded, had slipped into the water. Bobby drew his harpoon, and holding it poised waited, until presently a dozen feet away the wounded seal came struggling to the surface. In a flash the harpoon flew from the young hunter's hand and struck its mark, and with the assistance of Skipper Ed and Jimmy he drew it to the ice.

These seals were of a species which they called "harps," because of the peculiar, harp-shaped markings on their back; and of the hair variety, for none of the valuable fur seals inhabits north Atlantic waters. The skins, however, when dressed into leather by Mrs. Abel, would prove of splendid quality for boot tops, or, when dressed without removing the hair, would supply them with many articles of clothing for their comfort.

The day was terribly cold—Skipper Ed judged that the temperature must have stood at least at fifty degrees below zero, and that even the temperature of the sea water, where it was unfrozen, was well below the freezing point. Once or twice, indeed, in spite of their enthusiasm, the hunters retired to the igloo, where a lamp was kept burning, to warm themselves.

Late that afternoon Jimmy wounded a seal on an ice pan, and it went into the water. He seized a harpoon, but when the seal rose to the surface it was so far away that the line could not reach it.

"Here!" shouted Bobby, laying down his gun and grabbing a paddle which he had brought from Itigailit Island for such an emergency, "jump on this pan. I'll paddle you out where you can get him."

They sprang upon a small pan, and, utilizing it as a raft, Bobby paddled a few yards.

"There! There!" shouted Bobby. "There he is. He's most dead. You can get him!"

Jimmy jumped to the side of the pan upon which Bobby was kneeling with his paddle, and poising the harpoon was about to cast it when the pan, too heavily weighted on that side, began slowly to turn. Bobby did not see this, but Jimmy did.

"Don't move!" shouted Jimmy. "Stay where you are!"

And, without hesitation, Jimmy slipped from the pan and into the icy sea, though he knew there was small chance for him to swim, and, overcome by the shock of the terrible cold, he sank beneath the waves.

The pan righted itself immediately it was relieved of Jimmy's weight, and Bobby, realizing what Jimmy had done, and that his friend had sacrificed himself for his sake, stood bewildered and stunned, gazing blankly at the spot where Jimmy had sunk.



CHAPTER XXI

WHO WAS THE HERO?

Bobby did not lose his head. After his manner in emergencies, he thought quickly, and acted instantly, and now his bewilderment was for only a moment.

Seizing the harpoon which Jimmy had dropped upon the ice, he gave a yell that brought Skipper Ed to the water's edge in a hurry, and when Skipper Ed came running down Bobby had already thrown off his netsek and his mittens and was knotting the loose end of the harpoon line around his waist. Grasping the harpoon, he cast it upon the main ice, with the command:

"Grab it, and hold it!"

"My God!" gasped Skipper Ed. "What has happened? Where is Jimmy? Where is Partner?"

"In there! Stand by and help!" directed Bobby, who had not taken his eyes off the dark water where Jimmy had disappeared, save for the fleeting instant when he cast his harpoon to Skipper Ed.

Presently Jimmy, hampered by his netsek, weakly struggled to the surface, already apparently overcome by the awful cold of the plunge. Bobby saw him and instantly sprang after him, seized him about the waist and held him with the desperation of one who fights with death. A moment's struggle followed and then both lads went down.

Skipper Ed now comprehended Bobby's suddenly formulated plan of rescue, and he pulled with all his strength upon the line, and as he pulled Bobby, still grasping Jimmy about the body, rose again to the surface, and Skipper Ed giving impetus to the line, drew them to him, seized them and quite easily drew them upon the ice.

Jimmy had already lost consciousness and Bobby was so overcome by the shock that he could scarcely speak, and Skipper Ed, lifting Jimmy into his arms, ran with him to the igloo, calling to Bobby as he did so:

"Come! Run! Run, or you'll freeze!"

Bobby tried to run—tried very hard—but he fell. The water in an instant formed a coat of mail upon his body. He rose, but his legs refused to respond, and again he fell, and when Skipper Ed, who came running back when he had dragged Jimmy into the igloo, reached him he found Bobby on his hands and knees and nearly helpless.

"Come!" he shouted into Bobby's ear, at the same time passing his arm around Bobby's body and lifting him to his feet. "Come, lad! Don't give up!" he encouraged, half dragging the boy forward and pushing him into the igloo.

"Undress, Bobby! Get into your sleeping bag!" he commanded.

"Jimmy—Jimmy—" said Bobby, in a voice which he hardly recognized as his own.

"I'll take care of Jimmy," broke in Skipper Ed. "Get into your sleeping bag! Quick!"

And Bobby in a dazed manner obeyed.

Fortunately the stone lamp was burning. Skipper Ed closed the door of the igloo with a block of snow, and working rapidly he stripped the frozen clothing from Jimmy, wrapped him in a caribou skin, turned him upon his face, and resorted to artificial respiration to restore him to consciousness.

Jimmy responded quickly to the treatment, for he was suffering rather from shock than from the amount of water that had entered his lungs, and in a little while Skipper Ed was gratified to observe that he was breathing naturally and making an effort to speak.

"Where's—Bobby?" he asked faintly.

"Bobby's safe," said Skipper Ed with a strange choking in his voice. "Bobby pulled you out, Partner. My brave partner!"

Without delay Skipper Ed now tucked Jimmy into his sleeping bag, and wrapping an additional caribou skin around each of the boys, set himself at once to brewing some hot strong tea, which he forced them to drink, and until they had drunk it and were thoroughly warmed he commanded them to do no talking, though in spite of the injunction Bobby asked:

"Is Jimmy all right?"

"He's all right," reassured Skipper Ed, "as snug as can be, in his bag. Now don't say another word until I give you permission. Go to sleep."

"Where's my netsek? Did you find it? And my mittens? I'll need 'em again," persisted the practically disposed Bobby, who was already thinking of the future.

"You young rascal! Go to sleep, I say, and don't let me hear another word," insisted Skipper Ed. "I'll go find 'em. Keep quiet now and go to sleep."

Skipper Ed found the netsek and mittens, as he had promised he would. The tide had driven the piece of ice upon which Bobby had left them back again to the main ice. Then he fed the dogs, and when he returned to the igloo both lads were sleeping soundly.

He filled his pipe, and sat for two hours, and until darkness settled, smoking and ruminating. He did not know yet the full history of the accident. He only knew that Jimmy had in some manner got into the water, was overcome by the icy bath and was perishing when Bobby called, and that Bobby by quick thought and quick action had saved his young partner.

"They're both as tough as nuts or they never would have come out of that dip so well," he said to himself. "Bobby's a hero, and as unselfish as the day is long.

"I wonder what he'd have been if he'd never gone adrift and had never come to this rugged land. I wonder if his rich parents, or the luxuries and frivolities of civilization, would have spoiled him, and made him grow up into a selfish, cowardly, and perhaps dissipated, weakling? I wonder if it's the rugged country and the rugged, hard life he lives, that have given him a rugged, noble heart, or whether he'd have had it anyway?

"It's God's mystery. God holds our destiny in His hands, and our destiny is His will. Perhaps He sent the lad here to mould his character upon the plan of the great wide wilderness and boundless sea, and to fit him for some noble part that he is to play some time in life."

Skipper Ed knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Perhaps after all," he mused, "my life here has not been wasted. Perhaps my part in life was to teach these boys and help to broaden their life. Perhaps that was the reason I drifted here and remained here. Every misfortune and every sorrow is just a stepping stone to something higher and better."

"Skipper!" Bobby was awake and Skipper Ed's musings were at an end.

"Yes, son." He called Bobby "son" sometimes, as a special mark of affection.

"Did you find the netsek and mittens?"

"Yes, you practical young scamp."

"That's good," said Bobby, "for I couldn't hunt tomorrow without them."

"Hunt tomorrow!" exclaimed Skipper Ed. "Is that the first thing you think of when you wake up? I'm not sure I'll let you hunt tomorrow. I may keep you in your sleeping bag."

"I'm all right, Skipper," declared Bobby, "I'm going to get out of my bag right now. I'm so hungry I'll be eating it if I don't."

"Stay where you are!" commanded Skipper Ed. "I'll feed you right there. I have some fresh seal meat all cooked, and I'll make tea."

"Is Jimmy asleep, and is he all right?"

"Yes, he's sleeping, and I've no doubt he'll be all right in a day or two."

"Skipper," said Bobby, as Skipper Ed threw a handful of tea into the simmering teakettle, "do you know what Jimmy did?"

"Why, yes. He fell into the sea, and would have perished if you hadn't been so prompt in making a human fishhook of yourself."

"What I did wasn't anything any one wouldn't have done," declared Bobby deprecatingly.

"But we were on that cake of ice and it began to turn over, and Jimmy jumped into the water to save me. If we'd both gone in we'd both have drowned, for we couldn't have got out with our netseks on in that paralyzing cold, and Jimmy knew it, so he just jumped in to save me, and I'm sure he never expected to get out himself. That's the greatest thing anybody could have done."

"Jumped in to save you? My partner a hero, too! I knew it was in him, though. You're a pair of the bravest chaps I ever knew, and I'm proud of you both," and Skipper Ed's voice sounded strange and choky.

"Oh, it was nothing for me to do! I was safe on the end of the line! I was sure of getting out—but Jimmy!"

"Here," said Skipper Ed, "is some fine tender seal meat and a hard biscuit. Drink down this hot tea. It's good for you. And stop talking. I know what you did, you young husky."

Bobby laughed, and sipped the steaming tea.

Jimmy always insisted that he would have gone into the water anyhow when the ice turned over, and therefore had no choice, and deserved no credit for what he did, but that Bobby did a very brave act. And Bobby insisted that Jimmy had risked his life to save his, and was the bravest chap in the world. And Skipper Ed insisted that both lads were wonderful heroes. So it comes about that you and I will have to decide for ourselves which was right, and who was the hero.



CHAPTER XXII

A STORM AND A CATASTROPHE

True to his promise, Bobby was up the next morning bright and early, and awoke Skipper Ed as he moved about, lighting the lamp and hanging the kettle of snow to melt for tea, and the kettle containing cooked seal meat, to thaw, for it had frozen hard in the night. Then, while he waited for these to heat, he crawled back into his sleeping bag.

"How are you feeling after your Arctic dip?" inquired Skipper Ed.

"As fine as could be!" answered Bobby. "My fingers were nipped a little, and they're a bit numb. That's the only way I'd know, from the way I feel, that I'd been in the water."

"You're a regular tough young husky!" declared Skipper Ed. "But it was a narrow escape, and we can thank God for the deliverance of you two chaps. You mustn't take those risks again. It's tempting Providence."

"Why, I didn't think we were careless," said Bobby. "It was the sort of thing that is always likely to happen."

Jimmy lifted his head.

"Hello!" drowsily. "Is it time to get up? I've been sleeping like a stone."

"It isn't time for you to get up," cautioned Skipper Ed. "You stay right where you are today."

"I'm all right, Partner!" Jimmy declared.

"Well, you've got to demonstrate it. We don't want any pneumonia cases on our hands. Just draw some long breaths, and punch yourself, and see how you feel."

"I feel fine," insisted Jimmy, after some deep breaths and several self-inflicted punches. "It doesn't hurt a bit to breathe, and I don't feel lame anywhere. The only place I feel bad is in my stomach, and that's just shouting for grub."

"Very well," laughed Skipper Ed, "that kind of an ache we can cure with boiled seal and hardtack."

And so, indeed, it proved. Their hardihood, brought about by a life of exposure to the elements, and their constitutions, made strong as iron by life and experience in the open, withstood the shock, and, none the worse for their experience, and passing it by as an incident of the day's work, they resumed the hunt with Skipper Ed.

All of that day and the next, which was Thursday, they hunted with great success, and when Thursday night came more than half a hundred fat seals, among which were three great bearded seals—"square flippers," they called them—lay upon the ice as their reward. They were well pleased. Indeed, they could scarcely have done better had Abel Zachariah been with them.

"Tomorrow will be Friday, and we had better haul our seals to Itigailit Island to the cache," Skipper Ed suggested that evening as they sat snug in the igloo, eating their supper. "We have all we can care for."

"I hate to leave with all these seals about, but I suppose we'll have to go some time," said Bobby regretfully.

"Yes, and I'm wondering what I'll find in my traps when we get home," said Jimmy.

"You may have a silver fox, Partner," laughed Skipper Ed.

"I've been looking for one every round I've made this winter," Jimmy grinned.

"That's the way with every hunter," said Skipper Ed. "He's always looking for a silver, and it makes him the keener for the work, and drives away monotony. He's always expecting a silver, though year in and year out he gets nothing but reds and whites, with now and again a cross, to make him think that his silver is prowling around somewhere close by."

"I'd feel rich if I ever caught a silver!" broke in Bobby. "And wouldn't I get some things for Father and Mother, though! A new rifle and shotgun and traps, and—loads of things!"

"So you're looking for a silver, too," said Skipper Ed, all of them laughing heartily. "That's the way it goes—everyone is looking for a silver fox, and that keeps everyone always hopeful and gives vim for labor. When they don't have silvers or don't hunt and trap, they're looking for something else that takes the place of a silver—some great success. It's ambition to catch silvers, and the hope of catching them, that makes the world go round."

"Well, I never got one yet," said Bobby, "and there's one due me by this time. Every one gets a silver some time in his life."

"Not every one," corrected Skipper Ed. "Well, shall we haul the seals over in the morning, and then go home to see if we've got any silvers in the traps?"

"I suppose so," agreed Bobby, regretfully. "It's hard to leave this fine hunting, but I suppose there'll be good hunting till the ice goes out, and anyway we've got all we can use."

So with break of day on Friday they loaded their sledges, and all that day hauled seals to their cache, and when night came and they returned in the dark to the sena igloo, some seals still remained to be hauled on Saturday.

But the sun did not show himself on Saturday morning, for the sky was heavily overcast, and before they reached Itigailit Island with the first load of seals snow was falling and the wind was rising. They hurried with all their might, for it was evident a storm was about to break with the fury of the North, and out on the open ice field, where the wind rides unobstructed and unbridled, these storms reach terrible proportions.

So they pushed the dogs back to the sena at the fastest gait to which they could urge them. Skipper Ed and Jimmy were in advance and had Skipper Ed's komatik loaded with the larger proportion of the remaining seals, and were lashing the load into place, when Bobby arrived.

"I've got a heavier load than yours will be, so I'll go on with it," Skipper Ed shouted as Bobby drove up. "There are only two small ones left for you, and the cooking outfit and your snow knives in the igloo. Don't forget them. You and Jimmy will likely overtake me. Hurry along."

"All right," answered Bobby. "We'll catch you before you reach smooth ice."

So Skipper Ed drove away with never a thought of catastrophe, and was quickly swallowed up by the thickening snow, while Bobby and Jimmy loaded the seals and the things from the igloo upon the sledge, and, spurred by the rising wind and snow, hurried with all their might.

Already great seas were booming and breaking with a roar upon the ice, and as the boys turned the dogs back upon the trail they observed a waving motion of the ice beneath them, which was rapidly becoming more apparent. At one moment the dogs would be hauling the sledge up an incline, and at the next moment the sledge would be coasting down another incline close upon the heels of the team, as the heaving ice assumed the motion of the seas which rolled beneath.

As they receded from the ice edge, however, this motion diminished, until finally it was hardly perceptible at all, and there seemed no further cause for alarm or great speed, and the dogs, which were weary with the two days' heavy hauling, were permitted to proceed at their own leisurely gait.

At length through the snow they saw Skipper Ed waiting for them, but when he was assured they were following he proceeded.

"Ah!" Bobby shouted to his dogs a moment later, bringing them suddenly to a stop. "I've dropped my whip somewhere. Jimmy, watch the team while I run back after it."

Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned with the whip, and they drove on.

Skipper Ed, satisfied that Bobby and Jimmy were close at his heels, did not halt again until well out over the smooth ice and near to Itigailit Island, when he heard behind him a strange rumbling and crackling. He halted and listened, and strained his eyes through the drifting snow for a glimpse of the boys. They were not visible, and, springing from his komatik, he ran back in the direction from which he had come and as fast as he could run, and presently, with a sickening sensation at his heart, was brought to a halt by a broad black space of open water.

The great ice pack upon which they had been hunting had broken loose from the shore ice, and tide and wind were driving it seaward. Already the chasm between him and the floe had widened to over thirty feet, and it was rapidly growing wider. The minutes dragged and when at last Bobby and Jimmy came into view on the opposite side of the chasm it was a full two hundred feet in breadth. They shouted to the dogs and rushed to the edge of the open water, but there was no hope of their escape. They had delayed too long. They were adrift on the ice floe, which was steadily taking them seaward.



CHAPTER XXIII

IT WAS GOD'S WILL

Skipper Ed was appalled and stunned. A sense of great weakness came upon him, and he swayed, and with an effort prevented his knees from doubling under him. His vision became clouded, like the vision of one in a dream. His brain became paralyzed, inert, and he was hardly able to comprehend the terrible tragedy that he believed inevitable.

Had there been any means at his command whereby he could at least have attempted a rescue, it would have served as a safety valve. But he was utterly and absolutely helpless to so much as lift a finger to relieve the two boys whom he loved so well and who had become so much a part of his life.

And there was Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel. Vaguely he remembered them and the great sorrow that this thing would bring upon them. He knew well that they would place none of the responsibility upon himself, but, nevertheless, he could but feel that had he remained with the boys they would now have been safe.

Home? His cabin would never be home to him again, without his partner. He could never go over to Abel Zachariah's again of evenings, with no Bobby there. Only two days ago he had thanked God for sparing the lives of the boys, and how proud he had been of their heroic action, and their pluck, too, after he had got them safe into the igloo!

He could see them now—barely see them through the snow. He watched their faint outlines, and then the swirling snow hid them, and the ice floe and only black waters remained.

Then it was that Skipper Ed fell to his knees, and, kneeling there in the driving Arctic storm and bitter cold, prayed God, as he had never prayed before, to work a miracle, and spare his loved ones to him. Nothing, he remembered, was beyond God's power, and God was good.

When, presently, he arose from his knees, Skipper Ed felt strangely relieved. A part, at least, of the load was lifted from his heart. He could not account for the sensation, but, nevertheless, he felt stronger, and a degree of his old courage had returned.

He stood for a little longer gazing seaward, but nothing was to be seen but black, turbulent, surly waters and swirling snow, and at length he turned reluctantly back to his sledge.

The dogs were lying down, and already nearly covered by the drift. He called to them to go forward, and, arriving at the igloo, listlessly unharnessed and fed them, and retreated to the shelter of the igloo to think.

He could eat nothing that night, but he brewed some strong tea over the stone lamp. Then he lighted his pipe and sat silent, for a long while, forgetting to smoke.

With every hour the wind increased in force, and before midnight one of those awful blizzards, so characteristic of Labrador at this season, was at its height. Once Skipper Ed removed the snow block at the entrance of the igloo, and partly crawled out with a view to looking about, but he was nearly smothered by drift, and quickly drew back again into the igloo and replaced the snow block.

"The poor lads!" said he. "God help and pity them, and" he added reverently, "if it be Thy will, O God, preserve their lives."

Skipper Ed finally slipped into his sleeping bag and fell into a troubled sleep, to awake, as morning approached, with a great weight upon his heart, and with his waking moment came the realization of its cause. He arose upon his elbow and listened. The tempest had passed.

He sprang up, and drawing on his netsek and moccasins, for these were the only garments he had removed upon lying down, he went out and looked about him. The stars were shining brilliantly, and an occasional gust of wind was the only reminder of the storm. Mounds of snow marked the place where the dogs were sleeping, covered by the drift. The morning was bitterly cold.

He ran down to the ice edge, and gazed eagerly seaward, but nowhere could he see the ice pack. It had vanished utterly.

A sense of awful loneliness fell upon Skipper Ed. Reluctantly he returned to the igloo and prepared his breakfast, which he ate sparingly. Then until day broke he sat pondering the situation. There was nothing he could do, and he decided at length to return at once to Abel Zachariah's, and report the calamity.

When he emerged again from the igloo the last breath of the storm had ceased to blow and a dead calm prevailed. He loaded the komatik, and calling the dogs from beneath their coverlets of snow, harnessed them, and without delay set out for the head of Abel's Bay.

It was long after dark when the dogs, straining at their traces and yelping, rushed in through the ice hummocks below Abel's cabin. The cabin was dark, but a light flashed in the window as the sledge ascended the incline. Abel and Mrs. Abel had heard the approach, and when the sledge came to a stop before the door they were there to give welcome and greetings.

"Where is Bobby? And where is Jimmy?" asked Abel. "Are they coming?"

"They will never come," answered Skipper Ed.

Abel and Mrs. Abel understood, for tragedies, in that stern land, are common, and always the people seem steeled to meet them. And so in silence they led the way into the cabin, and in silence they sat, uttering no word, while Skipper Ed related what had happened. And though still there was no crying and no wailing from the stricken couple, Skipper Ed knew that they felt no less keenly their loss, and he knew that they had lost what was dearer to them than their own life.

"And now," said Skipper Ed, when he was through, "I will unharness the dogs and take care of the things on the komatik."

"Yes," said Abel, "we will look after the dogs. You will stop with us tonight, for your igloosuak (cabin) is cold."

And when they had cared for the dogs and had eaten the supper which Mrs. Abel prepared, Abel Zachariah took his Eskimo Bible from the shelf and read from it, and then they sang a hymn, and when the three knelt in evening devotion he thanked God for the son He had sent them out of the mists from the Far Beyond where storms are born, and had seen fit to call back again into the mists, for the son had been a good son and had made brighter and happier many years of their life. It was God's will, and God's will was law, and it was not for them to question the righteousness of His acts.

And that night when Mrs. Abel turned down the blankets on Bobby's bed for Skipper Ed, she thought of the time when Bobby was little, and she lay by his side of evenings to croon him to sleep with her quaint Eskimo lullabies.



CHAPTER XXIV

UNDER THE DRIFTING SNOW

Bobby and Jimmy heard the ominous booming that accompanied the parting of the floe from the land ice, and they whipped the dogs to the utmost exertion of which the animals were capable, but they had dallied too long, and when they reached the rapidly widening chasm it was plain that retreat was hopelessly cut off.

"We can swim it! We can swim!" shouted Jimmy, and but for the restraining hand of Bobby he would have plunged into the water and made the mad attempt, so soon forgetful was he of his recent experience.

"You'd freeze! You'd freeze! We couldn't swim in this cold!" Bobby protested.

"I think we could have made it!" declared Jimmy, when Bobby let go his arm.

"You know how the water treated us the other day, Jimmy," said Bobby quietly. "We never could swim it. The cold would paralyze us before we got half way across."

"But now we're sure to perish!" Jimmy exclaimed. "We'll be carried to sea, and the ice will break up, and there'll be no chance for us at all. We'd have had at least a chance if we'd tried! Now our last chance is gone!"

"There wouldn't have been a chance if we'd tried to swim," Bobby protested. "Here there is some sort of a chance. The ice may not break up, and it may drift back so that we can get ashore, and if it holds together long enough some vessel may pick us up. Anyhow we're here, and we've got to make the best of it."

"There's Partner!" broke in Jimmy. "Poor old Partner! See him out there? I wonder what he'll do."

And then they shouted to Skipper Ed, and again and again they shouted, but the wind blew their shouts back into their teeth and Skipper Ed did not hear them, and at last he faded away, and the land ice faded away in the cloud of drifting snow.

"There's going to be a hard blow, and we'll have to find a place to build our igloo," Bobby at length suggested.

"Yes," agreed Jimmy. "I'm glad we've got the snow knives and the lamp. If it comes to blow hard we'd perish in the open."

"And I'm glad we've got these seals, and some tea and biscuits," added Bobby. "I'm famishing. We'll have to get back among the hummocks to find a drift for the igloo. Our old igloo, I suppose, has been washed away before this. Anyway, it's too near the surf to be safe."

"I'm afraid there's no drift, except among the big hummocks on the other side, that's big enough for an igloo" suggested Jimmy disconsolately, "and I think you're right about it being too near open water out there to be safe, for if the ice breaks it'll break there first."

"Yes, but we may find something toward the center," agreed Bobby, as he took up the whip and turned the dogs about. "We've got to make some kind of shelter."

And so they made their way back among the pressure hummocks, and, compelling the dogs to lie down, each with a snow knife began his search for a suitable snow drift upon which to build an igloo.

The fury of the storm increased with every moment. It drifted past and around them in dense and stifling clouds and at times nearly choked them. The wind shrieked and moaned among the hummocks. In the distance they could hear the boom of the seas hammering upon the floe and threatening it with destruction, and now with growing frequency rising above the sound of shrieking wind and booming seas they were startled by the cannon-like report of smashing ice.

At last the flying snow become so dense there was danger they would lose the komatik and lose each other, and they came together again, groping their way blindly to the komatik, which was nearly hidden under the drift, and the sleeping dogs, which by this time were wholly invisible.

"The snow is too soft," Bobby announced. "I've tried it everywhere, and every block that I cut falls to pieces."

"I couldn't find any, either," said Jimmy, "but we've got to do something. We'll perish without shelter."

"I'm afraid there's no use trying to build an igloo," acknowledged Bobby, "though we needn't perish if we can't make one. But I don't want to give up yet. Let's try just a little longer, but we must keep as close to the komatik as we can, or we'll get separated."

"We can't live through the night without an igloo!" Jimmy again declared, adding wistfully: "I wonder if our old igloo isn't all right yet, after all? It sat a little back, you know, from the water."

"It wouldn't be safe," Bobby protested. "If it hasn't gone already, it will soon in this blow, for the sea is eating away the ice floe on all sides. Don't worry, Jimmy. We'll make out, igloo or no igloo. Look at the dogs. They don't have igloos ever. But I'm weak with hunger. I've got to eat a biscuit before I do another thing."

Together they dug away the snow and found the food bag, and from it extracted some sea biscuits, and each cut for himself a thick piece of the boiled fat pork, frozen as hard as pork will freeze, but nevertheless very palatable to the famished young castaways. And crouching close together under the lee of the komatik they munched in silence.

"If it wasn't for these big hummocks we'd be blown clear off the ice," said Bobby, finally. "We've no idea how strong the wind is and how it sweeps over the level ice out there. The dogs are wise to get under the drift so soon."

They again fell into silence for a little while, when Jimmy remarked, sadly:

"We'll never see home again, I suppose! There's no hope that I can see of getting off this floe. I wonder what it will be like to die."

"I'm not thinking about dying," said Bobby, "and I'm not going to die till I have to. It's the last thing I expect to do. I'm thinking about getting a shelter made before it gets dark, and then keeping alive on here, and as comfortable as we can, until we get ashore."

"I don't see how we're ever going to get ashore," Jimmy solemnly insisted. "Not that I feel scared, though I'd rather live than die. But it's an awful thing to feel that our bodies will be lost in the sea, and no one will know how we die."

"If we have to die the sea is as good a place as any to die in, and what difference does it make about our bodies? But," added Bobby, "we won't die if I can help it, and I don't believe we're going to. If we do, why that's the way the Almighty planned it for us, and we shouldn't mind, for what the Almighty plans is right. He knows what is best for us."

"I can't believe just that," said Jimmy. "If we'd hurried we wouldn't have been caught in this trap. It was our fault. I'm not blaming you, Bobby. I'm older than you and should have thought further and told you to hurry, so I'm most to blame. And I can't help worrying about Partner and Abel and Mrs. Zachariah, and how they'll feel and what they'll do."

"What's the use of worry? You always get worrying and stewing, Jimmy, and you know it doesn't help things any and makes you miserable, and there's never been a time yet when it didn't turn out in the end that there never was anything to really worry about, after all. If you keep on you'll get yourself scared. Now quit it. I was more at fault for getting us into the scrape than you were, and you know that too, and if you keep up this sort of talk I'll feel you're trying to rub it in."

"Well, perhaps you're right," Jimmy admitted, and after a moment's silence suggested, as they rose to continue their efforts to make a shelter: "Bobby—let's ask God to take care of us."

"Yes," agreed Bobby enthusiastically, "let's do; and then let's do our best to take care of ourselves, and help Him."

They sank on their knees in the snow, and each in silence offered his own fervent prayer, while the wind drove the thick snow about them and shrieked and moaned weirdly through the hummocks, and the distant booming of the seas, and thunderous smashing of the ice on the outer edge of the floe, fell upon their ears with solemn, ominous foreboding.

"Now I'm going to look again for hard snow," said Bobby, when they rose presently. "You better keep close to the komatik, Jimmy, so we won't lose it. I won't go far, and if I find snow that will cut I'll holler, and if I lose the direction I'll holler, and then you answer."

And taking his snow knife Bobby was swallowed up by the swirling snow, and Jimmy waited and waited, in dreadful loneliness and suspense, while the minutes stretched out, and at last dusk began to steal upon his stormswept world.

Many times Jimmy shouted, but no answering shout from Bobby came to him, and now he shouted and listened, and shouted and listened, but only the shrieking and moaning of the wind, and booming and thundering of breaking seas and pounding ice gave answer.

A sickening dread came into Jimmy's heart as vainly he peered through the gathering darkness into ever thickening snow clouds, and called and shouted until he was hoarse.

He could not see the dogs now—he could hardly see the length of the komatik. The dogs lay quiet under their blanket of snow somewhere ahead in the gloom. Jimmy, though he had wrapped a caribou skin around his shoulders, was becoming numb with cold.

Growing desperate at last, he set out to search for Bobby, but did not go far when he realized that it would be a hopeless search, and that it was after all his duty to remain with the sledge. Then he turned back to find the sledge and stumbled and groped around in the snow for a long while before he fell upon it by sheer accident.

With darkness the velocity of the storm increased, constantly gathering force. The bitter cold cut through Jimmy's sealskin clothing and through the caribou skin which he had again wrapped around him, and his flesh felt numb, and a heavy drowsiness was stealing upon him which it was hard to resist. He knew that to surrender to this in his exposed position would be fatal, and he rose to his feet and jumped up and down to restore circulation.

Any further attempt to find Bobby, he realized, would be foolhardy if not suicidal. His previous effort had proved this, and now he felt quite helpless. He was also very certain that Bobby could not by any possibility, if he still survived, find his way back to the komatik until the storm abated. He would have lost the komatik himself now had he wandered even a dozen feet from it.

And then he comforted himself with the thought that Bobby had learned many things from Abel concerning the manner in which the Eskimos on the open barrens and ice fields protect themselves when suddenly overtaken by storms such as the one that now raged. In these matters, indeed, he looked upon Bobby as an Eskimo, and had great confidence in Bobby's ability to overcome conditions that to himself would seem unconquerable.

He knew, too, that Bobby, when hunting with Abel upon the barrens, had weathered some terrific storms. These were experiences which he himself had never encountered, for he and Skipper Ed during their winter months on the trapping trails clung more closely to the forests, where they were protected from sweeping gales and could always find firewood in abundance, and could build a temporary shelter.

And pondering these things as he sat huddled upon the sledge, his hope that Bobby might after all be safe grew, and he felt a sense of vast relief steal over him. He was not so cold now, his brain was heavy with sleep and he began to doze.

Suddenly he again realized his own danger were he to submit to the sleep which the cold was urging upon him, and he sprang to his feet and jumped and jumped and shouted and swung his arms, until he could feel the blood tingling through his veins, and his brain awake.

"I must do something!" said he. "I must do something! Bobby is lost out there and I can't help him, and I can't stand this much longer. I must do something for myself or I'll perish before morning."

Then he remembered the dogs, lying deep and snug under the drifts, and what Bobby had said about them, and with feverish haste he drew his snow knife and cut away the drift which now all but covered the komatik. Then he took his sleeping bag from the load, and, digging deeper down and down into the drift, stretched the bag into the hole he had made, and slid into it, and in a little while the snow covered him, and he like the dogs lay buried beneath the drift.



CHAPTER XXV

A LONELY JOURNEY

Weary as Jimmy was, he lay awake for a long time, torn by emotions and filled with misgivings and wild imaginings. Would he ever see good old Partner again? Would he ever see the cozy cabin that had been his home through all these happy years? Would he ever again sit, snug in his big arm chair before the big box stove with its roaring fire, while Skipper Ed helped him with his studies or told him stories of the far-off fairy land of civilization?

Then for a time he fell to thinking about Bobby, and, in his old way, to worrying, and to wondering if, after all, he could not or should not make one more attempt to rescue his comrade.

"I never should have let him go that last time," he moaned. "If he perishes it will be my fault! I'm older and I should have thought further! I should have kept him back! But I'm so in the habit of letting him go ahead! Oh, I should have held him back! I should have held him back!"

And in this soliloquy Jimmy unconsciously admitted, though he did not know it, that Bobby was his leader still, as he always had been, and that Bobby's will and judgment dominated. Bobby had decided to go upon that last attempt to find snow suitable for an igloo, and Bobby went, and Jimmy could no more successfully have interposed his judgment against Bobby's than he could have stopped the blowing of the wind.

"No," he admitted to himself at last, "I could not have done anything more to find Bobby. In this terrible storm I would have perished, for it is physically impossible to move about."

And so presently Jimmy, easing his conscience, permitted his better judgment to prevail, though once he had been upon the point of digging out of his retreat and throwing himself again into the maelstrom of suffocating snow and darkness. And then he prayed the good Lord to preserve Bobby's life and his own, and to guide them back to safety, as only He could, for they were in His care.

Even under the snowdrift that had quickly covered him Jimmy could hear the shrieking wind and thunderous pounding of ice and seas, and there was little wonder that at last he fancied the floe rising and falling beneath him, and he lay in momentary expectation of being cast into the water and crushed beneath mighty ice pans.

But Jimmy was young, and nature's demands were strong upon him, and presently, snug under his accumulating blanket of snow, a drowsy warmth stole over him, and he slept.

How long he had been sleeping Jimmy did not know, when he awoke from a dream that he and Skipper Ed and Bobby were in a snow Igloo and the top had fallen in and was suffocating him with its weight. For a moment, until he marshaled his wandering wits, he believed it no dream at all, but a reality, and then as the happenings of the previous afternoon and night were remembered, he realized his position, and Bobby's going, and he began wildly digging away the snow with his hands.

It was a hard task, but at last he made an opening through the drift, and was astonished as he forced his way out to find that it was broad day and the sun shone brightly and a dead calm prevailed.

But a wild terror came upon him as he looked about. Less than fifty feet from the place where he had lain waves were breaking over the edge of the ice. On the opposite side and very close to him lay the land, and the ice upon which he stood was jammed against the land ice, offering him a clear road to safety.

But safety now meant nothing to Jimmy. The main ice pack from which his little section had broken, lay glimmering in the sunlight a full two miles to the southeast and well out to sea, and Bobby was either on that pack or had been lost in the sea. The discovery made Jimmy numb with fear and consternation.

He recognized the land near him as the farthermost point of Cape Harrigan. The pack in its southward drift had come in contact with Cape Harrigan's long projection of land, the wind had severed the pack, and, while the comparatively small section of floe upon which he stood had remained jammed against the land, the main floe, reaching far out beyond the obstruction of the cape, had been swept on and on, and was now floating steadily southward.

In frantic frenzy Jimmy ran about and shouted, and searched every nook and turn of his little corner of the original floe for Bobby, but there was no trace of his missing comrade. Again and again he searched, but without reward. Bobby was gone and Jimmy no longer had any doubt that he had perished.

With heavy heart he at last set about with his snow knife, digging the komatik from under the drift and getting his load in order, and then he roused the dogs from their drifts and drove them to the land. The great floe was now but a speck upon the far horizon.

There was nothing more he could do. He felt very much as Skipper Ed had felt the day before, and was feeling that very morning, and he remembered, and repeated over and over again, what Skipper Ed had so often said: "Our destiny is in God's hands, and our destiny is His will."

Jimmy's travels had carried him south nearly to Cape Harrigan on two or three occasions when he had been with Skipper Ed in their trap boat in summer, and he knew that he could not be above two days' journey from the head of Abel's Bay, for now it was March and the days were growing long. And between Cape Harrigan and Abel's Bay was a Hudson's Bay trading post where he and Skipper Ed sometimes traded furs and salt trout for flour and pork and tea, and beyond this point he knew the sledge route well.

So, as there was nothing else to be done, he turned the dog team northward, in the hope that he might find the trading post and the old familiar trail.

The weather was keen, the air was filled with floating rime, which shimmered and sparkled in the sunshine, and Jimmy's garments were covered with it, but, plodding disconsolately on and on, his heart heavy with the tragedy and his thoughts filled with Bobby and the happy years of comradeship that were ended, he did not feel or heed the cold or dazzling glitter of the snow, until in mid-afternoon his eyes began to trouble him, and he realized that snow-blindness was threatening.

Presently, however, the long, wolf-like howl of dogs came down to him over the ice, and rounding a point of land he discovered, directly ahead of him, and nestling at the foot of a great barren hill, the white buildings of the fort. His dogs immediately broke into a run, and a few moments later he was safe at the post.

The factor and the people were very hospitable and kind to Jimmy, after the manner of the Coast. They agreed that he had left nothing undone that he could have done. The tragedy was, after all, an incident of life, and all in a day's work, and to some extent they reconciled him with himself, but they could not ease his sorrow.

They would not permit Jimmy to proceed further that night, though at first he protested that he must, that he might so much the sooner ease Skipper Ed's anxiety, so far as his own safety was concerned. But the preceding twenty-four hours had tried his physical powers, and when he entered the heated post kitchen his eyes became so inflamed that he consented to stay.

The dogs, which had not received their daily portion the previous evening, were ravenous, and when they were fed Jimmy stretched his sleeping bag upon the floor in the kitchen and slipped into it, and almost immediately fell into deep slumber.

A mild attack of snow blindness held Jimmy prisoner all the next day. This was exceedingly disappointing. Bright and early the following morning, however, wearing a pair of smoked goggles to protect his eyes from the daily increasing sun glare, he set out for home, and only halted for a little at the cabin of Abraham Moses, the nearest neighbor of Skipper Ed and Abel Zachariah, where he must needs stop for tea and bread, else Abraham would feel offended.

It was near sunset when he arrived again at Abel Zachariah's. They met him as they had met Skipper Ed, and welcomed him warmly, and when they heard his story of Bobby's disappearance they had no blame for him and no complaint, but said again that God had sent them Bobby, and God had called him back again, and God knew best, for He was good. And then Jimmy left them and hurried eagerly on to the cabin home that so recently had seemed lost to him forever. How good it looked that cold winter evening, and when he quietly pushed the door open and silently entered, and surprised Skipper Ed with his coming, and when Skipper Ed clasped him in his arms and thanked God over and over again for sparing his partner, Jimmy sank down in his chair and cried.



CHAPTER XXVI

CAST AWAY ON THE ICE

It was one of Bobby's characteristics never to acknowledge himself defeated in anything he undertook to do, so long as there seemed a possibility of accomplishing the thing in hand. He had set out to find a suitable drift and to build a snow house. He was confident such a drift was to be found not far from the komatik where he had left Jimmy, for in passing to Itigailit Island and back with loads of seals earlier in the day he had observed some good hard drifts which he believed to be in this locality, though he was aware that in the blinding snow he may have stopped the dogs a little on one side or the other of them. So he felt assured that he and Jimmy had overlooked them in their previous search, and this time he was determined to find them.

This it was, then—this dislike to feel himself beaten—rather than dire necessity, that had sent him on the final search. And, too, the man who lives constantly in the wilderness never endures unnecessary hardships. He makes himself as comfortable as the conditions under which he lives will permit, and provides himself as many conveniences and comforts as possible under the circumstances in which he finds himself, without burdening himself with needless luxuries.

Bobby had hinted to Jimmy that they might protect themselves under the snow, after the manner of the dogs. He had done this once during the winter, when he and Abel Zachariah were hunting together and were suddenly overtaken by a storm. But at best this was an uncomfortable method of passing a night, and a last resort, and Bobby was therefore quite willing to endure preliminary discomfort in order to secure an igloo.

Engrossed in his search he wandered much farther afield than he had intended, and much farther than he knew, which was a reckless thing to do. And so it came about that presently, when his search was rewarded by a solid drift of hard-packed snow, and he shouted to Jimmy to come on with the dogs, no answer came from Jimmy, and Bobby, endeavoring to locate himself, became quite confused and uncertain as to the direction in which Jimmy and the komatik lay, for his course had been a winding course, in and out among the hummocks, and in the blinding, swirling snow he could never see a dozen feet from where he stood.

Then he shouted again and listened intently, and again and again, but only the roar and boom of sea and pounding ice and the shrieking and weird moaning of the wind gave answer.

"Well, I've lost Jimmy, sure enough," he acknowledged to himself at last, after much futile shouting, "and I'm lost myself, too! I don't know north from south, and I couldn't hit in ten guesses in which direction the komatik is! This is a pretty mess!"

Dusk was not far off, and there was no time to be lost, and without further parley or useless waste of breath and strength Bobby set bravely to work with his snow knife, as any wilderness dweller in similar case would have done, and in a little while had prepared for himself a grave-shaped cavern in the drift, with a stout roof of snow blocks, and when it was finished he crawled in and closed the entrance with a huge block.

This emergency shelter was, of course, not to be compared with a properly built igloo, but an igloo he could scarcely have built in the face of the storm without assistance. It was, however, much more comfortable than a burrow in the drift, such as Jimmy had made, for it gave him an opportunity to turn over and stretch his limbs, and it afforded him, also, a considerable breathing space.

"'Twould be fine, now, if I only had my sleeping bag," he soliloquized, when he had at last composed himself in his improvised shelter. "I hope Jimmy's just as snug. I told him about getting in the snow like the dogs do, and he'll do it and be all right, and he's got his sleeping bag, too."

Bobby was not given to vain regrets and needless worry, as we have seen, but nevertheless he could not keep his mind from the possible fate of himself and Jimmy, and think as he would he could conceive of no possible means of their escape, save in the possibility of the floe coming again in contact with land. Then his thoughts ran to Abel and Mrs. Abel, and before he was aware of it he was crying bitterly.

"If I'd only hurried on, as Skipper Ed told me to!" he moaned. "I'm always doing something! And there's Jimmy in the—in the fix too! And it was all my fault!"

And then he remembered the evening devotions that Abel and Mrs. Abel were doubtless then holding in the cabin. He could see Abel taking the old worn Eskimo Bible and hymnal from the shelf, and Abel reading and the two good folks singing a hymn, and then kneeling in praise and thanks to God for his mercies. And joining them in spirit he sang the Eskimo version of "Nearer My God to Thee," and then he knelt and prayed, and felt the better for it.

For a long while he lay, after his devotions were ended, recalling the kindness of his beloved foster parents. But at last he, too, like Jimmy, fell asleep to the tune of the booming ice and howling wind, and, exhausted with his day's work, he slept long and heavily.

When Bobby awoke at last he perceived that it was twilight in his snow cavern, and, listening for the wind, discovered to his satisfaction that it had ceased to blow.

"Now I'll find Jimmy," said he, seizing his snow knife, "and see how he spent the night in the storm."

He removed the snow block from the entrance and cut away the accumulated drift, and crawling out at once looked about him with astonished eyes. On one side very near where he had been sleeping waves were breaking upon the ice, and far away beyond the waters lay the bleak and naked headland of Cape Harrigan. In the east the sun was just rising, and the snow of the ice pack sparkled and glittered with wondrous beauty.