Bobby of the Labrador by Dillon Wallace

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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.

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