Bobby of the Labrador by Dillon Wallace

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"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.

But Bobby saw only the open water, and the distant land, and nowhere
Jimmy or the dogs. A sickening dread came into his heart. The water had
eaten away the ice as he slept! That was the side upon which Jimmy must
have been! Jimmy was gone! He had no doubt Jimmy's body was now floating
somewhere in that stretch of black water!

Then he ran out over the ice and among the hummocks, shouting: "Jimmy!
Jimmy! Answer me, Jimmy, and tell me you're alive! Oh, Jimmy! Tell me
you're alive!"

But no Jimmy answered, and, overcome with grief, Bobby sat down upon the
snow and threw his arms over his knees, and, pillowing his head in the
crook of his elbow, wept.

"It's all my fault! It's all my fault!" he moaned. "I the same as killed
him! I led him into it! Oh, if I hadn't gone back for the whip! Oh, if
I'd only hurried when Skipper Ed told me to!"

But Bobby was young and healthy and active, and had an appetite, and the
air was excessively cold. The appetite began to call for food and drink,
and the cold drove him to exercise. And so, rising at last and drying
his eyes, he very wisely resolved:

"There's no good to come from crying or mourning about Jimmy, I suppose,
or what's past. I've got to do something for myself now. There's a
chance the ice may drive back with a shift of wind, and I've got to try
to keep alive as long as I can."

He had nothing to eat, no cup into which to melt ice for water, and no
lamp or seal oil with which to make a fire over which to melt the ice
had he possessed a cup, but he set out at a rapid pace to explore the
ice field, clinging as he walked to his snow knife, the only weapon he
possessed, for his rifle had been left upon the _komatik_, and in a
little while he discovered that the pack was not so large as he had
supposed it to be, for the heavy seas of the night before had eaten away
its edges. It had broken away, indeed, to a point far within the
boundaries of their old _igloo_ and the place where they had hunted.

"The first little blow will break the whole floe up," he said
dejectedly. "Anyhow I suppose it won't matter, for I'll soon starve to
death without a gun."

But out to the southward lay a great field of ice, and it seemed not so
far away. An hour's observation assured Bobby that his small floe was
traveling much more rapidly than this larger field, and was gradually
approaching it. Late in the afternoon he caught the glint of miniature
bergs, as the sunlight touched them, rising above the great floe ahead,
and as he watched them a burst of understanding came upon him.

"It's the great North pack!" he exclaimed. "It's the Arctic pack! If I
can get on that I'll be safe from drowning, anyhow, for a few days! It's
stronger than this, and it'll stand some good blows."

To quench his thirst he clipped particles of ice with his snow knife and
sucked them, while he ran up and down to keep warm. And, as night
approached, he built a new night shelter from snow blocks, near the
center of his floe, and, very hungry and despondent, crawled into it to
lie long and think of Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel, and the lost
happiness in the cabin which was his home; and of Skipper Ed and Jimmy,
and of the old days that were now gone forever, when he and Jimmy had
played together with never a thought of the terrible fate that awaited
them; and of the adventure on the cliff, and the hundred other scrapes
into which they had got and from which they had somehow always escaped
unharmed; and even of the lonely grave on Itigailit Island, and the
cairn of stones he had built upon it.

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