Bobby of the Labrador Part 12

And so they were. Nowhere could they discover the oars, though they clambered up the iceberg again and scanned the surrounding sea.

"Well," said Bobby, "that's hard luck! I wonder if we can't make father or some one hear. Let's get up on top and yell."

From the top of the iceberg they shouted and shouted, but Mrs. Abel was in one tent, busied with her household affairs, and Skipper Ed and Abel were in the other tent, making ready their fishing gear, and the breeze blew from the land, and altogether no one heard the shouting.

"No use," said Bobby at last, descending to the skiff. "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll knock one of the seats out, split it, and make two paddles. They'll be short, but they'll do us to get ash.o.r.e. It isn't far."

"It looks as though it's the only thing to do, unless we want to stay here for three or four hours," agreed Jimmy, taking the ax and knocking out the seat. "I'm shivering cold from my wetting."

"It's lucky I hung to the ax," said Bobby, as he watched Jimmy fashioning the paddles.

"There," said Jimmy at length, "they're pretty short paddles, but we'll have to make 'em do. Let's get off of this."

But the tide was running out, and a very strong tide it proved, and the breeze from the land was stiff enough, too, had there been no opposing tide, to have made pulling against it with a good pair of oars no easy task. All this they did not realize until they had paddled beyond the shelter of the iceberg, for they had drawn the boat up upon its lee side.

They put all the energy they could muster into their effort, but the paddles were very short and very narrow, and work as they would they presently discovered that tide and wind were mastering them, and instead of progressing toward Itigailit Island they were drifting seaward.

"We can't make it!" said Jimmy at last.

"No," agreed Bobby. "We'll have to go back to the berg and wait for them to come for us."

But even that they could not accomplish. Work as they would, the paddles proved hopelessly inefficient, and after an hour's desperate effort they realized that they were nearly as far to seaward from the iceberg as the iceberg was from Itigailit Island.

"Well," said Bobby, at length, "we're in for it, and a fine fix it is."

"What are we going to do?" asked Jimmy. "We've _got_ to do something."

"I wish that I had some of that bear meat. I'm as hungry as the old bear ever was," said Bobby, irrelevantly.

"Well, so am I, but we'll be hungrier than the bear ever was, I'm thinking, if we don't do something to get to land," broke in Jimmy with some irritation. "Why, Bobby, don't you realize what it means? We've got no water and nothing to eat! We'll perish of thirst and hunger if we don't get to land! Unless a sea rises and swamps us, and then we'll drown!"

"It does look as though we were drifting to the place I came from, but it won't do any good to worry," said Bobby. "Maybe when the tide turns we can do something. The wind goes down with the sun every evening, and then with the tide in our favor maybe we can make it."

"It'll be a good hour yet before the tide turns, and two or three hours before sundown, and where'll we be then?" argued Jimmy, dejectedly. "I wish I could be like you, Bobby, and not worry over things the way I do."

"Well, just remember that we did the best we could to get out of the mess after we got into it, and if we keep on doing our best that is all we can do, and worrying won't help us any. I just feel like being thankful that you weren't killed and we're both here safe and sound, with an even chance that we'll get back home all right."

And so, paddling, drifting, sometimes silent for a long while, sometimes talking, the time pa.s.sed. The land faded upon the horizon and was lost.

Icebergs lay about them. Once they were startled by the thunderous roar of a monster berg in the distance as it toppled and turned upon its side, and later they felt its swell. Not far away a whale spouted.

Finally the sun set, and the wind died, and for a little while the heavens and icebergs and sea were marvelously and gloriously painted with crimson and purple and orange.

Then came the long gray twilight of the North, and at last the stars, and night, and darkness, with the icebergs, white, spectral, and coldly majestic, rising in silhouette against the distant sky, and the throbbing, restless sea, somber and black, around them.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW THE "GOOD AND SURE" BROUGHT TROUBLE

The two or three hours of the midsummer Labrador night were long hours for Bobby and Jimmy--the longest hours they had ever experienced. At intervals, guiding their course by the stars, they paddled, and this drove away the deadening chill that threatened to overcome them.

But at last dawn came, and with the growing light the sense of helplessness which had enveloped them during the period of darkness fell away, and to some extent Bobby's confidence, hopefulness, and buoyancy of spirits returned, and he rallied Jimmy, also, into a better frame of mind.

"Hurrah!" shouted Bobby, at length. "See there, Jimmy!"

And Jimmy, looking, saw upon the western horizon a long, gray line.

"Why, there's the land!" he exclaimed.

"Isn't it great to see it again!" said Bobby.

"Let's paddle hard, and see if we can't make it. The tide's been drifting us in, and the paddling we've done in the night has been helping."

"It didn't seem to, but it must have," agreed Jimmy, working as hard as he could with his short paddle. "The exercise kept me warm, and that's about the only good I thought it was doing, but it did help, didn't it?"

"It certainly did," agreed Bobby. "My, but I'm hungry!"

"So am I," said Jimmy. "Won't the sun feel good when it rises?"

"I wonder which way we lie from home?"

"South, of course, for that's the drift of the current. All the bergs drift south."

"Yes, but how far?"

"Oh, I don't know, but we must be some bit south of the island."

And so they calculated and chatted, while the glow grew in the eastern sky, and until the sun rose, at last, to comfort them and warm stiffened fingers and chilled bodies. But with the sun a westerly breeze also set in to r.e.t.a.r.d them, and their progress was tedious and slow.

The sh.o.r.e still lay a long way off, though a little nearer than when they first discovered it in the morning light, and Bobby had just remarked that they had gained a little, when Jimmy suddenly ceased paddling, and rising to his feet gazed eagerly to the southward.

"What is it?" asked Bobby. "What do you see?"

"A sail! A sail!" Jimmy almost shouted a moment later. "I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm certain!"

Bobby was on his feet in an instant, and the two, balancing themselves dexterously while the skiff rose and fell upon the swell, watched excitedly as the sail increased in size.

"It's a schooner!" said Jimmy.

"And it'll pick us up!" said Bobby.

"If it doesn't pa.s.s too far to windward to see us," suggested Jimmy.

"They'll be sure to see us," insisted the optimistic Bobby. "They can't pa.s.s between us and the land without seeing us."

And so it came to pa.s.s. Nearer and nearer the schooner drew, until at length her whole black hull was visible, and then Bobby and Jimmy took off their jackets and waved them and waved them, until presently men crowded at the rail of the schooner and waved in answer, and in due time, when the schooner came abreast of them, a boat was lowered, and pointed directly toward them.