Bobby of the Labrador Part 22

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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e."

"I don't see how we're ever going to get ash.o.r.e," 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 G.o.d 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 hoa.r.s.e.

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.