Chapter 27

A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

It was fortunate that Bobby had selected the center of the floe for his night shelter, for when he awoke in the morning and crawled out of his snow cavern he discovered that the unstable shore ice of which the floe was composed had been gradually breaking up during the night into separate pans, and that he was now upon a comparatively small floe, little more indeed than a large pan, which had originally been the center of the great floe upon which he went adrift.

Surrounding him was a mass of loose pans, rising and falling on the swell, and grinding and crunching against one another with a voice of ominous warning. With quick appreciation he was aware that his position was now indeed a perilous one, for it was obvious that his small remnant of floe was rapidly going to pieces.

But another and more sinister danger threatened him, should he escape drowning. Bobby was ravenously hungry. He had eaten nothing since the hasty luncheon of sea biscuit and pork on the night he and Jimmy parted. He had been terribly hungry the day before, but now he was ravenous and he felt gaunt and weak. As though to tantalize him, numerous seals lay sunning themselves upon the ice pans, for it was now past sunrise, but his only weapon was his snow knife, and he was well aware that the seals would slip into the water and beyond his reach before he could approach and despatch them.

Looking away over the mass of moving ice he discovered to his delight that the loose pans surrounding the little floe upon which he stood reached out in a continuous field to the great Arctic pack which he had watched so anxiously the previous day. And, what was particularly to his satisfaction, the pans were so closely massed together that by jumping from pan to pan he was quite certain he could make the passage safely, and for a time at least be secure from the threatening sea.

Running over loose ice pans in this manner was not wholly new to Bobby. Every hunter in the Eskimo country learns to do it, and Bobby had often practiced it in Abel's Bay when the water was calm and the ice pans to a great extent stationary. But he had never attempted it on the open sea where the pans were never free from motion. It was, therefore, though not an unusual feat for the experienced seal hunter, a hazardous undertaking.

The situation, however, demanded prompt action. Should wind arise the ice pans would quickly be scattered, and all possibility of retreat to the big ice field cut off.

Bobby, after his manner, not only decided quickly what to do, but acted immediately upon his decision. The distance to be traversed was probably not much above a mile, and, selecting a course where the pans appeared closely in contact with one another, he seized his snow knife, which he had no doubt he would still find useful in preparing shelters, and leaping from pan to pan set out without hesitation upon his uncertain journey.

It was a feat that required a steady nerve, a quick eye, and alert action, for the ice was constantly rising and falling upon the swell. Now and again there were gaps of several yards, where the ice had been ground into pieces so small that none would have borne his weight. He ran rapidly over these gaps, touching the ice as lightly as possible and not remaining upon any piece long enough to permit it to sink.

And so it came about that presently with a vast sense of relief Bobby clambered from the last unstable ice pan to the big ice pack, and for a time, at least, felt that he had escaped the sea.

For a moment he stood and looked back over the hazardous path that he had traversed. Then climbing upon a high hummock, which attained the proportions of a small berg, he scanned his surroundings.

To the northward lay the loose ice; to the eastward and southward as far as he could see stretched the unbroken ice of the great field; to the westward and two miles distant was the black water of the open sea, dotted here and there by vagrant pans of ice which glistened white in the bright sunlight as they rose and fell upon the tide.

Suddenly his attention was attracted to something which made him stare in astonishment and wonder. Near the water's edge, and extending back from the water for a considerable distance, there appeared innumerable dark objects, some lying quiet upon the ice, others moving slowly about.

"Seals!" exclaimed Bobby. "Seals! Hundreds--thousands of them! I can get one now before they take to the water! They're too far back to get to the water before I can get at them!"

And scrambling down from the hummock he set out as fast as he could go, highly excited at the prospect of food that had so suddenly come to him.

"Oh, if I can get one!" he said as he ran, "if I can only get one! God help me to get one!"

With this prayer on his lips, and keen anxiety in his breast, he neared the seals. Then, all of his hunter's instincts alert, his advance became slow and cautious. Crouching among hummocks, he watched his prey, and studied the intervening ice, and its possible sheltering hummocks. Carefully he stalked, now standing still as a statue, now darting forward, and at last proceeding on all fours until finally he was quite certain that those farthest from the water could not escape him. Then springing to his feet he ran at them.

Bobby had until now kept his nerves under control, but with the attack a wild desperation took possession of him, and looking neither to one side nor the other he slaughtered the seals, one after another, as he overtook them, until, the first frenzy of success past, he realized that he had already killed more than he could probably use. Then he stopped, trembling with excitement, and looked about him. Five victims of the two species known to him as harp and jar seals had fallen under his knife.

Now he could eat. This thought brought relaxation from the great physical strain and mental anxiety that had spurred him to activity and keyed his nerves to a high pitch since leaving his snow cavern early in the morning, and with the relaxation he was overcome by emotion. Tears sprang to his eyes, and suddenly he felt very weak.

"The Lord surely has been taking care of me. Maybe it is my destiny to live, after all, and if I get out of this I'll never forget 'twas the Lord took me through."

Bobby's undivided attention until this time had been centered upon the seals which he had attacked, which were among those farthest from the open water. Now as he dried his eyes and, still trembling from effort and excitement, drew his sheath knife to dress the animals, he looked about him, and what he saw brought forth an exclamation:

"Puppies! That's what all the seals are here for!"

And, sure enough, lying about on the ice were a great number of little white balls, so small and white they had escaped his notice at a distance, and each white ball was a new-born seal. That, then, was why old seals were so numerous and so fearless.

But Bobby had no time to think about this. Hunger was crying to be satisfied, and now that food was at hand he was hungrier than ever. As quickly as he could he dressed one of the seals, and as he had no means of cooking the meat made a satisfactory meal upon the raw flesh and blubber, after the manner of Eskimos.

This done he looked about him for a suitable place to build a shelter, and finding a good drift not far away set about his building with greater care than on the night before, and before noon time had a small but well-fashioned _igloo_ erected with a tunnel leading to the entrance that he might better be protected from the wind.

He now skinned and dressed the remaining seals, and spreading the skins for a bed on his _igloo_ floor felt himself very comfortably situated under the circumstances.

"Now," said he, surveying his work, "if I only had a lamp and a kettle I could get on all right till the ice drives ashore or I'm picked up or the pack goes to pieces and I won't need to get along any more."

But this last thought he quickly put from him with the exclamation: "That's silly! I won't worry now till I have to. I'll just do my best for myself, and if the Lord wants me to live He'll show me how to save myself, or He'll save me."

Then Bobby sat down to think. The pieces of ice which he melted in his mouth in lieu of water he was convinced had a weakening effect upon him, and his mouth was becoming tender and sore from sucking them, and he preferred his meat cooked. He had plenty of matches in his pocket, for the man who lives always in the wilderness is never without a good supply, but since he had gone adrift they had been of no use to him, without means or method of making a fire.

"I've got it!" said he at last, springing up. "I'm sure it will work!"

Opening the jackknife he cut from one of the skins a large circular piece, and at regular intervals near the edge of this made small slits. Then from the edge of a skin he cut a long, narrow thong, and proceeded to thread it through the slits. This done he tightened the thong, puckering the edge of the circular piece of skin until it assumed the form of a shallow bowl perhaps fifteen inches wide. This he set into a snow block in order that it might set firm and retain its shape. This was to be his Eskimo lamp.

Now he tore a strip from his shirt, folded it to proper size, filled his lamp with oil from the blubber, drove the point of his snow knife into the side of his _igloo_ in such manner that the side rested in a flat position on the top of the bowl, and saturating the cloth with the oil he arranged it upon the knife, taking care that it did not touch either side of the bowl. This he lighted, and to his great delight found that his lamp was a success.

It was easy to grill small pieces of seal meat over this, but the problem of melting ice for water was a puzzling one. Finally this, too, was solved, by improvising another bowl from sealskin and suspending over it a piece of ice. This bowl he held as near as possible to the flame without putting it in danger of scorching the skin. The ice, suspended by a thong directly above the bowl and a little on one side of the flame, began at once to drip water into the bowl. The water resulting was very oily and unclean, but Bobby in his position had neither a discriminating taste nor a discriminating appetite.

"Well," said Bobby that evening when he had settled himself comfortably after a good meal of grilled meat, "this isn't as comfortable as home, but it's away ahead of raw meat and ice, and no _igloo_ at all. And it's safe for a while, anyhow."

And so our young adventurer took up his lonely life upon the shifting ice, and day after day he watched the baby seals grow, and wondered at it, for each morning they were visibly larger than they had been the previous night. And he wondered, too, that each mother should know her own little one, by merely sniffing about, for the babies, or "white coats" as he called them, were as like as peas.

Thus he had lived ten lonely days, and sometimes he believed God had forgotten him, when one morning a black streak appeared in the sky and then another and another, and something wonderful happened, for God had not forgotten Bobby and was guiding his destiny.