This was exciting sport—­so exciting that Bobby could not bring himself to give it up until a full two hours past noonday, and even then he would not have done so had not a rising northeast wind created a chop which made shooting from the skiff so difficult and inaccurate that it lost its interest.

Then Bobby discovered that he was possessed of a great hunger, and he ran the skiff ashore on a wooded point, and in a snug hollow in the lee of a knoll and surrounded by a grove of thick spruce trees, where he was well sheltered from the keen northeast wind, he lighted a fire, plucked and dressed one of the fifteen sea pigeons he had secured, and impaling it upon a stick proceeded to grill it for his dinner.

He was thus busily engaged when snow began to fall.  Thicker and thicker it came, but Bobby was well protected and he finished his cooking and his meal without a thought of danger or concern for his safety.  And, when he had eaten, reluctant to leave his cozy fire, he tarried still another half hour.

“Well,” said he, rising at length, “the snow’s getting thick and I’d better be pulling back.  My!  I didn’t know it was so late!  It’s getting dusk, already, and it’ll be good and dark before I get home!”

Then, to his amazement, he discovered when he emerged from his sheltered nook that the wind had risen tremendously, that the cold had visibly increased, and that the chop had developed into a considerable sea, and that the snow, too, driving before the wind, was blinding thick.

Bobby was not, however, alarmed, though he realized there was no time to be lost if he would reach home before the full force of the rising blizzard was upon him, and he chided himself for his delay.  But the old skiff was a good sea boat, and Bobby was a good sea-man, and he pulled fearlessly out upon the wind-swept waters.  And here the driving snow soon swallowed up the land, but Bobby was not afraid, and pulling with all his might turned down before the storm.

For a little while all went well, and Bobby was congratulating himself that after all he would reach home before it became too dark to see.  Then suddenly a big sea broke over his stern, and left the skiff half filled with water.  This was serious.  He could not relinquish the oars to bail out the water.  Another such deluge would smother him.

Then he realized that the seas had grown too big for him to weather, and his one hope was to make a landing.  He searched his mind for a section of the shore within his reach, sufficiently free from jagged rocks and sufficiently sheltered to offer him a safe landing, and all at once he bethought himself of the bird island where he and Jimmy had gone egging, and which he had visited many times since.

He was, fortunately, very near the island and when he heard the surf beating upon its rocky shores he determined quickly to make an effort to run upon its lee shore.  Here, he argued, he could bail the water from the skiff, and then could pull across to the mainland, where he could haul up the skiff and walk home.  It would be a disagreeable tramp in the storm, but it was his safest and his only course.