The attack of measles this year, however, had so interfered with their fishing that their small catch had purchased from the traders scarcely enough flour and pork and tea to last them until the new year.  And so one day late in December Abel and Skipper Ed drove the two dog teams over to the Nain Mission, expecting to obtain there the supplies they needed.

“I’m sorry,” said the missionary, “but I can spare you very little—­almost nothing.  The seal hunt was a failure with the people all down north, and they are starving, and I must take care of them.  This year there are so many needy ones our stock will go only a little way.  I’ll divide it the best way I know how, but, God help the poor folk, it won’t go far, and I’m praying God to send caribou or send seals.”

“We’ll get on somehow,” said Skipper Ed.  “The timber is back of us and we’ll get rabbits and partridges, and make out.  Give the Eskimos what you have.  They’re on barren ground and don’t have the chance we have.  There’ll be better luck for us all by and by.  Better luck.”

And with only a half barrel of flour and some tea they returned to Abel’s Bay to face the winter and make their fight against nature without complaint.  For no truly brave man will complain when things go wrong in the game of life.  And up there on The Labrador the game of life is a man’s game and every man who wins must play it like a man, with faith and courage.

The weeks that followed were trying and tedious ones.  Sometimes there was not much to eat, when the hunting was poor, but they thanked God there was always something.

But when February came at last there was not food enough to render it possible for them to make the long journey to the ice edge with safety.  Living now was from hand to mouth.  Each day they must hunt for what they would eat that day.  Grouse and rabbits were the game upon which they usually relied, but Fate had cast this as one of those years when the rabbits disappear from the land as it is said they do every nine years.  Be that as it may, not one was killed that winter and not a track was seen.  For them to go to the ice without food was too great a risk.  If they went and failed to find seals and were overtaken by a storm they would perish.

This was the condition of affairs when Bobby and Jimmy set out one cold, clear morning to hunt for ptarmigans, the white grouse of the North.  Not far away was a barren hill whose top was kept clean swept of snow by the winds, and up this hill they climbed, for sometimes ptarmigans are found in places like this, feeding upon the frozen moss berries which cling to the rocks.

Bobby was in advance, and from the summit of the hill he scanned the great expanse of snow reaching away over the endless rolling country to the westward.  And looking, he discovered in the distance a dark, moving mass slowly drawing down another hillside.  For a moment he was speechless with joy, but it was for only a moment, and then he shouted: