Bobby at this age had developed into a big, husky lad.  He could drive the dog team as well as Abel.  He had already killed many seals, and he was an excellent hunter for his years.  To Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel he was a dutiful, affectionate son.  They, too, were proud of him, and looked upon him as the finest lad in the whole land, and Abel boasted that when he grew to be a man he would be the finest hunter on the coast.

It happened that early in February following Bobby’s fifteenth birthday Abel wrenched an ankle so badly that he could not go about his duties, or even hobble outside the cabin door.  The responsibility of providing for the little household, therefore, fell upon Bobby.  And Bobby, though keenly sympathetic, was nevertheless glad of an opportunity to show his prowess.

He squared his shoulders, and regardless of cold and storm set about the work, determined to prove that he was a man in the things he could accomplish, if not in years; and he succeeded so well that he won high praise from Abel.  Certainly Abel himself could not have done better with the fox trapping, which at this season was the chief employment.  Bobby kept the house, too, so well supplied with rabbits and ptarmigans, through his incessant hunting, that presently there were enough hanging frozen in the porch to last till the coming of warm weather.

One evening near the end of February Bobby announced, as he entered the cabin after giving the dogs their daily feed: 

“There’s only enough seal meat left to last the dogs a week.  I’ll have to go to the sena and kill some more.”

“You do not know how to do that kind of hunting,” objected Abel.  “It is not like hunting seals from a boat, or like spearing them through their breathing holes in the ice.  Feed the dogs only once every two days, and perhaps before the meat is gone my foot will be strong enough for me to go to the sena.”

“I was there with you last year,” Bobby insisted.  “Jimmy will go with me.  He has been to the sena with you twice, and he knows how.  We will be careful.”

And at last Abel surrendered, for he could not long deny Bobby any reasonable thing that the lad set his heart upon, and after all Bobby had proved himself a good and careful hunter; and they needed seals.

Skipper Ed had not kept dogs since the slaughter of his team in the year of famine.  He hunted and trapped more after the manner of the Indian than the Eskimo, going long journeys inland on snowshoes, and now Jimmy accompanied him.  And living quite alone, as he had during his earlier years on the coast, there was no one who could have fed or cared for dogs when Skipper Ed was absent upon these trapping expeditions.  It was therefore only during the two or three years preceding the year of famine, when Jimmy was old enough to care for them, and wished them, that he had a team.

Abel, on the other hand, after the manner of Eskimos, set his traps nearer the shore, that he might, so far as possible, make the rounds of them with dogs.