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 hoarse.

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.

He knew, too, that Bobby, when hunting with Abel upon the barrens, had weathered some terrific storms.  These were experiences which he himself had never encountered, for he and Skipper Ed during their winter months on the trapping trails clung more closely to the forests, where they were protected from sweeping gales and could always find firewood in abundance, and could build a temporary shelter.