“Now I’ll find Jimmy,” said he, seizing his snow knife, “and see how he spent the night in the storm.”

He removed the snow block from the entrance and cut away the accumulated drift, and crawling out at once looked about him with astonished eyes.  On one side very near where he had been sleeping waves were breaking upon the ice, and far away beyond the waters lay the bleak and naked headland of Cape Harrigan.  In the east the sun was just rising, and the snow of the ice pack sparkled and glittered with wondrous beauty.

But Bobby saw only the open water, and the distant land, and nowhere Jimmy or the dogs.  A sickening dread came into his heart.  The water had eaten away the ice as he slept!  That was the side upon which Jimmy must have been!  Jimmy was gone!  He had no doubt Jimmy’s body was now floating somewhere in that stretch of black water!

Then he ran out over the ice and among the hummocks, shouting:  “Jimmy!  Jimmy!  Answer me, Jimmy, and tell me you’re alive!  Oh, Jimmy!  Tell me you’re alive!”

But no Jimmy answered, and, overcome with grief, Bobby sat down upon the snow and threw his arms over his knees, and, pillowing his head in the crook of his elbow, wept.

“It’s all my fault!  It’s all my fault!” he moaned.  “I the same as killed him!  I led him into it!  Oh, if I hadn’t gone back for the whip!  Oh, if I’d only hurried when Skipper Ed told me to!”

But Bobby was young and healthy and active, and had an appetite, and the air was excessively cold.  The appetite began to call for food and drink, and the cold drove him to exercise.  And so, rising at last and drying his eyes, he very wisely resolved: 

“There’s no good to come from crying or mourning about Jimmy, I suppose, or what’s past.  I’ve got to do something for myself now.  There’s a chance the ice may drive back with a shift of wind, and I’ve got to try to keep alive as long as I can.”

He had nothing to eat, no cup into which to melt ice for water, and no lamp or seal oil with which to make a fire over which to melt the ice had he possessed a cup, but he set out at a rapid pace to explore the ice field, clinging as he walked to his snow knife, the only weapon he possessed, for his rifle had been left upon the komatik, and in a little while he discovered that the pack was not so large as he had supposed it to be, for the heavy seas of the night before had eaten away its edges.  It had broken away, indeed, to a point far within the boundaries of their old igloo and the place where they had hunted.

“The first little blow will break the whole floe up,” he said dejectedly.  “Anyhow I suppose it won’t matter, for I’ll soon starve to death without a gun.”

But out to the southward lay a great field of ice, and it seemed not so far away.  An hour’s observation assured Bobby that his small floe was traveling much more rapidly than this larger field, and was gradually approaching it.  Late in the afternoon he caught the glint of miniature bergs, as the sunlight touched them, rising above the great floe ahead, and as he watched them a burst of understanding came upon him.