But another and more sinister danger threatened him, should he escape drowning.  Bobby was ravenously hungry.  He had eaten nothing since the hasty luncheon of sea biscuit and pork on the night he and Jimmy parted.  He had been terribly hungry the day before, but now he was ravenous and he felt gaunt and weak.  As though to tantalize him, numerous seals lay sunning themselves upon the ice pans, for it was now past sunrise, but his only weapon was his snow knife, and he was well aware that the seals would slip into the water and beyond his reach before he could approach and despatch them.

Looking away over the mass of moving ice he discovered to his delight that the loose pans surrounding the little floe upon which he stood reached out in a continuous field to the great Arctic pack which he had watched so anxiously the previous day.  And, what was particularly to his satisfaction, the pans were so closely massed together that by jumping from pan to pan he was quite certain he could make the passage safely, and for a time at least be secure from the threatening sea.

Running over loose ice pans in this manner was not wholly new to Bobby.  Every hunter in the Eskimo country learns to do it, and Bobby had often practiced it in Abel’s Bay when the water was calm and the ice pans to a great extent stationary.  But he had never attempted it on the open sea where the pans were never free from motion.  It was, therefore, though not an unusual feat for the experienced seal hunter, a hazardous undertaking.

The situation, however, demanded prompt action.  Should wind arise the ice pans would quickly be scattered, and all possibility of retreat to the big ice field cut off.

Bobby, after his manner, not only decided quickly what to do, but acted immediately upon his decision.  The distance to be traversed was probably not much above a mile, and, selecting a course where the pans appeared closely in contact with one another, he seized his snow knife, which he had no doubt he would still find useful in preparing shelters, and leaping from pan to pan set out without hesitation upon his uncertain journey.

It was a feat that required a steady nerve, a quick eye, and alert action, for the ice was constantly rising and falling upon the swell.  Now and again there were gaps of several yards, where the ice had been ground into pieces so small that none would have borne his weight.  He ran rapidly over these gaps, touching the ice as lightly as possible and not remaining upon any piece long enough to permit it to sink.

And so it came about that presently with a vast sense of relief Bobby clambered from the last unstable ice pan to the big ice pack, and for a time, at least, felt that he had escaped the sea.

For a moment he stood and looked back over the hazardous path that he had traversed.  Then climbing upon a high hummock, which attained the proportions of a small berg, he scanned his surroundings.