CHAPTER XXVII
A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
It was fortunate that Bobby had selected the center of the floe for hisnight shelter, for when he awoke in the morning and crawled out of hissnow cavern he discovered that the unstable shore ice of which the floewas composed had been gradually breaking up during the night intoseparate pans, and that he was now upon a comparatively small floe,little more indeed than a large pan, which had originally been thecenter of the great floe upon which he went adrift.
Surrounding him was a mass of loose pans, rising and falling on theswell, and grinding and crunching against one another with a voice ofominous warning. With quick appreciation he was aware that his positionwas now indeed a perilous one, for it was obvious that his small remnantof floe was rapidly going to pieces.
But another and more sinister danger threatened him, should he escapedrowning. Bobby was ravenously hungry. He had eaten nothing since thehasty 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 andhe felt gaunt and weak. As though to tantalize him, numerous seals laysunning themselves upon the ice pans, for it was now past sunrise, buthis only weapon was his snow knife, and he was well aware that the sealswould slip into the water and beyond his reach before he could approachand despatch them.
Looking away over the mass of moving ice he discovered to his delightthat the loose pans surrounding the little floe upon which he stoodreached out in a continuous field to the great Arctic pack which he hadwatched so anxiously the previous day. And, what was particularly tohis satisfaction, the pans were so closely massed together that byjumping from pan to pan he was quite certain he could make the passagesafely, 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 oftenpracticed it in Abel's Bay when the water was calm and the ice pans to agreat extent stationary. But he had never attempted it on the open seawhere the pans were never free from motion. It was, therefore, thoughnot an unusual feat for the experienced seal hunter, a hazardousundertaking.
The situation, however, demanded prompt action. Should wind arise theice pans would quickly be scattered, and all possibility of retreat tothe big ice field cut off.
Bobby, after his manner, not only decided quickly what to do, but actedimmediately upon his decision. The distance to be traversed was probablynot much above a mile, and, selecting a course where the pans appearedclosely in contact with one another, he seized his snow knife, which hehad no doubt he would still find useful in preparing shelters, andleaping from pan to pan set out without hesitation upon his uncertainjourney.
It was a feat that required a steady nerve, a quick eye, and alertaction, for the ice was constantly rising and falling upon the swell.Now and again there were gaps of several yards, where the ice had beenground into pieces so small that none would have borne his weight. Heran rapidly over these gaps, touching the ice as lightly as possible andnot remaining upon any piece long enough to permit it to sink.
And so it came about that presently with a vast sense of relief Bobbyclambered from the last unstable ice pan to the big ice pack, and for atime, at least, felt that he had escaped the sea.
For a moment he stood and looked back over the hazardous path that hehad traversed. Then climbing upon a high hummock, which attained theproportions of a small berg, he scanned his surroundings.
To the northward lay the loose ice; to the eastward and southward asfar as he could see stretched the unbroken ice of the great field; tothe westward and two miles distant was the black water of the open sea,dotted here and there by vagrant pans of ice which glistened white inthe bright sunlight as they rose and fell upon the tide.
Suddenly his attention was attracted to something which made him starein astonishment and wonder. Near the water's edge, and extending backfrom the water for a considerable distance, there appeared innumerabledark objects, some lying quiet upon the ice, others moving slowly about.
"Seals!" exclaimed Bobby. "Seals! Hundreds--thousands of them! I can getone now before they take to the water! They're too far back to get tothe water before I can get at them!"
And scrambling down from the hummock he set out as fast as he could go,highly excited at the prospect of food that had so suddenly come to him.
"Oh, if I can get one!" he said as he ran, "if I can only get one! Godhelp me to get one!"
With this prayer on his lips, and keen anxiety in his breast, he nearedthe seals. Then, all of his hunter's instincts alert, his advance becameslow and cautious. Crouching among hummocks, he watched his prey, andstudied the intervening ice, and its possible sheltering hummocks.Carefully he stalked, now standing still as a statue, now dartingforward, and at last proceeding on all fours until finally he was quitecertain that those farthest from the water could not escape him. Thenspringing to his feet he ran at them.
Bobby had until now kept his nerves under control, but with the attack awild desperation took possession of him, and looking neither to one sidenor the other he slaughtered the seals, one after another, as heovertook them, until, the first frenzy of success past, he realized thathe had already killed more than he could probably use. Then he stopped,trembling with excitement, and looked about him. Five victims of the twospecies known to him as harp and jar seals had fallen under his knife.
Now he could eat. This thought brought relaxation from the greatphysical strain and mental anxiety that had spurred him to activity andkeyed his nerves to a high pitch since leaving his snow cavern early inthe morning, and with the relaxation he was overcome by emotion. Tearssprang to his eyes, and suddenly he felt very weak.
"The Lord surely has been taking care of me. Maybe it is my destiny tolive, after all, and if I get out of this I'll never forget 'twas theLord took me through."
Bobby's undivided attention until this time had been centered upon theseals which he had attacked, which were among those farthest from theopen water. Now as he dried his eyes and, still trembling from effortand excitement, drew his sheath knife to dress the animals, he lookedabout him, and what he saw brought forth an exclamation:
"Puppies! That's what all the seals are here for!"
And, sure enough, lying about on the ice were a great number of littlewhite balls, so small and white they had escaped his notice at adistance, and each white ball was a new-born seal. That, then, was whyold seals were so numerous and so fearless.
But Bobby had no time to think about this. Hunger was crying to besatisfied, and now that food was at hand he was hungrier than ever. Asquickly as he could he dressed one of the seals, and as he had no meansof cooking the meat made a satisfactory meal upon the raw flesh andblubber, after the manner of Eskimos.
This done he looked about him for a suitable place to build a shelter,and finding a good drift not far away set about his building withgreater care than on the night before, and before noon time had a smallbut well-fashioned _igloo_ erected with a tunnel leading to the entrancethat he might better be protected from the wind.
He now skinned and dressed the remaining seals, and spreading the skinsfor a bed on his _igloo_ floor felt himself very comfortably situatedunder the circumstances.
"Now," said he, surveying his work, "if I only had a lamp and a kettle Icould get on all right till the ice drives ashore or I'm picked up orthe pack goes to pieces and I won't need to get along any more."
But this last thought he quickly put from him with the exclamation:"That's silly! I won't worry now till I have to. I'll just do my bestfor myself, and if the Lord wants me to live He'll show me how to savemyself, or He'll save me."
Then Bobby sat down to think. The pieces of ice which he melted in hismouth in lieu of water he was convinced had a weakening effect upon him,and his mouth was becoming tender and sore from sucking them, and hepreferred his meat cooked. He had plenty of matches in his pocket, forthe man who lives always in the wilderness
is never without a goodsupply, but since he had gone adrift they had been of no use to him,without means or method of making a fire.
"I've got it!" said he at last, springing up. "I'm sure it will work!"
Opening the jackknife he cut from one of the skins a large circularpiece, and at regular intervals near the edge of this made small slits.Then from the edge of a skin he cut a long, narrow thong, and proceededto thread it through the slits. This done he tightened the thong,puckering the edge of the circular piece of skin until it assumed theform of a shallow bowl perhaps fifteen inches wide. This he set into asnow block in order that it might set firm and retain its shape. Thiswas to be his Eskimo lamp.
Now he tore a strip from his shirt, folded it to proper size, filled hislamp with oil from the blubber, drove the point of his snow knife intothe side of his _igloo_ in such manner that the side rested in a flatposition on the top of the bowl, and saturating the cloth with the oilhe arranged it upon the knife, taking care that it did not touch eitherside of the bowl. This he lighted, and to his great delight found thathis lamp was a success.
It was easy to grill small pieces of seal meat over this, but theproblem of melting ice for water was a puzzling one. Finally this, too,was solved, by improvising another bowl from sealskin and suspendingover it a piece of ice. This bowl he held as near as possible to theflame without putting it in danger of scorching the skin. The ice,suspended by a thong directly above the bowl and a little on one side ofthe flame, began at once to drip water into the bowl. The waterresulting was very oily and unclean, but Bobby in his position hadneither a discriminating taste nor a discriminating appetite.
"Well," said Bobby that evening when he had settled himself comfortablyafter a good meal of grilled meat, "this isn't as comfortable as home,but it's away ahead of raw meat and ice, and no _igloo_ at all. And it'ssafe for a while, anyhow."
And so our young adventurer took up his lonely life upon the shiftingice, and day after day he watched the baby seals grow, and wondered atit, for each morning they were visibly larger than they had been theprevious night. And he wondered, too, that each mother should know herown little one, by merely sniffing about, for the babies, or "whitecoats" as he called them, were as like as peas.
Thus he had lived ten lonely days, and sometimes he believed God hadforgotten him, when one morning a black streak appeared in the sky andthen another and another, and something wonderful happened, for God hadnot forgotten Bobby and was guiding his destiny.