by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER XXII
A STORM AND A CATASTROPHE
True to his promise, Bobby was up the next morning bright and early, andawoke Skipper Ed as he moved about, lighting the lamp and hanging thekettle of snow to melt for tea, and the kettle containing cooked sealmeat, to thaw, for it had frozen hard in the night. Then, while hewaited for these to heat, he crawled back into his sleeping bag.
"How are you feeling after your Arctic dip?" inquired Skipper Ed.
"As fine as could be!" answered Bobby. "My fingers were nipped a little,and they're a bit numb. That's the only way I'd know, from the way Ifeel, that I'd been in the water."
"You're a regular tough young husky!" declared Skipper Ed. "But it was anarrow escape, and we can thank God for the deliverance of you twochaps. You mustn't take those risks again. It's tempting Providence."
"Why, I didn't think we were careless," said Bobby. "It was the sort ofthing that is always likely to happen."
Jimmy lifted his head.
"Hello!" drowsily. "Is it time to get up? I've been sleeping like astone."
"It isn't time for you to get up," cautioned Skipper Ed. "You stay rightwhere you are today."
"I'm all right, Partner!" Jimmy declared.
"Well, you've got to demonstrate it. We don't want any pneumonia caseson our hands. Just draw some long breaths, and punch yourself, and seehow you feel."
"I feel fine," insisted Jimmy, after some deep breaths and severalself-inflicted punches. "It doesn't hurt a bit to breathe, and I don'tfeel lame anywhere. The only place I feel bad is in my stomach, andthat's just shouting for grub."
"Very well," laughed Skipper Ed, "that kind of an ache we can cure withboiled seal and hardtack."
And so, indeed, it proved. Their hardihood, brought about by a life ofexposure to the elements, and their constitutions, made strong as ironby life and experience in the open, withstood the shock, and, none theworse for their experience, and passing it by as an incident of theday's work, they resumed the hunt with Skipper Ed.
All of that day and the next, which was Thursday, they hunted with greatsuccess, and when Thursday night came more than half a hundred fatseals, among which were three great bearded seals--"square flippers,"they called them--lay upon the ice as their reward. They were wellpleased. Indeed, they could scarcely have done better had Abel Zachariahbeen with them.
"Tomorrow will be Friday, and we had better haul our seals to ItigailitIsland to the cache," Skipper Ed suggested that evening as they sat snugin the _igloo_, eating their supper. "We have all we can care for."
"I hate to leave with all these seals about, but I suppose we'll have togo some time," said Bobby regretfully.
"Yes, and I'm wondering what I'll find in my traps when we get home,"said Jimmy.
"You may have a silver fox, Partner," laughed Skipper Ed.
"I've been looking for one every round I've made this winter," Jimmygrinned.
"That's the way with every hunter," said Skipper Ed. "He's alwayslooking for a silver, and it makes him the keener for the work, anddrives away monotony. He's always expecting a silver, though year in andyear out he gets nothing but reds and whites, with now and again across, to make him think that his silver is prowling around somewhereclose by."
"I'd feel rich if I ever caught a silver!" broke in Bobby. "And wouldn'tI get some things for Father and Mother, though! A new rifle and shotgunand traps, and--loads of things!"
"So you're looking for a silver, too," said Skipper Ed, all of themlaughing heartily. "That's the way it goes--everyone is looking for asilver fox, and that keeps everyone always hopeful and gives vim forlabor. When they don't have silvers or don't hunt and trap, they'relooking for something else that takes the place of a silver--some greatsuccess. It's ambition to catch silvers, and the hope of catching them,that makes the world go round."
"Well, I never got one yet," said Bobby, "and there's one due me bythis time. Every one gets a silver some time in his life."
"Not every one," corrected Skipper Ed. "Well, shall we haul the sealsover in the morning, and then go home to see if we've got any silvers inthe traps?"
"I suppose so," agreed Bobby, regretfully. "It's hard to leave this finehunting, but I suppose there'll be good hunting till the ice goes out,and anyway we've got all we can use."
So with break of day on Friday they loaded their sledges, and all thatday hauled seals to their cache, and when night came and they returnedin the dark to the _sena igloo_, some seals still remained to be hauledon Saturday.
But the sun did not show himself on Saturday morning, for the sky washeavily overcast, and before they reached Itigailit Island with thefirst load of seals snow was falling and the wind was rising. Theyhurried with all their might, for it was evident a storm was about tobreak with the fury of the North, and out on the open ice field, wherethe wind rides unobstructed and unbridled, these storms reach terribleproportions.
So they pushed the dogs back to the _sena_ at the fastest gait to whichthey could urge them. Skipper Ed and Jimmy were in advance and hadSkipper Ed's _komatik_ loaded with the larger proportion of theremaining seals, and were lashing the load into place, when Bobbyarrived.
"I've got a heavier load than yours will be, so I'll go on with it,"Skipper Ed shouted as Bobby drove up. "There are only two small onesleft for you, and the cooking outfit and your snow knives in the_igloo_. Don't forget them. You and Jimmy will likely overtake me. Hurryalong."
"All right," answered Bobby. "We'll catch you before you reach smoothice."
So Skipper Ed drove away with never a thought of catastrophe, and wasquickly swallowed up by the thickening snow, while Bobby and Jimmyloaded the seals and the things from the _igloo_ upon the sledge, and,spurred by the rising wind and snow, hurried with all their might.
Already great seas were booming and breaking with a roar upon the ice,and as the boys turned the dogs back upon the trail they observed awaving motion of the ice beneath them, which was rapidly becoming moreapparent. At one moment the dogs would be hauling the sledge up anincline, and at the next moment the sledge would be coasting downanother incline close upon the heels of the team, as the heaving iceassumed the motion of the seas which rolled beneath.
As they receded from the ice edge, however, this motion diminished,until finally it was hardly perceptible at all, and there seemed nofurther cause for alarm or great speed, and the dogs, which were wearywith the two days' heavy hauling, were permitted to proceed at their ownleisurely gait.
At length through the snow they saw Skipper Ed waiting for them, butwhen he was assured they were following he proceeded.
"_Ah!_" Bobby shouted to his dogs a moment later, bringing them suddenlyto a stop. "I've dropped my whip somewhere. Jimmy, watch the team whileI run back after it."
Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned with the whip, and they droveon.
Skipper Ed, satisfied that Bobby and Jimmy were close at his heels, didnot halt again until well out over the smooth ice and near to ItigailitIsland, when he heard behind him a strange rumbling and crackling. Hehalted and listened, and strained his eyes through the drifting snowfor a glimpse of the boys. They were not visible, and, springing fromhis _komatik_, he ran back in the direction from which he had come andas fast as he could run, and presently, with a sickening sensation athis heart, was brought to a halt by a broad black space of open water.
The great ice pack upon which they had been hunting had broken loosefrom the shore ice, and tide and wind were driving it seaward. Alreadythe chasm between him and the floe had widened to over thirty feet, andit was rapidly growing wider. The minutes dragged and when at last Bobbyand Jimmy came into view on the opposite side of the chasm it was a fulltwo hundred feet in breadth. They shouted to the dogs and rushed to theedge of the open water, but there was no hope of their escape. They haddelayed too long. They were adrift on the ice floe, which was steadilytaking them seaward.