"_Ah!_" Bobby shouted to his dogs a moment later, bringing them suddenly
to a stop. "I've dropped my whip somewhere. Jimmy, watch the team while
I run back after it."
Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned with the whip, and they drove
on.
Skipper Ed, satisfied that Bobby and Jimmy were close at his heels, did
not halt again until well out over the smooth ice and near to Itigailit
Island, when he heard behind him a strange rumbling and crackling. He
halted and listened, and strained his eyes through the drifting snow
for a glimpse of the boys. They were not visible, and, springing from
his _komatik_, he ran back in the direction from which he had come and
as fast as he could run, and presently, with a sickening sensation at
his 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 loose
from the shore ice, and tide and wind were driving it seaward. Already
the chasm between him and the floe had widened to over thirty feet, and
it was rapidly growing wider. The minutes dragged and when at last Bobby
and Jimmy came into view on the opposite side of the chasm it was a full
two hundred feet in breadth. They shouted to the dogs and rushed to the
edge of the open water, but there was no hope of their escape. They had
delayed too long. They were adrift on the ice floe, which was steadily
taking them seaward.
CHAPTER XXIII
IT WAS GOD'S WILL
Skipper Ed was appalled and stunned.
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