"No," he admitted to himself at last, "I could not have done anything
more to find Bobby. In this terrible storm I would have perished, for it
is physically impossible to move about."
And so presently Jimmy, easing his conscience, permitted his better
judgment to prevail, though once he had been upon the point of digging
out of his retreat and throwing himself again into the maelstrom of
suffocating snow and darkness. And then he prayed the good Lord to
preserve Bobby's life and his own, and to guide them back to safety, as
only He could, for they were in His care.
Even under the snowdrift that had quickly covered him Jimmy could hear
the shrieking wind and thunderous pounding of ice and seas, and there
was little wonder that at last he fancied the floe rising and falling
beneath him, and he lay in momentary expectation of being cast into the
water and crushed beneath mighty ice pans.
But Jimmy was young, and nature's demands were strong upon him, and
presently, snug under his accumulating blanket of snow, a drowsy warmth
stole over him, and he slept.
How long he had been sleeping Jimmy did not know, when he awoke from a
dream that he and Skipper Ed and Bobby were in a snow _Igloo_ and the
top had fallen in and was suffocating him with its weight. For a moment,
until he marshaled his wandering wits, he believed it no dream at all,
but a reality, and then as the happenings of the previous afternoon and
night were remembered, he realized his position, and Bobby's going, and
he began wildly digging away the snow with his hands.
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