"It's the great North pack!" he exclaimed. "It's the Arctic pack! If I
can get on that I'll be safe from drowning, anyhow, for a few days! It's
stronger than this, and it'll stand some good blows."
To quench his thirst he clipped particles of ice with his snow knife and
sucked them, while he ran up and down to keep warm. And, as night
approached, he built a new night shelter from snow blocks, near the
center of his floe, and, very hungry and despondent, crawled into it to
lie long and think of Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel, and the lost
happiness in the cabin which was his home; and of Skipper Ed and Jimmy,
and of the old days that were now gone forever, when he and Jimmy had
played together with never a thought of the terrible fate that awaited
them; and of the adventure on the cliff, and the hundred other scrapes
into which they had got and from which they had somehow always escaped
unharmed; and even of the lonely grave on Itigailit Island, and the
cairn of stones he had built upon it.
"A tragedy brought me into the country," he said to himself, "and a
tragedy has taken me out of it, and the end of my life will be a
tragedy."
And then, after long thought:
"Skipper Ed says our destiny is God's will. But God always has a
purpose in His will. I wonder if I've fulfilled my destiny, and what the
purpose of it was. Maybe it was just to be a son to Father and Mother."
He mused upon this for a long time, and then his thoughts ran to Skipper
Ed and Jimmy:
"I wonder what there is in Skipper Ed's life that he's never told us,"
he pondered.
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