Bobby was ravenously hungry. He had eaten nothing since the
hasty 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 and
he felt gaunt and weak. As though to tantalize him, numerous seals lay
sunning themselves upon the ice pans, for it was now past sunrise, but
his only weapon was his snow knife, and he was well aware that the seals
would slip into the water and beyond his reach before he could approach
and despatch them.
Looking away over the mass of moving ice he discovered to his delight
that the loose pans surrounding the little floe upon which he stood
reached out in a continuous field to the great Arctic pack which he had
watched so anxiously the previous day. And, what was particularly to
his satisfaction, the pans were so closely massed together that by
jumping from pan to pan he was quite certain he could make the passage
safely, 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 often
practiced it in Abel's Bay when the water was calm and the ice pans to a
great extent stationary. But he had never attempted it on the open sea
where the pans were never free from motion. It was, therefore, though
not an unusual feat for the experienced seal hunter, a hazardous
undertaking.
The situation, however, demanded prompt action.
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