ould have made it!" declared Jimmy, when Bobby let go his
arm.

"You know how the water treated us the other day, Jimmy," said Bobby
quietly. "We never could swim it. The cold would paralyze us before we
got half way across."

"But now we're sure to perish!" Jimmy exclaimed. "We'll be carried to
sea, and the ice will break up, and there'll be no chance for us at all.
We'd have had at least a chance if we'd tried! Now our last chance is
gone!"

"There wouldn't have been a chance if we'd tried to swim," Bobby
protested. "Here there is some sort of a chance. The ice may not break
up, and it may drift back so that we can get ashore, and if it holds
together long enough some vessel may pick us up. Anyhow we're here, and
we've got to make the best of it."

"There's Partner!" broke in Jimmy. "Poor old Partner! See him out there?
I wonder what he'll do."

And then they shouted to Skipper Ed, and again and again they shouted,
but the wind blew their shouts back into their teeth and Skipper Ed did
not hear them, and at last he faded away, and the land ice faded away in
the cloud of drifting snow.

"There's going to be a hard blow, and we'll have to find a place to
build our _igloo_," Bobby at length suggested.

"Yes," agreed Jimmy. "I'm glad we've got the snow knives and the lamp.
If it comes to blow hard we'd perish in the open."

"And I'm glad we've got these seals, and some tea and biscuits," added
Bobby. "I'm famishing. We'll have to get back among the hummocks to find
a drift for the _igloo_. Our old _igloo_, I suppose, has been washed
away before this. Anyway, it's too near the surf to be safe."

"I'm afraid there's no drift, except among the big hummocks on the other
side, that's big enough for an _igloo_" suggested Jimmy disconsolately,
"and I think you're right about it being too near open water out there
to be safe, for if the ice breaks it'll break there first."

"Yes, but we may find something toward the center," agreed Bobby, as he
took up the whip and turned the dogs about. "We've got to make some kind
of shelter."

And so they made their way back among the pressure hummocks, and,
compelling the dogs to lie down, each with a snow knife began his search
for a suitable snow drift upon which to build an _igloo_.

The fury of the storm increased with every moment. It drifted past and
around them in dense and stifling clouds and at times nearly choked
them. The wind shrieked and moaned among the hummocks.