till I have to. It's the last thing I expect to do. I'm thinking about
getting a shelter made before it gets dark, and then keeping alive on
here, and as comfortable as we can, until we get ashore."

"I don't see how we're ever going to get ashore," Jimmy solemnly
insisted. "Not that I feel scared, though I'd rather live than die. But
it's an awful thing to feel that our bodies will be lost in the sea, and
no one will know how we die."

"If we have to die the sea is as good a place as any to die in, and what
difference does it make about our bodies? But," added Bobby, "we won't
die if I can help it, and I don't believe we're going to. If we do, why
that's the way the Almighty planned it for us, and we shouldn't mind,
for what the Almighty plans is right. He knows what is best for us."

"I can't believe just that," said Jimmy. "If we'd hurried we wouldn't
have been caught in this trap. It was our fault. I'm not blaming you,
Bobby. I'm older than you and should have thought further and told you
to hurry, so I'm most to blame. And I can't help worrying about Partner
and Abel and Mrs. Zachariah, and how they'll feel and what they'll do."

"What's the use of worry? You always get worrying and stewing, Jimmy,
and you know it doesn't help things any and makes you miserable, and
there's never been a time yet when it didn't turn out in the end that
there never was anything to really worry about, after all. If you keep
on you'll get yourself scared. Now quit it. I was more at fault for
getting us into the scrape than you were, and you know that too, and if
you keep up this sort of talk I'll feel you're trying to rub it in."

"Well, perhaps you're right," Jimmy admitted, and after a moment's
silence suggested, as they rose to continue their efforts to make a
shelter: "Bobby--let's ask God to take care of us."

"Yes," agreed Bobby enthusiastically, "let's do; and then let's do our
best to take care of ourselves, and help Him."

They sank on their knees in the snow, and each in silence offered his
own fervent prayer, while the wind drove the thick snow about them and
shrieked and moaned weirdly through the hummocks, and the distant
booming of the seas, and thunderous smashing of the ice on the outer
edge of the floe, fell upon their ears with solemn, ominous foreboding.

"Now I'm going to look again for hard snow," said Bobby, when they rose
presently. "You better keep close to the _komatik_, Jimmy, so we won't
lose it. I wo