n't go far, and if I find snow that will cut I'll holler,
and if I lose the direction I'll holler, and then you answer."

And taking his snow knife Bobby was swallowed up by the swirling snow,
and Jimmy waited and waited, in dreadful loneliness and suspense, while
the minutes stretched out, and at last dusk began to steal upon his
stormswept world.

Many times Jimmy shouted, but no answering shout from Bobby came to him,
and now he shouted and listened, and shouted and listened, but only the
shrieking and moaning of the wind, and booming and thundering of
breaking seas and pounding ice gave answer.

A sickening dread came into Jimmy's heart as vainly he peered through
the gathering darkness into ever thickening snow clouds, and called and
shouted until he was hoarse.

He could not see the dogs now--he could hardly see the length of the
_komatik_. The dogs lay quiet under their blanket of snow somewhere
ahead in the gloom. Jimmy, though he had wrapped a caribou skin around
his shoulders, was becoming numb with cold.

Growing desperate at last, he set out to search for Bobby, but did not
go far when he realized that it would be a hopeless search, and that it
was after all his duty to remain with the sledge. Then he turned back to
find the sledge and stumbled and groped around in the snow for a long
while before he fell upon it by sheer accident.

With darkness the velocity of the storm increased, constantly gathering
force. The bitter cold cut through Jimmy's sealskin clothing and through
the caribou skin which he had again wrapped around him, and his flesh
felt numb, and a heavy drowsiness was stealing upon him which it was
hard to resist. He knew that to surrender to this in his exposed
position would be fatal, and he rose to his feet and jumped up and down
to restore circulation.

Any further attempt to find Bobby, he realized, would be foolhardy if
not suicidal. His previous effort had proved this, and now he felt quite
helpless. He was also very certain that Bobby could not by any
possibility, if he still survived, find his way back to the _komatik_
until the storm abated. He would have lost the _komatik_ himself now
had he wandered even a dozen feet from it.

And then he comforted himself with the thought that Bobby had learned
many things from Abel concerning the manner in which the Eskimos on the
open barrens and ice fields protect themselves when suddenly overtaken
by storms such as the one that now rage