r came upon him as he looked about. Less than fifty feet
from the place where he had lain waves were breaking over the edge of
the ice. On the opposite side and very close to him lay the land, and
the ice upon which he stood was jammed against the land ice, offering
him a clear road to safety.

But safety now meant nothing to Jimmy. The main ice pack from which his
little section had broken, lay glimmering in the sunlight a full two
miles to the southeast and well out to sea, and Bobby was either on that
pack or had been lost in the sea. The discovery made Jimmy numb with
fear and consternation.

He recognized the land near him as the farthermost point of Cape
Harrigan. The pack in its southward drift had come in contact with Cape
Harrigan's long projection of land, the wind had severed the pack, and,
while the comparatively small section of floe upon which he stood had
remained jammed against the land, the main floe, reaching far out beyond
the obstruction of the cape, had been swept on and on, and was now
floating steadily southward.

In frantic frenzy Jimmy ran about and shouted, and searched every nook
and turn of his little corner of the original floe for Bobby, but there
was no trace of his missing comrade. Again and again he searched, but
without reward. Bobby was gone and Jimmy no longer had any doubt that he
had perished.

With heavy heart he at last set about with his snow knife, digging the
_komatik_ from under the drift and getting his load in order, and then
he roused the dogs from their drifts and drove them to the land. The
great floe was now but a speck upon the far horizon.

There was nothing more he could do. He felt very much as Skipper Ed had
felt the day before, and was feeling that very morning, and he
remembered, and repeated over and over again, what Skipper Ed had so
often said: "Our destiny is in God's hands, and our destiny is His
will."

Jimmy's travels had carried him south nearly to Cape Harrigan on two or
three occasions when he had been with Skipper Ed in their trap boat in
summer, and he knew that he could not be above two days' journey from
the head of Abel's Bay, for now it was March and the days were growing
long. And between Cape Harrigan and Abel's Bay was a Hudson's Bay
trading post where he and Skipper Ed sometimes traded furs and salt
trout for flour and pork and tea, and beyond this point he knew the
sledge route well.

So, as there was nothing else to be done, he turne