so it came about that presently, when his search was rewarded by
a solid drift of hard-packed snow, and he shouted to Jimmy to come on
with the dogs, no answer came from Jimmy, and Bobby, endeavoring to
locate himself, became quite confused and uncertain as to the direction
in which Jimmy and the _komatik_ lay, for his course had been a winding
course, in and out among the hummocks, and in the blinding, swirling
snow he could never see a dozen feet from where he stood.

Then he shouted again and listened intently, and again and again, but
only the roar and boom of sea and pounding ice and the shrieking and
weird moaning of the wind gave answer.

"Well, I've lost Jimmy, sure enough," he acknowledged to himself at
last, after much futile shouting, "and I'm lost myself, too! I don't
know north from south, and I couldn't hit in ten guesses in which
direction the _komatik_ is! This is a pretty mess!"

Dusk was not far off, and there was no time to be lost, and without
further parley or useless waste of breath and strength Bobby set bravely
to work with his snow knife, as any wilderness dweller in similar case
would have done, and in a little while had prepared for himself a
grave-shaped cavern in the drift, with a stout roof of snow blocks, and
when it was finished he crawled in and closed the entrance with a huge
block.

This emergency shelter was, of course, not to be compared with a
properly built _igloo_, but an _igloo_ he could scarcely have built in
the face of the storm without assistance. It was, however, much more
comfortable than a burrow in the drift, such as Jimmy had made, for it
gave him an opportunity to turn over and stretch his limbs, and it
afforded him, also, a considerable breathing space.

"'Twould be fine, now, if I only had my sleeping bag," he soliloquized,
when he had at last composed himself in his improvised shelter. "I hope
Jimmy's just as snug. I told him about getting in the snow like the dogs
do, and he'll do it and be all right, and he's got his sleeping bag,
too."

Bobby was not given to vain regrets and needless worry, as we have seen,
but nevertheless he could not keep his mind from the possible fate of
himself and Jimmy, and think as he would he could conceive of no
possible means of their escape, save in the possibility of the floe
coming again in contact with land. Then his thoughts ran to Abel and
Mrs. Abel, and before he was aware of it he was crying bitterly.

"If I'd only hur