s pocket, for
the man who lives always in the wilderness is never without a good
supply, but since he had gone adrift they had been of no use to him,
without means or method of making a fire.

"I've got it!" said he at last, springing up. "I'm sure it will work!"

Opening the jackknife he cut from one of the skins a large circular
piece, and at regular intervals near the edge of this made small slits.
Then from the edge of a skin he cut a long, narrow thong, and proceeded
to thread it through the slits. This done he tightened the thong,
puckering the edge of the circular piece of skin until it assumed the
form of a shallow bowl perhaps fifteen inches wide. This he set into a
snow block in order that it might set firm and retain its shape. This
was to be his Eskimo lamp.

Now he tore a strip from his shirt, folded it to proper size, filled his
lamp with oil from the blubber, drove the point of his snow knife into
the side of his _igloo_ in such manner that the side rested in a flat
position on the top of the bowl, and saturating the cloth with the oil
he arranged it upon the knife, taking care that it did not touch either
side of the bowl. This he lighted, and to his great delight found that
his lamp was a success.

It was easy to grill small pieces of seal meat over this, but the
problem of melting ice for water was a puzzling one. Finally this, too,
was solved, by improvising another bowl from sealskin and suspending
over it a piece of ice. This bowl he held as near as possible to the
flame without putting it in danger of scorching the skin. The ice,
suspended by a thong directly above the bowl and a little on one side of
the flame, began at once to drip water into the bowl. The water
resulting was very oily and unclean, but Bobby in his position had
neither a discriminating taste nor a discriminating appetite.

"Well," said Bobby that evening when he had settled himself comfortably
after a good meal of grilled meat, "this isn't as comfortable as home,
but it's away ahead of raw meat and ice, and no _igloo_ at all. And it's
safe for a while, anyhow."

And so our young adventurer took up his lonely life upon the shifting
ice, and day after day he watched the baby seals grow, and wondered at
it, for each morning they were visibly larger than they had been the
previous night. And he wondered, too, that each mother should know her
own little one, by merely sniffing about, for the babies, or "white
coats" as he calle