d them, were as like as peas.

Thus he had lived ten lonely days, and sometimes he believed God had
forgotten him, when one morning a black streak appeared in the sky and
then another and another, and something wonderful happened, for God had
not forgotten Bobby and was guiding his destiny.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SHIPS THAT CAME DOWN TO THE ICE

Closer and closer came the three black streaks, and presently the masts,
then the funnels, and finally the hulls of three ships appeared, first
one, then another, then the third. Bobby watched them with awe and
wonder. He even forgot for a time that a way was opening for his escape.

The three ships were streaming directly toward the ice, and in the
course of an hour after he had first sighted them the advance ship came
to, half a mile or so from the floe, and not above a mile to the
southward of him. Boats were lowered before the steamer had fully
stopped, and immediately men swarmed over her sides and into them, and
in a moment the boats put off for the ice, the men climbed out upon it
and presently were running everywhere, beating to the right and to the
left with clubs.

Then the boats returned to the ship to fetch more men, and still more,
until there were more men upon the ice than Bobby had ever seen before,
and all beating about them with their clubs. So it was with the other
ships as they came up; they, too, sent scores upon scores of men to the
ice in boats.

Bobby was astonished beyond measure at what he saw, and at first he was
afraid, and watched from a distance. But at last he recalled that he had
heard of this thing before. These were the seal hunters from
Newfoundland, and with bats they were slaying the young white-coat
seals, and such of the old seals, also, as did not slip away from them
into the water.

Finally some of the sealers from the first ship were making their way up
over the ice in the direction of Bobby's _igloo_, and presently he knew
they would be upon the very seals that he had watched with so much
interest growing from day to day. Among these were two men with guns,
instead of clubs, and these two devoted their attention to the old
seals, which now and again they shot.

Overcome with awe and wonder, and timid in the presence of so many
strangers, Bobby kept himself from view while he watched, though he knew
that presently he would be called upon to present himself, in order that
he might escape from the floe, for in all probab