"I can't believe just that," said Jimmy. "If we'd hurried we wouldn't have been caught in this trap. It was our fault. I'm not blaming you, Bobby. I'm older than you and should have thought further and told you to hurry, so I'm most to blame. And I can't help worrying about Partner and Abel and Mrs. Zachariah, and how they'll feel and what they'll do."
"What's the use of worry? You always get worrying and stewing, Jimmy, and you know it doesn't help things any and makes you miserable, and there's never been a time yet when it didn't turn out in the end that there never was anything to really worry about, after all. If you keep on you'll get yourself scared. Now quit it. I was more at fault for getting us into the scrape than you were, and you know that too, and if you keep up this sort of talk I'll feel you're trying to rub it in."
"Well, perhaps you're right," Jimmy admitted, and after a moment's silence suggested, as they rose to continue their efforts to make a shelter: "Bobby—let's ask God to take care of us."
"Yes," agreed Bobby enthusiastically, "let's do; and then let's do our best to take care of ourselves, and help Him."
They sank on their knees in the snow, and each in silence offered his own fervent prayer, while the wind drove the thick snow about them and shrieked and moaned weirdly through the hummocks, and the distant booming of the seas, and thunderous smashing of the ice on the outer edge of the floe, fell upon their ears with solemn, ominous foreboding.
"Now I'm going to look again for hard snow," said Bobby, when they rose presently. "You better keep close to the komatik, Jimmy, so we won't lose it. I won'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.