Growing desperate at last, he set out to search for Bobby, but did not go far when he realized that it would be a hopeless search, and that it was after all his duty to remain with the sledge. Then he turned back to find the sledge and stumbled and groped around in the snow for a long while before he fell upon it by sheer accident.
With darkness the velocity of the storm increased, constantly gathering force. The bitter cold cut through Jimmy's sealskin clothing and through the caribou skin which he had again wrapped around him, and his flesh felt numb, and a heavy drowsiness was stealing upon him which it was hard to resist. He knew that to surrender to this in his exposed position would be fatal, and he rose to his feet and jumped up and down to restore circulation.
Any further attempt to find Bobby, he realized, would be foolhardy if not suicidal. His previous effort had proved this, and now he felt quite helpless. He was also very certain that Bobby could not by any possibility, if he still survived, find his way back to the komatik until the storm abated. He would have lost the komatik himself now had he wandered even a dozen feet from it.
And then he comforted himself with the thought that Bobby had learned many things from Abel concerning the manner in which the Eskimos on the open barrens and ice fields protect themselves when suddenly overtaken by storms such as the one that now raged. In these matters, indeed, he looked upon Bobby as an Eskimo, and had great confidence in Bobby's ability to overcome conditions that to himself would seem unconquerable.
He knew, too, that Bobby, when hunting with Abel upon the barrens, had weathered some terrific storms. These were experiences which he himself had never encountered, for he and Skipper Ed during their winter months on the trapping trails clung more closely to the forests, where they were protected from sweeping gales and could always find firewood in abundance, and could build a temporary shelter.
And pondering these things as he sat huddled upon the sledge, his hope that Bobby might after all be safe grew, and he felt a sense of vast relief steal over him. He was not so cold now, his brain was heavy with sleep and he began to doze.
Suddenly he again realized his own danger were he to submit to the sleep which the cold was urging upon him, and he sprang to his feet and jumped and jumped and shouted and swung his arms, until he could feel the blood tingling through his veins, and his brain awake.
"I must do something!" said he. "I must do something! Bobby is lost out there and I can't help him, and I can't stand this much longer. I must do something for myself or I'll perish before morning."
Then he remembered the dogs, lying deep and snug under the drifts, and what Bobby had said about them, and with feverish haste he drew his snow knife and cut away the drift which now all but covered the komatik. Then he took his sleeping bag from the load, and, digging deeper down and down into the drift, stretched the bag into the hole he had made, and slid into it, and in a little while the snow covered him, and he like the dogs lay buried beneath the drift.