But Bobby was young and healthy and active, and had an appetite, and the air was excessively cold. The appetite began to call for food and drink, and the cold drove him to exercise. And so, rising at last and drying his eyes, he very wisely resolved:
"There's no good to come from crying or mourning about Jimmy, I suppose, or what's past. I've got to do something for myself now. There's a chance the ice may drive back with a shift of wind, and I've got to try to keep alive as long as I can."
He had nothing to eat, no cup into which to melt ice for water, and no lamp or seal oil with which to make a fire over which to melt the ice had he possessed a cup, but he set out at a rapid pace to explore the ice field, clinging as he walked to his snow knife, the only weapon he possessed, for his rifle had been left upon the komatik, and in a little while he discovered that the pack was not so large as he had supposed it to be, for the heavy seas of the night before had eaten away its edges. It had broken away, indeed, to a point far within the boundaries of their old igloo and the place where they had hunted.
"The first little blow will break the whole floe up," he said dejectedly. "Anyhow I suppose it won't matter, for I'll soon starve to death without a gun."
But out to the southward lay a great field of ice, and it seemed not so far away. An hour's observation assured Bobby that his small floe was traveling much more rapidly than this larger field, and was gradually approaching it. Late in the afternoon he caught the glint of miniature bergs, as the sunlight touched them, rising above the great floe ahead, and as he watched them a burst of understanding came upon him.
"It's the great North pack!" he exclaimed. "It's the Arctic pack! If I can get on that I'll be safe from drowning, anyhow, for a few days! It's stronger than this, and it'll stand some good blows."
To quench his thirst he clipped particles of ice with his snow knife and sucked them, while he ran up and down to keep warm. And, as night approached, he built a new night shelter from snow blocks, near the center of his floe, and, very hungry and despondent, crawled into it to lie long and think of Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel, and the lost happiness in the cabin which was his home; and of Skipper Ed and Jimmy, and of the old days that were now gone forever, when he and Jimmy had played together with never a thought of the terrible fate that awaited them; and of the adventure on the cliff, and the hundred other scrapes into which they had got and from which they had somehow always escaped unharmed; and even of the lonely grave on Itigailit Island, and the cairn of stones he had built upon it.
"A tragedy brought me into the country," he said to himself, "and a tragedy has taken me out of it, and the end of my life will be a tragedy."
And then, after long thought:
"Skipper Ed says our destiny is God's will. But God always has a purpose in His will. I wonder if I've fulfilled my destiny, and what the purpose of it was. Maybe it was just to be a son to Father and Mother."