Bobby of the Labrador

by Dillon Wallace

He now skinned and dressed the remaining seals, and spreading the skins for a bed on his igloo floor felt himself very comfortably situated under the circumstances.

"Now," said he, surveying his work, "if I only had a lamp and a kettle I could get on all right till the ice drives ashore or I'm picked up or the pack goes to pieces and I won't need to get along any more."

But this last thought he quickly put from him with the exclamation: "That's silly! I won't worry now till I have to. I'll just do my best for myself, and if the Lord wants me to live He'll show me how to save myself, or He'll save me."

Then Bobby sat down to think. The pieces of ice which he melted in his mouth in lieu of water he was convinced had a weakening effect upon him, and his mouth was becoming tender and sore from sucking them, and he preferred his meat cooked. He had plenty of matches in his 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 called them, were as like as peas.