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 probability no other opportunity would come to him.