"He's all right," reassured Skipper Ed, "as snug as can be, in his bag. Now don't say another word until I give you permission. Go to sleep."
"Where's my netsek? Did you find it? And my mittens? I'll need 'em again," persisted the practically disposed Bobby, who was already thinking of the future.
"You young rascal! Go to sleep, I say, and don't let me hear another word," insisted Skipper Ed. "I'll go find 'em. Keep quiet now and go to sleep."
Skipper Ed found the netsek and mittens, as he had promised he would. The tide had driven the piece of ice upon which Bobby had left them back again to the main ice. Then he fed the dogs, and when he returned to the igloo both lads were sleeping soundly.
He filled his pipe, and sat for two hours, and until darkness settled, smoking and ruminating. He did not know yet the full history of the accident. He only knew that Jimmy had in some manner got into the water, was overcome by the icy bath and was perishing when Bobby called, and that Bobby by quick thought and quick action had saved his young partner.
"They're both as tough as nuts or they never would have come out of that dip so well," he said to himself. "Bobby's a hero, and as unselfish as the day is long.
"I wonder what he'd have been if he'd never gone adrift and had never come to this rugged land. I wonder if his rich parents, or the luxuries and frivolities of civilization, would have spoiled him, and made him grow up into a selfish, cowardly, and perhaps dissipated, weakling? I wonder if it's the rugged country and the rugged, hard life he lives, that have given him a rugged, noble heart, or whether he'd have had it anyway?
"It's God's mystery. God holds our destiny in His hands, and our destiny is His will. Perhaps He sent the lad here to mould his character upon the plan of the great wide wilderness and boundless sea, and to fit him for some noble part that he is to play some time in life."
Skipper Ed knocked the ashes from his pipe.
"Perhaps after all," he mused, "my life here has not been wasted. Perhaps my part in life was to teach these boys and help to broaden their life. Perhaps that was the reason I drifted here and remained here. Every misfortune and every sorrow is just a stepping stone to something higher and better."