"'Tis cold enough," said Toby, "but the sea'll have to calm down before she freezes. We'll have to bide here three or four days more, whatever."
Two days later they ate the last of the goose, and that night went to their sleeping bags with no breakfast in view for the following morning. Still the waters of the bay gave no promise of freezing when they awoke. Heavy seas were breaking in from the eastward, though for three days the sky had been clear.
With scant meals the boys had been hungry for several days, and now with nothing to eat they became ravenous. They could talk of little else than the good things they would have to eat when they were safely back at the cabin at Double Up Cove, and the possibility of the early freezing of the bay. Every little while during the day they wandered out along the shore in the hope that they might discover that the sea was calming, only to return each time with little to encourage them.
"I'm as hollow as a drum," Charley declared when night came and they had settled in their sleeping bags. "I don't see how I can stand it another day. Isn't there something we can find to eat?"
"I'm wonderful hungry too," admitted Toby. "I'm as empty as a flour barrel that's been scraped, and I'm not knowin' anything we could find to eat, with snow on the ground. If the ground were clear we might be findin' berries, though I'm doubtin' there's many on Swile Island. But if there are, they're under the snow and they'll have to bide there, for we never could be findin' they."
"It seems to me I can't sleep without something to eat," Charley complained. "I just can't stand it much longer, that's all."
"Try gettin' asleep," counseled Toby, "and when you gets asleep you'll be forgettin' about bein' hungry."
Charley did get to sleep readily enough, but it was only to dream that he was hungry, and always in his dreams he was about to get food, but something happened to keep it from him.
Two more days passed, and still the boys were without food. No one can know but one who has starved the degree of their hunger and craving for food during this period. Nothing that might have served as food would have been rejected by them or have been repugnant to them, but no morsel could they find. It was on the morning of the third day of their famine, when hunger pangs were the keenest, that Toby announced:
"I been prayin' the Lard to send the ice, and telling He how we wants to get away from here but don't know how until ice comes. Has you been prayin', Charley?"