“What! You don’t mean the ship won’t come at all?”
“I’m not sayin’ that for sure, but it’s how ’tis lookin’ t’ me now.”
“Oh, but Dan, that can’t be! What will we do if we’re not picked up?”
“I’ve been thinkin’ un over, an’ figurin’ un out. Tom were sayin’ they’s tradin’ posts t’ th’ s’uthard, an’ I been figurin’ we’ll have t’ make for un. We’ll have t’ hunt for our grub, but onct we gets t’ th’ posts we’ll be safe.”
“Do you really think we’ll have to do that, and stay here all winter? It would just kill my mother, for she won’t know where I am.”
“I’m just sayin’ what’s like t’ happen, but ’tain’t no way sure. A bit inside I finds a river runnin’ in th’ head o’ this bight, an’ plenty o’ timber. ’Twere near th’ river I kills th’ goose. ’Tain’t such a wonderful bad country.”
This was a possibility that had not occurred to Paul. He had harbored no doubt that the North Star would presently cruise southward along the coast, pick them up, and he would go home in comfort. The bare possibility that they might not be rescued was a shock. All pleasures, all comforts, all hardships and privations are measured by contrast. The tent had seemed very cozy, for unconsciously Paul had compared its warmth and security with the hardships he had experienced on the ice pan. Now the possibility that he might have to spend the winter in a tent in this northern wilderness led him to compare such a condition with the luxurious comforts of his home in New York, and the comparison made him shrink from the hardships that he instinctively attached to tent life in winter in a sub-Arctic wilderness. With the comparison, also, came an overwhelming desire to see his father and mother again.
“Dan, it would kill me to have to spend the winter here. Oh, that would be awful.”
“Not so bad if we finds grub. Th’ grub’s what’s troublin’ me. An’ we’ll be needin’ more clothes when th’ cold weather comes. But we’ll not let un worry us till we has to. Dad says it never does no good t’ worry, for worryin’ don’t help things, an’ it puts a feller in a fix so he ain’t much good t’ help hisself.”