From these troubled thoughts Bobby’s mind went to Takyak, the dying Eskimo chief. Wasn’t it possible, he thought, that Takyak thought he was worse off than he actually was?
Suppose he should recover and repent of his confidence?
“Well,” thought Bobby, “in that case he shall have his treasure and we, at least, will try for liberty.” He hoped the Eskimo would recover. He was kind-hearted and had tried to put in a good word for them with Captain Garrish.
Garrish! At the name Bobby felt the same fierce rush of anger he had felt the day before when the captain had regarded him with that bullying look of suspicion.
How much did the captain suspect?
Well, if they had any sort of luck at all, they would soon put so much distance between themselves and the surly captain that what he thought or did not think would make no difference at all.
If they only had some warm clothing! They had been given top coats from the ship’s locker, but they were far too big for them. Rushed as they had been with work on deck, they had not been so conscious of the bitter cold. But in an open boat, with nothing to shield them from the fierce winds, they might be frozen to death.
Bobby shivered and thought of the snug fur coats worn by the Eskimo members of the crew. That was the only thing that could keep out the biting cold of the Northland—fur, and plenty of it.
“Oh, well, we’ll have to take our chance of freezing to death. That, after all, may be pleasanter than running into an iceberg,” he muttered, with a sigh.
And so, still listening to the grating of the ice against the sides of the ship, Bobby at last fell into a doze from which he was rudely roused a half hour later.