Part 25 (1/2)

And, sure enough, lying about on the ice were a great number of little white balls, so small and white they had escaped his notice at a distance, and each white ball was a new-born seal That, then, hy old seals were so numerous and so fearless

But Bobby had no ti to be satisfied, and now that food was at hand he was hungrier than ever As quickly as he could he dressed one of the seals, and as he had nothe meat made a satisfactory meal upon the raw flesh and blubber, after the manner of Eskimos

This done he looked about hiood drift not far away set about his building with greater care than on the night before, and before noon tiloo_ erected with a tunnel leading to the entrance that he ht better be protected fro seals, and spreading the skins for a bed on his _igloo_ floor felt himself very comfortably situated under the circu his work, ”if I only had a laht till the ice drives ashore or I'et along any ht he quickly put from him with the exclamation: ”That's silly! I won't worry now till I have to I'll just do my best for myself, and if the Lord wants me to live He'll show me how to save myself, or He'll save me”

Then Bobby sat down to think The pieces of ice which he melted in hiseffect upon hi them, and he preferred his meat cooked He had plenty of matches in his pocket, for the ood supply, but since he had gone adrift they had been of no use to hiot it!” said he at last, springing up ”I' the jackknife he cut froular intervals near the edge of this e of a skin he cut a long, narrow thong, and proceeded to thread it through the slits This done he tightened the thong, puckering the edge of the circular piece of skin until it assumed the form of a shallol perhaps fifteen inches wide This he set into a snow block in order that it ht set firm and retain its shape This was to be his Eskimo lamp

Now he tore a strip from his shi+rt, folded it to proper size, filled his lamp with oil from the blubber, drove the point of his snow knife into the side of his _igloo_ in such manner that the side rested in a flat position on the top of the bowl, and saturating the cloth with the oil he arranged it upon the knife, taking care that it did not touch either side of the bowl This he lighted, and to his great delight found that his larill s ice for water was a puzzling one Finally this, too, was solved, by i over it a piece of ice This bowl he held as near as possible to the fla the skin The ice, suspended by a thong directly above the bowl and a little on one side of the flaan at once to drip water into the bowl The water resulting was very oily and unclean, but Bobby in his position had neither a discri appetite

”Well,” said Bobby that evening when he had settled hirilled meat, ”this isn't as comfortable as holoo_ at all And it's safe for a while, anyhow”

And so our young adventurer took up his lonely life upon the shi+fting ice, and day after day he watched the baby seals grow, and wondered at it, for each er than they had been the previous night And he wondered, too, that eachabout, for the babies, or ”white coats” as he called them, were as like as peas

Thus he had lived ten lonely days, and so a black streak appeared in the sky and then another and another, and sootten Bobby and was guiding his destiny

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE shi+PS 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 shi+ps appeared, first one, then another, then the third Bobby watched theot for a ti for his escape

The three shi+ps were strea directly toward the ice, and in the course of an hour after he had first sighted them the advance shi+p 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, theeverywhere, beating to the right and to the left with clubs

Then the boats returned to the shi+p 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 ith the other shi+ps 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 fro white-coat seals, and such of the old seals, also, as did not slip away from them into the water

Finally so 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 sothese were two uns, instead of clubs, and these two devoted their attention to the old seals, which now and again they shot