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The sea, far out in the direction in which Abel had found Bobby in the drifting boat that August morning, was frozen, and a little way out from Itigailit Island the smooth ice gave place to mountainous ridges and hummocks where, earlier in the season, rough seas had piled massive blocks one upon another and left them there to freeze and catch the drifting snow.
"Tomorrow will be Friday, and we had better haul our seals to Itigailit Island to the cache," Skipper Ed suggested that evening as they sat snug in the igloo, eating their supper. "We have all we can care for." "I hate to leave with all these seals about, but I suppose we'll have to go some time," said Bobby regretfully.
"Then everything is arranged," said Skipper Ed. "Abel says there are plenty of fish for all of us around Itigailit Island. Perhaps, then, we'd better go home, Partner, and put things in shipshape for an early start in the morning." And so they parted in high glee, Bobby to the cabin to break the good news to Mrs. Abel, and Skipper Ed down the trail toward his own cabin, with Jimmy at his heels.
Then, extracting some hardtack biscuits from their bags, they sat on the sledges and ate their dry luncheon while the dogs jogged leisurely on again. The sun was setting when Bobby, now well in the lead, halted his team at Abel Zachariah's old fishing place on Itigailit Island to await Skipper Ed and Jimmy.
Abel Zachariah was jigging cod. Cod were plentiful, and Abel Zachariah was happy. It still lacked two hours of mid-day, and already he had caught a skiffload of fish and had landed them on Itigailit Island, where his tent was pitched. Now, as he jigged a little off shore, he could see Mrs.
And so, with the mysterious child under the deck at his back, and the mysterious dead man lying in the boat at his feet, and his own skiff trailing behind, Abel, with a strong arm and a stout heart and a head filled with perplexing questions, rowed the mysterious boat to the low ledge of rocks that served as a landing place on Itigailit Island. Of course Mrs.
Skipper Ed, satisfied that Bobby and Jimmy were close at his heels, did not halt again until well out over the smooth ice and near to Itigailit Island, when he heard behind him a strange rumbling and crackling. He halted and listened, and strained his eyes through the drifting snow for a glimpse of the boys.
Abel many a time, of how he had been found drifting in a boat with a dead man, of the grave Abel had made on Itigailit Island for his dead companion, and the cairn he himself had built. "We have the boat yet," said Bobby, "for it was a good boat. Father has always taken great care of it.
When the fishing schooners now and again of a foggy night anchored behind Itigailit Island he never failed to examine the fine big trap boats which they carried. Sometimes he had ventured to inquire how much salt fish they would accept in exchange for one.
He was confident such a drift was to be found not far from the komatik where he had left Jimmy, for in passing to Itigailit Island and back with loads of seals earlier in the day he had observed some good hard drifts which he believed to be in this locality, though he was aware that in the blinding snow he may have stopped the dogs a little on one side or the other of them.
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