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Bobby could scarcely restrain his impatience. But one day in the middle of July Itigailit Island was sighted, and that evening the Gull anchored in its lee. Abel Zachariah had not come out to his fishing yet, and the island was bare and deserted. Bobby's emotion nearly got the better of him when he remembered that stormy winter's day when he had last been here, with Skipper Ed and Jimmy.
And then, one day, with a report like the report of a cannon, it separated from the mother glacier, slid out into the current, and began its southward voyage. Months had passed since then perhaps a year, or even two or three years and all the time it had been wasting away in the water until Bobby and Jimmy found it this July day, off Itigailit Island.
No wood save driftwood was to be found on Itigailit Island or on the near-by shores, and therefore both Abel's boat and Skipper Ed's boat had been provided with sufficient firewood to meet the needs of their camp for several days. And so, with fuel at hand, Abel quickly had a cozy fire blazing in his fireplace and Mrs.
One of the two lamps and a share of the provisions had been left in the igloo on Itigailit Island, which was to be their land base and their cache. But they had brought with them the other lamp and necessaries to make their hunting igloo comfortable.
"Now we'll be all right," said Bobby, with immense relief, as they watched the four long oars, pulled by four husky men, rise and fall and glint in the sunshine, while a fifth man sculled astern. "They'll either drop us in at Itigailit Island or lend us oars for the skiff!" "Yes, and it's great luck for us that they saw us," remarked Jimmy.
And so it came about that Bobby and Jimmy were presently aboard the Good and Sure, satisfying an accumulated and vast appetite upon Captain Higgles' good hardtack and tea, while the schooner laid her course for Itigailit Island.
Late that afternoon Jimmy wounded a seal on an ice pan, and it went into the water. He seized a harpoon, but when the seal rose to the surface it was so far away that the line could not reach it. "Here!" shouted Bobby, laying down his gun and grabbing a paddle which he had brought from Itigailit Island for such an emergency, "jump on this pan. I'll paddle you out where you can get him."
It was noon the following day when the boats drew up to the old landing place on Itigailit Island, and an hour later the two tents were pitched on Abel Zachariah's old camping ground, and everything was as snug and settled, and they were all as perfectly at home, as though they had been living there for months.
But the sun did not show himself on Saturday morning, for the sky was heavily overcast, and before they reached Itigailit Island with the first load of seals snow was falling and the wind was rising.
And whatever brings you driftin' around the sea at this time of the mornin', and with nary an oar?" exclaimed the man astern, who proved to be Captain Higgles of the Newfoundland fishing schooner Good and Sure, who for as long as the lads could remember had anchored for at least one night each summer on his outward voyage down north, or on his homeward voyage south, in the shelter of the island upon which Skipper Ed had always fished, or behind Itigailit Island.
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