He had done this once during the winter, when he and Abel Zachariah were hunting together and were suddenly overtaken by a storm.

But at best this was an uncomfortable method of passing a night, and a last resort, and Bobby was therefore quite willing to endure preliminary discomfort in order to secure an _igloo_.
Engrossed in his search he wandered much farther afield than he had intended, and much farther than he knew, which was a reckless thing to do.

And so it came about that presently, when his search was rewarded by a solid drift of hard-packed snow, and he shouted to Jimmy to come on with the dogs, no answer came from Jimmy, and Bobby, endeavoring to locate himself, became quite confused and uncertain as to the direction in which Jimmy and the _komatik_ lay, for his course had been a winding course, in and out among the hummocks, and in the blinding, swirling snow he could never see a dozen feet from where he stood.
Then he shouted again and listened intently, and again and again, but only the roar and boom of sea and pounding ice and the shrieking and weird moaning of the wind gave answer.
"Well, I've lost Jimmy, sure enough," he acknowledged to himself at last, after much futile shouting, "and I'm lost myself, too! I don't know north from south, and I couldn't hit in ten guesses in which direction the _komatik_ is! This is a pretty mess!" Dusk was not far off, and there was no time to be lost, and without further parley or useless waste of breath and strength Bobby set bravely to work with his snow knife, as any wilderness dweller in similar case would have done, and in a little while had prepared for himself a grave-shaped cavern in the drift, with a stout roof of snow blocks, and when it was finished he crawled in and closed the entrance with a huge block.
This emergency shelter was, of course, not to be compared with a properly built _igloo_, but an _igloo_ he could scarcely have built in the face of the storm without assistance.

It was, however, much more comfortable than a burrow in the drift, such as Jimmy had made, for it gave him an opportunity to turn over and stretch his limbs, and it afforded him, also, a considerable breathing space.
"'Twould be fine, now, if I only had my sleeping bag," he soliloquized, when he had at last composed himself in his improvised shelter.

"I hope Jimmy's just as snug.