I told him about getting in the snow like the dogs do, and he'll do it and be all right, and he's got his sleeping bag, too." Bobby was not given to vain regrets and needless worry, as we have seen, but nevertheless he could not keep his mind from the possible fate of himself and Jimmy, and think as he would he could conceive of no possible means of their escape, save in the possibility of the floe coming again in contact with land.

Then his thoughts ran to Abel and Mrs.Abel, and before he was aware of it he was crying bitterly.
"If I'd only hurried on, as Skipper Ed told me to!" he moaned.

"I'm always doing something! And there's Jimmy in the--in the fix too! And it was all my fault!" And then he remembered the evening devotions that Abel and Mrs.Abel were doubtless then holding in the cabin.

He could see Abel taking the old worn Eskimo Bible and hymnal from the shelf, and Abel reading and the two good folks singing a hymn, and then kneeling in praise and thanks to God for his mercies.

And joining them in spirit he sang the Eskimo version of "Nearer My God to Thee," and then he knelt and prayed, and felt the better for it.
For a long while he lay, after his devotions were ended, recalling the kindness of his beloved foster parents.