And, as night approached, he built a new night shelter from snow blocks, near the center of his floe, and, very hungry and despondent, crawled into it to lie long and think of Abel Zachariah and Mrs.Abel, and the lost happiness in the cabin which was his home; and of Skipper Ed and Jimmy, and of the old days that were now gone forever, when he and Jimmy had played together with never a thought of the terrible fate that awaited them; and of the adventure on the cliff, and the hundred other scrapes into which they had got and from which they had somehow always escaped unharmed; and even of the lonely grave on Itigailit Island, and the cairn of stones he had built upon it.
"A tragedy brought me into the country," he said to himself, "and a tragedy has taken me out of it, and the end of my life will be a tragedy." And then, after long thought: "Skipper Ed says our destiny is God's will.

But God always has a purpose in His will.

I wonder if I've fulfilled my destiny, and what the purpose of it was.

Maybe it was just to be a son to Father and Mother." He mused upon this for a long time, and then his thoughts ran to Skipper Ed and Jimmy: "I wonder what there is in Skipper Ed's life that he's never told us," he pondered.

"He's always said he was a wandering sailor-man, who stopped on the coast because he liked it.