CHAPTER XXVII.
A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE It was fortunate that Bobby had selected the center of the floe for his night shelter, for when he awoke in the morning and crawled out of his snow cavern he discovered that the unstable shore ice of which the floe was composed had been gradually breaking up during the night into separate pans, and that he was now upon a comparatively small floe, little more indeed than a large pan, which had originally been the center of the great floe upon which he went adrift.
Surrounding him was a mass of loose pans, rising and falling on the swell, and grinding and crunching against one another with a voice of ominous warning.

With quick appreciation he was aware that his position was now indeed a perilous one, for it was obvious that his small remnant of floe was rapidly going to pieces.
But another and more sinister danger threatened him, should he escape drowning.

Bobby was ravenously hungry.

He had eaten nothing since the hasty luncheon of sea biscuit and pork on the night he and Jimmy parted.
He had been terribly hungry the day before, but now he was ravenous and he felt gaunt and weak.

As though to tantalize him, numerous seals lay sunning themselves upon the ice pans, for it was now past sunrise, but his only weapon was his snow knife, and he was well aware that the seals would slip into the water and beyond his reach before he could approach and despatch them.
Looking away over the mass of moving ice he discovered to his delight that the loose pans surrounding the little floe upon which he stood reached out in a continuous field to the great Arctic pack which he had watched so anxiously the previous day.