As quickly as he could he dressed one of the seals, and as he had no means of cooking the meat made a satisfactory meal upon the raw flesh and blubber, after the manner of Eskimos.
This done he looked about him for a suitable place to build a shelter, and finding a good drift not far away set about his building with greater care than on the night before, and before noon time had a small but well-fashioned _igloo_ erected with a tunnel leading to the entrance that he might better be protected from the wind.
He now skinned and dressed the remaining seals, and spreading the skins for a bed on his _igloo_ floor felt himself very comfortably situated under the circumstances.
"Now," said he, surveying his work, "if I only had a lamp and a kettle I could get on all right till the ice drives ashore or I'm picked up or the pack goes to pieces and I won't need to get along any more." But this last thought he quickly put from him with the exclamation: "That's silly! I won't worry now till I have to.

I'll just do my best for myself, and if the Lord wants me to live He'll show me how to save myself, or He'll save me." Then Bobby sat down to think.

The pieces of ice which he melted in his mouth in lieu of water he was convinced had a weakening effect upon him, and his mouth was becoming tender and sore from sucking them, and he preferred his meat cooked.

He had plenty of matches in his pocket, for the man who lives always in the wilderness is never without a good supply, but since he had gone adrift they had been of no use to him, without means or method of making a fire.
"I've got it!" said he at last, springing up.

"I'm sure it will work!" Opening the jackknife he cut from one of the skins a large circular piece, and at regular intervals near the edge of this made small slits.
Then from the edge of a skin he cut a long, narrow thong, and proceeded to thread it through the slits.