seas were breaking in from the eastward, though for three days the
sky had been clear.

With scant meals the boys had been hungry for several days, and now with
nothing to eat they became ravenous. They could talk of little else than
the good things they would have to eat when they were safely back at the
cabin at Double Up Cove, and the possibility of the early freezing of
the bay. Every little while during the day they wandered out along the
shore in the hope that they might discover that the sea was calming,
only to return each time with little to encourage them.

"I'm as hollow as a drum," Charley declared when night came and they had
settled in their sleeping bags. "I don't see how I can stand it another
day. Isn't there something we can find to eat?"

"I'm wonderful hungry too," admitted Toby. "I'm as empty as a flour
barrel that's been scraped, and I'm not knowin' anything we could find
to eat, with snow on the ground. If the ground were clear we might be
findin' berries, though I'm doubtin' there's many on Swile Island. But
if there are, they're under the snow and they'll have to bide there, for
we never could be findin' they."

"It seems to me I can't sleep without something to eat," Charley
complained. "I just can't stand it much longer, that's all."

"Try gettin' asleep," counseled Toby, "and when you gets asleep you'll
be forgettin' about bein' hungry."

Charley did get to sleep readily enough, but it was only to dream that
he was hungry, and always in his dreams he was about to get food, but
something happened to keep it from him.

Two more days passed, and still the boys were without food. No one can
know but one who has starved the degree of their hunger and craving for
food during this period. Nothing that might have served as food would
have been rejected by them or have been repugnant to them, but no morsel
could they find. It was on the morning of the third day of their famine,
when hunger pangs were the keenest, that Toby announced:

"I been prayin' the Lard to send the ice, and telling He how we wants to
get away from here but don't know how until ice comes. Has you been
prayin', Charley?"

"No," confessed Charley, "I've been growling around about our hard luck
and about being hungry. All I know is the Lord's prayer anyhow. I never
was taught to pray out of my head. How do you do it?"

"Just talk to the Lard like you talks to anybody," said Toby in
astonishment. "Ask He what you wants He