I can stand it a little while, and I hope the freeze-up won't come till they get back home." But Bobby lost no time in needless calculation.

What was of highest immediate importance was the satisfaction of his appetite, which as usual was protesting against delay.
He had been eating raw sea pigeon quite long enough, and he proposed now to enjoy the great treat of a grilled bird.

And so without troubling himself with vain regrets of what he might have done or might not have done, he proceeded to fetch wood from his cave and to build a fire, and a good one it was to be, too, in the lee of his bowlder.

And when the wood was crackling merrily he made a comfortable seat of boughs upon which to sit while he cooked and ate the one sea pigeon which he allowed himself.
Bobby had never eaten a sea pigeon that seemed quite so small as that one, and it required a large degree of self-denial and self-restraint to observe the rule of economy which he had imposed upon himself on the evening he was wrecked.

He had decided then that two sea pigeons a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, were all he could afford.