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.