This floating lump of ice, about a mile square at first
but later splitting into smaller and smaller fragments, was to be our
home for nearly two months. During these two months we made frequent
visits to the vicinity of the ship and retrieved much valuable clothing
and food and some few articles of personal value which in our light-
hearted optimism we had thought to leave miles behind us on our dash
across the moving ice to safety.
The collection of food was now the all-important consideration. As we
were to subsist almost entirely on seals and penguins, which were to
provide fuel as well as food, some form of blubber-stove was a
necessity. This was eventually very ingeniously contrived from the
ship's steel ash-shoot, as our first attempt with a large iron oil-drum
did not prove eminently successful. We could only cook seal or penguin
hooshes or stews on this stove, and so uncertain was its action that
the food was either burnt or only partially cooked; and, hungry though
we were, half-raw seal meat was not very appetizing. On one occasion a
wonderful stew made from seal meat, with two or three tins of Irish
stew that had been salved from the ship, fell into the fire through the
bottom of the oil-drum that we used as a saucepan becoming burnt out on
account of the sudden intense heat of the fire below.
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