"
Another man searched for over an hour in the snow where he had dropped
a piece of cheese some days before, in the hopes of finding a few
crumbs. He was rewarded by coming across a piece as big as his thumb-
nail, and considered it well worth the trouble.
By this time blubber was a regular article of our diet--either raw,
boiled, or fried. "It is remarkable how our appetites have changed in
this respect. Until quite recently almost the thought of it was
nauseating. Now, however, we positively demand it. The thick black oil
which is rendered down from it, rather like train-oil in appearance and
cod-liver oil in taste, we drink with avidity."
We had now about enough farinaceous food for two meals all round, and
sufficient seal to last for a month. Our forty days' reserve sledging
rations, packed on the sledges, we wished to keep till the last.
But, as one man philosophically remarked in his diary:
"It will do us all good to be hungry like this, for we will appreciate
so much more the good things when we get home."
Seals and penguins now seemed to studiously avoid us, and on taking
stock of our provisions on March 21 I found that we had only sufficient
meat to last us for ten days, and the blubber would not last that time
even, so one biscuit had to be our midday meal.
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