THE GRANITE HARBOUR EXPEDITION 357 



to take out a bag at Cape Evans. Gran is going to sow 

 sea-kale here, so that our vegetables and fruits should be 

 plentiful ! 



" About 5.30 a long streamer of smoke announced that the 

 famous stove was going, and Debenham made a splendid liver- 

 fry, followed by cocoa in very quick time. Gran produced a 

 bottle of Savoy sauce, which he had carried as part of his 

 personal gear, and presented it to me. No present could 

 possibly have been more acceptable, as any one who has lived 

 on one dish for a month will realize. I could have eaten two 

 whacks of the fry easily ! We decided to use the bottle at 

 one meal instead of spinning it out, but (as Wendell Holmes 

 remarked about the honeypot) you can't pour out the last 

 dregs from a sauce-bottle. Some one suggested we should 

 draw lots for these precious dregs. (Privately I thought they 

 belonged to me, but I nobly agreed !) So, in the way they 

 have in the navy, I thought of a word of five letters, and I 

 said that the last alphabetical letter should win the prize (as 

 a matter of fact I had thought of * Savoy '). Gran gave me 

 the third letter (v), and he took the first. Debenham took 

 the fourth, and then I felt safe. But Forde took the last (jy), 

 and so won the sauce. A very sorrowful moment ! This 

 ingenuous game always entranced me ; it trusted so implicitly 

 in the leader's lack of American l smartness,' for the word was 

 not divulged until the numbers were out ! 



The method bewildered me when I first heard it, but I 

 hope the above account is lucid. 



The next day Gran became cook, and gave us a fine 

 hoosh, after which I started trying to get the astronomical 

 position of our headquarters. Gran explained the way the 

 Norwegian fishermen obtain latitude and longitude by very 

 simple yet sufficiently accurate methods. They observe the 

 sun at 11.30, again near noon, and at 12.30. By this means 

 they get the local time of noon by calculating halfway between 

 the other two observations, which should be nearly the same 

 reading. The noon reading is a check. 



Unfortunately in 77 S. the sun pursued a placid path 

 which was nearly horizontal, and it was very difficult to find 

 the " keystone " of such a flat " arch " as he described ! 



We had unloaded one sledge and converted it into the 

 roof-tree of our granite hut. It was necessary to collect 



