SOUTH 
so our little stock of luxuries, such as fisli-paste, tinned lierrings, 
etc., was carefully husbanded and so distributed as to last as 
long as possible. My efiorts were not m vain, as one man 
states in his diary : "It must be admitted that we are feeding 
very well indeed, considering our position. Each meal consists 
of one coarse and a beverage. The dried vegetables, if any, 
all go into the same pot as the meat, and every dish is a sort 
of hash or stew, be it ham or seal meat or half and half. The 
fact that we only have two pots available places restrictions 
upon the number of things that can be cooked at one time, 
but in spite of the limitation of facilities, we always seem to 
manage to get jast enough. The milk-powder and sugar are 
necessarily boiled with the tea or cocoa. 
We are, of course, very short of the farinaceous element 
in our diet, and consequently have a mild craving for more of 
it. Bread is out of the question, and as we are husbanding the 
remaining cases of our biscuits for oiu: prospective boat journey, 
we are eking out the supply of flour by making bannocks, of 
which we have from three to four each day. These bannocks 
are made from flour, fat, water, salt, and a little baking-powder, 
the dough being rolled out into flat rounds and baked in about 
ten minutes on a hot sheet of iron over the fire. Each bannock 
weighs about one and a half to two ounces, and we are indeed 
lucky to be able to produce them." 
A few boxes of army biscuits soaked with sea-water were 
distributed at one meal. They were in such a state that they 
would not have been looked at a second time under ordinary 
circumstances, but to us on a floating lump of ice, over three 
hundred miles from land, and that quite hypothetical, and with 
the unplumbed sea beneath us, they were luxuries indeed. 
Wild's tent made a pudding of theirs with some dripping. 
Although keeping in mind the necessity for strict economy 
with our scanty store of food, I knew how important it was 
to keep the men cheerful, and that the depression occasioned 
by our surroundings and our precarious position could to some 
extent be alleviated by increasing the rations, at least until 
we were more accustomed to our new mode of life. That this 
was successful is shown in their diaries. Day by day goes by 
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