SOUTH 
issuing sugar now, and our meals consist of seal meat and 
blubber only, with 7 ozs. of dried milk per day for the party," 
I wrote. " Each man receives a pinch of salt, and the milk 
is boiled up to make hot drinks for all hands. The diet suits 
us, since we cannot get much exercise on the floe and the blubber 
supplies heat. Fried slices of blubber seem to our taste to 
resemble crisp bacon. It certainly is no hardship to eat it, 
though persons living under civilized conditions probably would 
shudder at it. The hardship would come if we were unable to 
get it." I think that the palate of the human animal can 
adjust itself to anything. Some creatures will die before 
accepting a strange diet if deprived of their natural food. The 
Yaks of the Himalayan uplands must feed from the growing 
grass, scanty and dry though it may be, and would starve even 
if allowed the best oats and corn. " We still have the dark 
water-sky of the last week with us to the south-west and west, 
round to the north-east. We are leaving all the bergs to the 
west and there are few within our range of vision now. The 
swell is more marked to-day, and I feel sure we are at the verge 
of the floe-ice. One strong gale followed by a calm would 
scatter the pack, I think, and then we could push through. 
I have been thinking much of our prospects. The appearance 
of Clarence Island after our long drift seems, somehow, to 
convey an ultimatum. The island is the last outpost of the 
south and our final chance of a landing-place. Beyond it hes 
the broad Atlantic. Our little boats may be compelled any 
day now to sail unsheltered over the open sea with a thousand 
leagues of ocean separating them from the land to the north 
and east. It seems vital that we shall land on Clarence Island 
or its neighbour, Elephant Island. The latter island has an 
attraction for us, although as far as I know nobody has ever 
landed there. Its name suggests the presence of the plump 
and succulent sea-elephant. We have an increasing desire in 
any case to get firm ground under our feet. The floe has been 
a good friend to us, but it is reaching the end of its journey, 
and it is liable at any time now to break up and fling us into 
the unplumbed sea." 
A little later, after reviewing the whole situation in the 
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