Page:South - the story of Shackleton's last expedition, 1914-1917.djvu/181

 Sir Ernest and Hussey sledged out to meet us with dixies of hot tea, well wrapped up to keep them warm.

"One or two of the men left behind had cut a moderately good track for us into the camp, and they harnessed themselves up with us, and we got in in fine style.

"One excellent result of our trip was the recovery of two cases of lentils weighing 42 lbs. each."

The next day I sent Macklin and Crean back to make a further selection of the gear, but they found that several leads had opened up during the night, and they had to return when within a mile and a half of their destination. We were never able to reach Ocean Camp again. Still, there was very little left there that would have been of use to us.

By the middle of February the blubber question was a serious one. I had all the discarded seals' heads and flippers dug up and stripped of every vestige of blubber. Meat was very short too. We still had our three months' supply of sledging food practically untouched; we were only to use this as a last resort. We had a small supply of dog-pemmican, the dogs that were left being fed on those parts of the seals that we could not use. This dog-pemmican we fried in suet with a little flour and made excellent bannocks.

Our meat supply was now very low indeed; we were reduced to just a few scraps. Fortunately, however, we caught two seals and four emperor penguins, and next day forty adelies. We had now only forty days' food left, and the lack of blubber was being keenly felt. All our suet was used up, so we used seal-blubber to fry the meat in. Once we were used to its fishy taste we enjoyed it; in fact, like Oliver Twist, we wanted more.

On Leap Year day, February 29, we held a special celebration, more to cheer the men up than for anything else. Some of the cynics of the party held that it was to celebrate their escape from woman's wiles for another four years. The last of our cocoa was used to-day. Henceforth water, with an occasional drink of weak milk, is to be our only beverage. Three lumps of sugar were now issued to each man daily.