Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/223

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1912]
HUNGER AND SUPPLIES
137

our seal meat too fast, so had to come down to half the above ration, and it was not until the middle of July, when we got some more seals, that we were able to go back to the old ration.

There is no doubt that during this period we were all miserably hungry, even directly after the meals. Towards the end of June we had to cut down still more, and have only one biscuit per day, and after July to stop the biscuit ration altogether until September, when we started one biscuit a day again. By this means we were able to save enough biscuits for a month at half ration for our journey down the coast. I am sure seals have never been so thoroughly eaten as ours were. There was absolutely no waste. The brain was our greatest luxury; then the liver, kidneys, and heart, which we used to save for Sundays. The bones, after we had picked all the meat off them, we put on one side, so that if the worst came to the worst we could pound them up for soup. The best of the undercut was saved for sledging. After our experience in March, when we got thirty-nine fish out of a seal's stomach, we always cut them open directly we killed them in the hope of finding more, but we never again found anything fit to eat. One of our greatest troubles was a lack of variety in the flavouring of our meals. Two attempts were made by Levick to relieve this want from the medicine chest, but both were failures. Once we dissolved several ginger tabloids in the hoosh without any effect at all, and on the historic occasion when we used a mustard plaster, there was a general decision that the correct term would have been linseed