“It’s no good,” I said sternly. “If we want anything to eat, and I most certainly do, we’ve got to cook it ourselves.”
Slowly Barron rose from his seat.
“Well,” he said, “what have you got?”
“There’s a tin of bully, some beans, half a Maconochie, we can make a stew of that.”
The stew was the work of a second. We mixed it all up with water, scattered some salt on the top, and left it to boil.
“And now the pudding,” I said.
This proved a more difficult matter. There was no rice left, and we had used the last of the Turban packets.
“Archie,” I said, “we’ll have to invent one.”
For five minutes we argued about the ingredients. Hodges wanted to give it a fish-flavour by adding a tin of salmon and shrimp paste.
“There’s been no taste to the beastly thing for the last six days,” he protested. “It might just as well taste of that as nothing.”