And the men were pleased; the gloomy shadows left their brows; their eyes grew brighter; they even laughed and joked a little as they worked, and I’m quite sure they got through the task in half the time.
A good dinner followed. The cook, poor fellow, had been drowned, but he found a worthy successor in busy boy Bounce.
Boy Bounce to-day had made some excellent pea-soup. It was a good thing for these unfortunate sailors that this house and camp had been built on shore, and that it contained all the necessaries for cooking, etc, that they were likely to want. After the soup came preserved potatoes and pork, to say nothing of a delightful frizzly relish of young seal’s liver. Then all felt happier and more hopeful.
There would be at least a whole month of daylight yet, though every day would be much shorter than its predecessor. Then light would leave them, and merge into the long, long Polar night.
As long as there was anything like a day, the men were employed fishing and hunting. The bears had not yet left, and sometimes a deer was met with. Why some of these animals should occasionally be left behind the migrating flock is a great puzzle. Are they too delicate for the journey south, or are they left behind for punishment?
The bears that meant remaining were already seeking holes and caves.
The doctor knew their tricks and their manners, and had every likely hole and corner searched, often by torchlight, and several fine specimens were thus unearthed.
The brutes always showed fight, and some fierce hand to hand encounters (if I may so name them) were the consequence.
But the days grew shorter, and, despite all that Dr Barrett could do, a gloom settled down on the minds of the men that nothing seemed able to dispel. Even Paddy O’Connell himself lost heart.
“Och! sure,” he said one day, “it is our graves we are in already, and it’s little use there is in trying to prolong our existence.”