“I think so too,” said she, “we will have to take food with us—how much?”
“Enough for a month,” said he, “who knows, we may have to come back, and there’s not much to be had elsewhere.” Then he fell into thought for a moment, “maybe stuff for a fortnight will be enough for there’s birds and rabbits to be got, and gulls’ eggs. Them old penguins let you screw their necks as if it come natural to them, we don’t want to take too big a load.”
Then they found themselves at a loss, it was quite easy to arrange to take a fortnight’s food, but how much did that mean?
They determined to use two blankets for sacks and then made a rough calculation, based on imagination, and collected together tins of meat and vegetables and the remaining biscuits, the result was a burden that two people might have carried but not very far.
“We’ve overshot it,” said Raft.
“We’ll never be able to carry all that,” said the girl, “or if we did we would have to go so slowly that the journey would be much longer—it cuts both ways.”
They reduced the load by nearly a half.
“There’s one thing,” said he, “there’s no call to take water with us, there’s holes full of water everywhere, seems to me in this place.”
Then he turned to look at the weather.
The wind was less and the clouds were thinning and the air had the feel of a break coming. Then, just before sunset the clouds parted in the west and the sun went down in a sky red as blood.