The Skipper was heard to murmur as he turned over to sleep, ‘I say, what bread that is! When I get home I shall publish a pamphlet, and teach all the world to bake like that.’
It is rather rough on the Skipper’s pamphlet to publish his recipe here, but this is copied from his journal:—
‘Take dough in large quantities and place it on a tin. Heat the oven till you are sick to death of piling on wood. Smoke a pipe, and remove the ashes. Place the dough in the oven, and leave home for an indefinite period. If you ever return, remove the decomposed particles, and let them get warm in the sun, or else freeze in the snow, it really don’t matter a bit. Now heat the oven and recommit them. Brood over the oven exhibiting the tenderest solicitude. They will soon be done, and perhaps will be good, perhaps not; nobody can tell.’
September 9.—
Last night was very cold, and this morning there was ice on the lake, and the bilge-water in the boat was frozen solid. Esau and Jens went up the lake in the boat to stalk, and the Skipper accompanied them to fish, while John fished nearer home.
About six o’clock the boat was seen returning loaded with the head and skin of a very fine buck, and Esau gave us his history thus:—
‘As soon as we landed halfway up the lake we found the spoor of two very large bucks and a smaller one which had swum across the lake in the night. They seemed to have gone towards the Tyknings glacier, so we went in that direction also. The wind was as bad as it could be in that valley, for we were obliged to walk exactly with it at first instead of against it, in order to get round a sufficiently large piece of country, and then work back against the wind. We walked a couple of miles without seeing anything, and at last got close to the Tyknings glacier and the iceberg lake at its foot. You know that lake well enough, Skipper, full of lumps of ice, some of them as big as this hut, which keep breaking off from the projecting glacier as it slides down; and I dare say you remember what an awful deathly stillness reigns there and what a dismal sight the lake is, cold and black under the shade of the crags which close in its sides.
‘Well, we sat down there and used the glasses for a long time——’
‘What do you mean by “using the glasses?”’ interrupted John; ‘drinking whisky and water?’
Esau withered him with a look and went on.