“It’s one thing to do a broad jump at school on the flat ground and another to try it over a chasm full of white serpents,” moaned Harry.
The inventory taken, the boys found that they had the following articles on which to sustain life till they were rescued or till death claimed them—the latter seeming the inevitable contingency.
Three canteens of water—minus about a pint each drunk on the journey.
Four packages each of soup tablets and erbe wurst.
A pocketful apiece of pilot bread.
And that was all. To make matters worse the soup tablets needed water to make them edible and although the boys had an aluminum saucepan with them they realized that in a pinch it is more easy to subsist without food than without water. Their supply of water—the chief consideration—was lamentably small for the situation.
“Maybe we could eat the tablets dry and let them dissolve in our mouths,” suggested Billy, “I’m so ravenously hungry that I’ve got to eat something.”
The idea was hailed as a good one and the boys made a meal at about 2.30 that afternoon off dry soup tablets—two apiece—and one-half round each of their precious pilot bread.
“Tastes like soap more than soup to me,” remarked Billy with a wry face, and then suddenly stopped short, the boy had forgotten for a moment that the “soap” might stand between them and starvation. But the soapy qualities of the tablets were not their worst property. The enterprising manufacturers who made them had seasoned them liberally with salt and pepper, also presumably in compressed form, with the result that half an hour after their meal had concluded the boys were seized with furious pangs of thirst.
They held out as long as they could, knowing the importance of husbanding their water supply, but at last their sufferings became so unbearable that Billy seized his canteen with the remark: