But Norah's courage, which had shrunk before the intangible menace of the bay, rose to meet the concrete disaster that appeared to have overwhelmed Dick. With Changalilo's help she unpacked the food boxes and measured the margin between them and starvation.
Even the scant array of tins that Changalilo produced proved to be misleading. It included such innutritious aids as baking and curry powder, anchovies and Worcester sauce—the armoury of Colonials against the monotony of ulendo meals. The solid residue was meagre, for they had brought on board only enough food for the normal trip of three days, counting for emergency on the ship's supplies and on purchases from fishing villages. What was now left would last them two bare days. And Alibaba had said that rescue could not come for twelve.
Norah looked towards Dick, who had subsided on the pile of baggage, his head in his hands. She decided to tell Changalilo first. He accepted the position with the indifference of one accustomed to famine, and with the native's inherited communism added his rations—a cloth full of millet meal—to the common store.
'What are you doing?' asked Dick in a dull voice.
She turned to him a little brusquely. After all, if Dick hadn't quarreled with the Indian, if he hadn't insisted on sleeping ashore, if he hadn't wasted his ammunition, they wouldn't be in this mess. He ought to pull himself together and help; there must be some way that a man could find to retrieve the disaster.
She was conscious that she was unfair and feminine, but with all their independence the present generation of young women admire a muddler as little as did their grandmothers.
'Come on, Dick,' she said briskly, let's think this out.'
'I've done nothing else, since that swine rowed off,' said Dick.
She made him listen to the result of her commissariat calculations.
'That's worse than I thought,' he said; 'our number's up.'