An unspoken horror was staring
them all in the face: navigation did not open when expected, and
supplies were running low, pitifully low. The smoked and dried
meats, the canned things, flour, sealed lard, oatmeal, hard-tack,
dried fruits--_everything_ was slowly but inevitably giving out day
upon day. Before and behind them stretched hummocks of trailless
snow. Not an Indian, not a dog train, not even a wild animal, had
set foot in that waste for weeks. In early March the major's wife
had hidden a single package of gelatine, a single tin of dried
beef, and a single half pound of cornstarch. "If sickness comes
to my boys" (she did not say boy), "I shall at least have saved
these," she told herself, in justification of her act. "A sick man
cannot live on beans." But now they were down to beans--just beans
and lard boiled together. Then a day dawned when there was not even
a spoonful of lard left. "Beans straight!"--it was the death knell,
for beans straight--beans without grease--kill the strongest man in
a brief span of days. Oh, that the ice bridges would melt, the seas
open, the ships come!
But that night the men at mess had beans with unlimited grease, its
peculiar flavor peppered and spiced out of it.
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