that it is impossible to launch her. In the meantime we are keeping body and soul together by eating roots and drinking water. The meat that we salted and dried eighteen months ago, and which has long been shrivelled up like chips, has now come into requisition, and is used sparingly and with a relish. We also shoot sea-gulls or any other scavengers that come within reach of us. Everything that is really fit to eat keeps out of our reach. We have had one seal since I last wrote, and this one affords another and more striking instance of the savage manner in which these animals fight. It was found by one of the men in a place where I have no doubt it had gone to die. One of its fore flippers was entirely torn away from its body; the other one was cut or broken off by the lower joint; the lower jaw broken, and the flesh torn away from underneath, and with a strip of skin about two inches wide torn off all the way down the belly, and another strip was torn off its back, from the top of the head to its tail, which was left quite bare to the bone. How it had managed to crawl out of the water I cannot imagine, and whether it had been set into by more than one seal I am unable to conjecture. It was a cow, and was with calf.
This great scarcity of meat has not been for want of searching after it. We have constantly had one, and sometimes two, men out on the forage. If the boat was afloat, I have no doubt but we should be able to find as much as we could eat. When we get her afloat, we shall at once lay in a sea stock, and be off with the first slant of wind. I consider, now that we have finished, we have made an excellent job of the boat, and she is not at all unsightly. Indeed, she may be pronounced a neat, substantial-looking, but small yacht, and what we have done is indeed substantially done. I wish the old bottom was half as good as the new work. Here remains the only doubt of our safety. If that stands we are safe; if not, we sink, which will be preferable to the bodily sufferings and hellish mental tortures I suffer here. But a truce to all ideas
