bacon, considered a rare treat since the bacon was
hoarded for flavoring beans which they were permitted but once a week.

In putting her family on rations Ellen noticed that each one's appetite
increased tremendously. Only by exercising the most rigid self-control
could she keep herself to the portions she had allotted. The sight of
Lollie scraping his plate for the last morsel of food and then looking
up at her expectantly, was the hardest thing she had to bear. She soon
began, surreptitiously, to put aside a portion of her daily share for
him.

For a time food was the all-absorbing topic of conversation. The men
found a certain grim amusement in sitting about the table talking of
the kind of "grub" they would order if they were in the States. They
could go into such detail as to taste and smell of certain appetizing
dishes eaten in the past that often Jean laughingly stopped them.

"By Jove!" Harlan would say. "I know a little place in San Francisco
where you can get a beefsteak Bordelaise that would _actually_ . . ."

"Um-m, yes," Shane would follow, "and don't you remember that little
Italian dump on Columbus where they serve spaghetti with a gooey stuff
filled with chicken livers and mushrooms--Oh . . . man!"

"One time up on the Kuskokwim I snared me a cut-throat," Kayak Bill
would drawl, and then, with an angler's delight, proceed to describe
every wiggle of that super-fish until he landed it, and every phase of
camp-fire cooking, until, crisp and bacon-garnished, he ate it from the
frying-pan.

Jean's longing for fruit, especially bananas, was so intense that she
used to wake up at night thinking about them. She dreamed of bananas
smothered in cream. When she closed her eyes sometimes during the day,
bunches of the yellow fruit dangled enticingly in her mental vision.
She tried to re-read _Pickwick Papers_. The hungry Fat Boy at first
appealed to her, but Dickens' masterly descriptions of the nourishing
food of old England filled her with such a hunger that she put the book
aside.

December proved to be a month of snow and blizzards, but despite the
faithful patrolling of the beach nothing in the way of pay-sand came to
light. Whenever the weather permitted everyone sought shellfish among
the rocks, as it had become necessary to gather a quantity sufficient
to last during storms. The prickly sea-eggs were now added to the
fare. Often however, when the wet snow was hurled unceasingly against