was no news of the 'Rachel Cohen' having left Hobart. We had
enough flour to last a fortnight, and could not get any from the sealers
as they possessed only three weeks' supply themselves. However, on July
8, Bauer came across and offered to let us have some wheatmeal biscuits
as they had a couple of hundredweights, so I readily accepted twenty
pounds of them. We now had soup twice a day, and managed to make it
fairly thick by adding sago and a few lentils. Cornflour and hot water
flavoured with cocoa made a makeshift blanc-mange, and this, with sago
and tapioca, constituted our efforts towards dessert.

On the 12th I received a message stating that the 'Rachel Cohen' had
sailed on July 7; news which was joyfully received. We expected her to
appear in ten or twelve days.

On the 18th we used the last ounce of flour in a small batch of bread,
having fully expected the ship to arrive before we had finished it.
Next day Bauer lent us ten pounds of oatmeal and showed us how to make
oatmeal cakes. We tried some and they were a complete success, though
they consisted largely of tapioca, and, according to the respective
amounts used, should rather have been called tapioca cakes.

When the 22nd arrived and no ship showed up, I went across to see what
the sealers thought of the matter, and found that they all were of
opinion that she had been blown away to the eastward of the island, and
might take a considerable time to "make" back.

On this date we came to the end of our meats, which I had been dealing
out in a very sparing manner, just to provide a change from sea elephant
and weka. We had now to subsist upon what we managed to catch. There
were still thirty-five tins of soup, of which only two tins a day
were used, so that there was sufficient for a few weeks. But we found
ourselves running short of some commodity each day, and after the 23rd
reckoned to be without bread and biscuit.

At this juncture many heavy blows were experienced, and on the 24th a
fifty-mile gale accompanied by a tremendous sea beat down on us, giving
the 'Rachel Cohen' a very poor chance of "making" the island. Our last
tin of fruit was eaten; twelve tins having lasted us since March 31, and
I also shared the remaining ten biscuits amongst the men on the 24th. We
were short of bread, flour, biscuits, meats, fish, jam, sugar and milk,
but had twenty tins of French beans, thirty tins of cornflour, some
tapioca, and thirty tins of soup, as well as t