I knew that the komatiks there would be starting at
daybreak over the hills for a parade of Orangemen about twenty miles
away. Possibly, therefore, I might be seen as they climbed the hills.
So I lay down, and went to sleep again.
It seems impossible to say how long one sleeps, but I woke with a
sudden thought in my mind that I must have a flag; but again I had no
pole and no flag. However, I set to work in the dark to disarticulate
the legs of my dead dogs, which were now frozen stiff, and which were
all that offered a chance of carrying anything like a distress signal.
Cold as it was, I determined to sacrifice my shirt for that purpose
with the first streak of daylight.
It took a long time in the dark to get the legs off, and when I had
patiently marled them together with old harness rope and the remains
of the skin traces, it was the heaviest and crookedest flag-pole it
has ever been my lot to see. I had had no food from six o'clock the
morning before, when I had eaten porridge and bread and butter. I had,
however, a rubber band which I had been wearing instead of one of my
garters, and I chewed that for twenty-four hours. It saved me from
thirst and hunger, oddly enough. It was not possible to get a drink
from my pan, for it was far too salty. But anyhow that thought did not
distress me much, for as from time to time I heard the cracking and
grinding of the newly formed slob, it seemed that my devoted boat must
inevitably soon go to pieces.
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