I had been blessed with a good digestion and a talent for sleeping under the most discouraging circumstances.

These, I have no doubt, were of the greatest assistance to me in my struggle for existence.

But now the rations became fearfully obnoxious to me, and it was only with the greatest effort--pulling the bread into little pieces and swallowing each, of these as one would a pill--that I succeeded in worrying the stuff down.

I had not as yet fallen away very much, but as I had never, up, to that time, weighed so much as one hundred and twenty-five pounds, there was no great amount of adipose to lose.

It was evident that unless some change occurred my time was near at hand.
There was not only hunger for more food, but longing with an intensity beyond expression for alteration of some kind in the rations.
The changeless monotony of the miserable saltless bread, or worse mush, for days, weeks and months, became unbearable.