The breakfast was a success, and we sat about the fire much longer than enterprising explorers should have done, sipping the hot black coffee and talking over our situation.
I was confident that we should find a station in some one of the coves, for I knew that the rookeries of Bering Sea were thus guarded; but Maud advanced the theory--to prepare me for disappointment, I do believe, if disappointment were to come--that we had discovered an unknown rookery.
She was in very good spirits, however, and made quite merry in accepting our plight as a grave one.
"If you are right," I said, "then we must prepare to winter here.

Our food will not last, but there are the seals.

They go away in the fall, so I must soon begin to lay in a supply of meat.

Then there will be huts to build and driftwood to gather.

Also we shall try out seal fat for lighting purposes.