This, with tea and ship biscuit, constituted their supper.
When Yim no longer needed his lamp for cooking he removed two-thirds of its wick and allowed the flame thus reduced to burn all night.

Over it hung a kettle of melting snow, and above this, on a snowshoe, supported by two others, wet mittens and moccasins were slowly but thoroughly dried.
In spite of the hot tea, their fur-lined sleeping bags, and the effective wind-break behind which they were huddled, our lads suffered with cold long before the night was over, and were quite willing to make a start when Yim, after a glance at the stars, announced that daylight was only three hours away.

For breakfast they had more scalding tea and a quantity of hard bread, broken into small bits, soaked in warm water, fried in seal oil, and eaten with sugar.

White pronounced this fine, but Cabot only ate it under protest, because, as he said, he must fill up with something.
The travel of that day, with its accompaniments of blisters and strained muscles, was much harder than that of the day before, and our weary lads were thankful when, towards its close, they entered a belt of timber that had been in sight for hours.
That night they slept warmly and soundly on luxurious beds of spruce boughs beside a great fire frequently replenished by Yim.
"I tell you what," said Cabot, as, early in the evening, he basked in the heat of this blaze, "there's nothing in all this world so good as that.

For my part I consider fire to be the greatest blessing ever conferred upon mankind." "How about light, air, water, food, and sleep ?" asked White.
"Those are necessaries, but fire is a luxury.