I sat there on the roof of the cabin for a good part of the morning cogitating the matter; and in the end I could think of no better plan than one which promised certainly a world of hard labor, and only promised uncertainly to serve my turn. This was to stick to my project of going steadily northward--carrying with me as much food as I could stagger under--until I came again to the outer edge of the wreck--pack; but to safeguard my return to the barque, should my food give out before my journey was accomplished, by blazing my path: that is to say, by making a mark on each wreck that I crossed so that I could retrace my steps easily and without fear of losing my way. What I would gain in the end I did not try very clearly to tell myself--having only a vague feeling that in getting again to the coast of my great dead continent I would be that much the nearer to the living world once more; and having a clearer feeling that only by sticking at some sort of hard work that had a little hopefulness in it could I save myself from going mad. And I cannot but think now, looking back at it, that a touch of madness already was upon me; for no man ever set himself to a crazier undertaking than that to which I set myself then. XXIII HOW I STARTED ON A JOURNEY DUE NORTH The morning was well spent by the time that I had made my mind up, and I was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in the second tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I was done I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of wood together, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways on desert islands getting fire that way--but they went at it with dry wood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soaked with damp. For that afternoon I decided to go forward only as far as I could fetch it to be back on board the barque again by sunset, taking with me as many tins of beans as I could carry and leaving them where I made my turn: by which arrangement I would save the carriage of my supper and my breakfast, and would have a little store of victuals to fall back upon--when I should be fairly started on my journey--without coming all the way again to the barque. I got the bed-bag that I had seen in the stateroom, and managed with the rusty scissors to cut it down to half its size. Into this I packed ten tins of beans, and made them snug by whipping around the bag one end of a longish line--which served when coiled as a handle for it; and, being uncoiled, enabled me to haul it up a ship's side after me, or to let it down ahead of me, or to sway it across an open space between two vessels, and so go at my climbing and jumping with both hands free. As for the compass, my back was the only place for it and I put it there--where it did not bother me much, having little weight; and I stuck the hatchet to blaze my path with into a sort of a belt that I made for myself with a bit of line.