Upon the 12th of September a small quantity of drift ice came into the sound, on a piece of which they found two walruses asleep, when "William Fakely being ready with his harping iron, heaved it so strongly into the old one that he quite disturbed her of her rest: after which, she, receiving five or six thrusts with our lances, fell into a sounder sleep of death." The young one, refusing to leave her mother, was also killed; and a week afterwards another walrus fell a victim; but even with these the store of provisions was inadequate. To make the food last, they put themselves on an allowance of one good meal a day, except on Wednesdays and Fridays which were fasting days devoted to whale sundries—"a very loathsome meat," says Pellham, in brackets—later on, for four days in the week they fed upon "the unsavoury and mouldy fritters, and the other three we feasted it with bear and venison." "But," continues the narrative, "as if it were not enough for us to want meat, we now began to want light also; all our meals proved suppers now, for little light could we see; even the glorious sun (as if unwilling to behold our miseries) masking his lovely face from us, under the sable veil of coal-black night."But they were equal to the emergency. "At the beginning of this darksome, irksome time, we sought some means of preserving light amongst us; finding therefore a piece of sheet lead over a seam of one of the coolers, that we ripped off and made three lamps of it, which, maintaining with oil that we found in the coopers' tent, and rope-yarn serving us instead of candle-wicks, we kept them continually burning." Cheerful and resourceful as they were, their fits of depression were not infrequent. "Our extremities being so many, made us sometimes in impatient speeches to break forth against the causers of our miseries; but then again, our consciences telling us of our own evil deservings, we took it either for a punishment upon us for our former wicked lives; or else for an example of God's mercy in our wonderful deliverance: humbling ourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God, we cast down ourselves before him in prayer, two or three times a day, which course we constantly held all the time of our misery." Their prospects got worse, but they never lost a little hope. "The new year now began: as the days began to lengthen, so the cold began to strengthen; which cold came at last to that extremity, as that it would raise blisters on our flesh, as if we had been burnt with fire, and if we touched iron at any time it would stick to our fingers like bird-lime: sometimes if we went but out of doors to fetch in a little water, the cold would nip us in such a sort that it made us as sore as if we had been beaten in some cruel manner."