The question of the strictest economy in the management of the food supplies was now a matter of life or death, and very seriously the leaders debated it. On October 26 the sun sank beneath the horizon, and in the ensuing darkness, which lasted for 110 days, there would be no chance of obtaining any game. A few blue foxes had been killed since the camp was formed, and half the number were set aside for subsequent consumption, those consumed at once being devoured to the bones, every part being put into the stew. Meagre as the rations were, it was necessary to reduce them still further if the food was to last until the spring. By a further reduction it was calculated that the party could exist until March 1, when the available supplies would amount to ten days' rations. But no relief could possibly reach them until a couple of months later than that, and how were they to live after March 10, when the last crumb of their supplies had been consumed? There was only one course open for them, and that was explained by the leader. On November 1, the allowance for each man would be fourteen ounces, given out every twenty-four hours, and on March 1, as soon as there was light, they would take their remaining ten days' supply and set out across the frozen straits in the forlorn hope of reaching an outlying camp of Etah Eskimo on the Greenland coast. The terrible prospect of such a scheme to men situated as they were can scarcely be imagined. For over a month they had already been slowly starving on an amount of food for daily consumption which an ordinary man could comfortably eat at one meal, and now that amount was to be decreased to less than a pound of food a day and in a climate where the cold was so intense that water could not be kept from freezing inside the hut excepting it was over the stove. For four months they would have to face that rigid diet, suffering the pangs of starvation constantly, almost entirely in the dark, and always huddled up in the sleeping-bags against the walls of their low-roofed hut. Yet they accepted the scheme without a murmur.