The deer I had killed as yet were very lean, with scarcely any fat on their guts, and we required what little there was for cooking; if there was any to spare Terry salted it against the future. In the commencement of May we happened to recollect that our fishing-tackle had never been looked at. I caught a fry of small trout on Loch Coulter, and put out set lines for pike. When we returned to inspect our lines we had two pike weighing eight or nine pounds each. I opened them by the loch-side to rebait my hooks with their entrails. They were full of soft oily fat. I carried it to the cave in triumph. We melted out the oil in a pan and added the scum of fat which rose to the surface of the water in which we boiled our pike. We were left with a good pint of oil.

I drained a milk-tin by cutting two holes in one end and blowing through one hole while the milk ran out of the other. Terry swilled out the residue of milk with boiling water and I went to the lochside for strong stalks of green rushes. I peeled the skin away from the pith of the rushes and laid the short lengths of pith to dry before our fire. Terry half-filled the tin with oil. Next we soaked two lengths of pith in oil and stuck them through the holes in the tin so that their bottom ends were in the oil and each protruded about an inch from the tin. We put a light to our wicks. They burned with a tiny yellow spluttering flame. With the light of our fire besides we had sufficient illumination for our work, and if we required more light we could bore other holes in the tin and add extra wicks.

‘Can we always get pike?’ Terry asked anxiously, ‘or must we catch as many as possible just now and extract enough oil for winter?’

‘They ought to be still fatter in winter,’ I answered. ‘But it would be a wise plan to gather a store of oil just now in case the weather is too wild later on. The loch will freeze over,’ I went on.

‘Then if we can get oil at any time I’m going to make dubbin for our shoes,’ she said.