368 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Appx. 



There is no end to the drollery of the penguin, and it would 

 require a cinematograph to do justice to its peculiarities and its 

 grotesque attitudes. When annoyed in any way the cock bird 

 ranges up in front of his wife, his eyes flashing anger, his feathers 

 erect in a ruffle round his head, and his language unfit for publica- 

 tion. He stands there for a minute or two breathing out threatenings 

 and slaughter till his rage overpowers him, and putting his head 

 down he makes a dash at one's legs and hails blows upon them 

 with his flippers like bullets from a machine-gun. 



His ecstatic attitude, too, in making love is beyond all praise ; 

 though not a sound escapes him, one can imagine the most 

 seductive music as he slowly waves his flippers to and fro and 

 gazes upwards in a perfect rhapsody. The next moment he will 

 be chasing his nearest neighbour with the most unwarrantable 

 desire to do him damage for having removed one of the dirty 

 little pebbles in the nest he was supposed to be protecting. 



One would like to follow the bird in his aquatic life — if such 

 a thing were possible. It is tantalising to see him darting about 

 in the water like a fish, shooting zig-zag under the ice-floes to 

 leap up on to the ice a hundred yards away with a Jack-in-the 

 box appearance merely to wag his tail and ' squawk ' to a distant 

 neighbour. 



In again he plunges, and, keeping his direction perfectly, 

 comes up exactly where he wished. One v/onders hovv' he does 

 so, but half his life is spent in an element into which we cannot 

 follow. We see them, too, in the open sea, shooting out of the 

 water like a school of little dolphins, swimming with strong 

 sharp strokes of their fin-like wings as fast as fish and using 

 their feet and tails for steering ; each one follows his leader, and 

 pops up on the ice-floe like a rabbit. Smart, comical, confiding 

 little beasts, the most excellent company imaginable in such a 

 desolate region as the Antarctic, they are like anything in the 

 world but birds. 



It is strange to think that at one time they probably used 

 their wings for flight. They are some of the most primitive of 

 birds, but at one time their wings were fully feathered. Even 

 now as one sees them drop to sleep with the bill tucked in 

 behind the wing, exactly as one sees it in a barn-door fowl, one 

 feels convinced that here is a relic of the past, for the wing which 

 is now a comfortless fin was once a bunch of feathers into which 

 with some comfort the bird could snuggle down. 



