THE TERRA NOVA GOES SOUTH 95 



when Pouting met us and told us the " owner " wished every 

 one to hurry to the ship, for the killer-whales were breaking 

 up the floes, and the stores on the ice would be lost ! We 

 ran on and found the sea-ice all broken away at the stern ; 

 but Ponting had not explained his own very exciting adven- 

 ture. Two dogs had broken loose and were racing about at 

 the edge of the ice, when a party of eight killer-whales ap- 

 peared at the stern of the ship, evidently attracted by these 

 strangely active " seals." An orca is twenty to thirty feet 

 long, and has the most fearsome jaw of all the creatures that 

 hunt in the high seas. Thirteen long conical teeth are set in 

 each jaw, each projecting a couple of inches from the bone — 

 and (unlike those of the crab-eater) built for business. Pont- 

 ing, ever keen on good photographs, took his camera along to 

 get a close view of these fellows. He narrates that they lifted 

 their wicked-looking heads above the water to look at him, 

 and he was just pressing the button, when he felt as if an 

 earthquake had hit him. The whole floe was being broken 

 away by the orcas, and he was separated from firm ice by two 

 feet of water. He did not stop to finish that photo ! 



After dinner Debenham and I made a trip across the ice 

 to Inaccessible Island. This rises sharply from the sea, about 

 one mile south of the ship, and is usually surrounded by a 

 belt of water — due to the warming action of the very dark 

 rocks of which it is composed. Here we came across our 

 first " sastrugi." They are long, deep furrows cut by the 

 drifting ice crystals in the sides of snow-drifts as they are 

 driven onward by the blizzard winds. Thus they lie on the 

 windward sides of the drifts, and make sledge-travelling very 

 difficult if they face the sledge. If the drifts are across the 

 path of the blizzards the sastrugi may cut right through the 

 former. Inaccessible Island was almost covered with the debris 

 of kenyte lavas, though here and there bosses of solid rock 

 remained, especially towards the summit ridge. In these cold 

 latitudes the frost action breaks down the rocks very rapidly, 

 without destroying the mineral structure to such an extent as 

 is the case in warmer regions. The kenyte weathered into 

 blocks, which irresistibly suggested the Easter Island " idols." 

 Every variety of this rock was found. Some with large 

 crystals an inch long, others like glass, of a chocolate colour ; 

 vesicular lava, full of bubbles, looking like petrified bath- 



