n6 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



rests. It was much more lively than " man-hauling." Meares' 

 constant cries, "Tchui — Tchui! Ky — Ky ! " directed the 

 leading dog, and the six pairs behind him swerved left or 

 right in unison. There were numerous seals on our route, 

 and Meares had considerable trouble to keep the dogs to the 

 straight path of duty. One ginger seal especially excited their 

 interest, and ours also, for the colour is most uncommon. 

 Usually the seals are a dull fawn brown, though the breast is 

 often beautifully mottled with white spots. 



My first seal-killing had been done a day or two before. 

 After dinner Wright and I had marched off on hunting 

 bent. We walked over the great South Road — where we 

 had cleared a track for the ponies over Cape Evans — and 

 reached Gully Bay. Just over the tide-crack we came on 

 three seals ; one beautifully dappled, one small and dark, and 

 a huge, big fellow. We wanted the skin for making sandals, 

 and so attacked the biggest specimen. There was not much 

 attack about it ! You just hit him hard on the nose, as 

 Wright did with an ice axe, and then stab him under the 

 fore-flipper, as I did with my Serbish dagger. To make sure, 

 we pole-axed him also. Then we skinned him with consider- 

 able difficulty, for two of us could hardly make the body 

 budge ! The skin and blubber were two inches thick and 

 frightfully slippery ; you could not grip it. We had to 

 drive the ice axe into the loose flap of hide, and so gradually 

 drag the carcase into the positions necessary for flaying. We 

 left the hide on the head and limbs, and then cut through 

 the cartilaginous breastbone and secured the huge liver — 

 about forty pounds of it, I expect. We intended to drag the 

 hide back with a rope, but all we could manage was the liver, 

 of which I hung a part on each fore-finger. Then we walked 

 back to the hut, about half an hour's journey, and when we 

 arrived I gave the liver to the cook. I soon found that my 

 fingers were frostbitten, and through inexperience I stayed in 

 the hut. For five minutes I tramped up and down with an 

 almost unbearable pain in my fingers very like toothache. 

 Never again did I expose my hands in the Antarctic in any 

 constrained position, so that this first slight mishap was a 

 good lesson to me. 



On the 27th of January the ship left Glacier Tongue, to 

 carry our party to the western side of MacMurdo Sound, a 



