My Birthplace 377 



in Kerguelen Island, my only sensation that of being 

 ravenously hungry, I had never been out of their 

 sight, one or the other of them, for an hour by day 

 or by night. At first they used to come and go almost 

 continually, always dropping some delightful morsel 

 down my gaping throat, and scurrying away through 

 the tunnel again as if they had not a moment to spare. 

 And they would hardly be gone before I began again 

 loudly lamenting my lack of food. 



But let me tell you about my home, for I never 

 forgot it in all my long journeyings ; when the time 

 came at the fall of the year for me to return thither, I 

 did so over the thousands of miles of intervening sea 

 as straight as the wind blows over those mighty open 

 spaces. As perhaps you know, Kerguelen is, for those 

 people who use the land continually, just a desolate 

 mass of rock and sand, with hardly a sign of anything 

 growing but birds and seals, far down the slope of 

 the Southern Sea. At one place there is quite a moun- 

 tain rises straight up from the sea facing the south, 

 but this mountain is split in half ; right in the middle 

 of it there is a crack as wide as a porpoise that runs 

 through from the sea to a quiet little plateau beyond. 

 All around this little fiat patch, which is floored with 

 black sand, there are round holes in the rocks which 

 run in about ten times my length and widen out a 

 little when you get as far in as you can. 



Here, in this cosy shelter from storm and wind, 

 which I never felt the need of at any time after I 

 left it, I first knew I was alive. And when first, 

 after a long stay in that darkling warmth, I was lured 

 slowly along the passage by my gentle little mother 

 (I was so much bigger than she was) I trembled so that 

 I could hardly move. You see, I had never before- 

 moved except in the tiny little hollow where I was 



