212 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



order on the pinkish white snow is a series of almost invisibly 

 yellowish white upright sort of sea-birds, which you would 

 not notice at all, but for their dark legs and eyes and bills. 

 If there happens to be one of the pale blue ice ponds just 

 beyond them, then you see them white against it distinctly, 

 and the blue is reflected under their bodies as they stand 

 beside the pool, or when they rise and flit over it it shines 

 under their wings. They always stand bills up wind, as if 

 they had come from somewhere and expected something, 

 but are not particularly anxious about it. They do not 

 seem to be excited about the flesh we throw into the snow 

 at this early hour ; later they all start to eat it at once. 

 The fulmars seem to eat all the time. These yellowish 

 white birds with chalky-grey and brown wings are always 

 with us, round our stern, battling ever about scraps of seals' 

 blubber ; there is quite a homely farm-door sound about 

 their cluck, cluck. Seamen say they are reincarnated souls 

 of men lost at sea rather a far-fetched idea, to my mind. 

 Then there comes a Richardson's skua. We need a specimen 

 for Edinburgh Museum, so I drop it on the floe with no 

 compunction ; it is the sea-birds' pirate and has a touch 

 of the cuckoo's plumage under its wings. It neither reaps 

 nor sows, simply lives by cheek. When a simple fulmar has 

 filled itself with what it can get, fish or fowls or little cuttle- 

 fish and minute shrimps, by dint of hard work and early 

 rising, then by comes Mr Skua of quick flight, and ingeni- 

 ously attacks the fulmar from behind and underneath, till 

 it disgorges its breakfast and the skua catches it up before it 

 reaches the water ! 



Though our ice-scape is very remote and far afield, and 

 subdued in sound and in colour, there is a great deal going 

 on. At the floe-edge there are reddish shrimps in the clear 

 cold water, and if you take some of the water in a glass, you 

 will see still more minute crustaceans, a joy of delicate 

 coloured armour under the microscope. And there is inor- 

 ganic life amongst the ice ; a blue block has just come sweep- 

 ing past very slowly it is like blue and white muslin. But 

 big life, bar our three selves on deck this morning, there 

 seems to be none. All the rest of our crowd are sound asleep 



