438 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE F1SHERIBS. 



is the most exposed and solitary pursuit either in the whale or seal fishery. The tender takes a 

 detachment of the crew, and plies along the island coast, landing one or two men on each of the 

 best beaches, with a supply of water and provisions ; a tent or shanty is erected, partly of wood, 

 partly of canvas ; and the skins of the elephants furnish the floor, couch, and covering of the 

 temporary habitation. Here the banished hunter or hunters rest at night after the fatigues of rang- 

 ing along the shore, killing and flaying the animals met with, and transporting the blubber to a 

 place of deposit, where it is buried, to prevent the gulls from devouring it, until taken aboard. 

 As the season returns at Hoard's Island, the vessels are usually ' on the ground ' ; the treacherous 

 surf is again passed and repassed in the light, frail whale-boats, landing the fresh crew from home, 

 who- relieve those who have thus literally ' seen the elephant.' The time passes quickly away in 

 the excitement of killing and flensing and again the floating fragment of the world departs for 

 the land of civilization, leaving her last crew from home to pass an Antarctic winter amid the 

 solitude of ice bergs and the snow-covered peaks of the mountain land. No passing sail is seen to 

 break the monotony of their voluntary exile ; even many varieties of sea-birds found at Desolation 

 Island do not deign to visit them. Multitudes of penguins, however, periodically resort to the 

 island, and their eggs, together with the tongues of the sea elephants, and one or two kinds of fish, 

 furnish a welcome repast for all hands, by way of change from that substantial fare called ' salt- 

 horse ' and ' hard-tack.' Beside the close stoves in their apartments, which are heated with coal 

 from the ship or the fat of the elephant pups, and the flickerings of a murky oil-lamp, the long 

 winter evenings are passed in smoking and playing amusing games, 'old sledge' and 'seven up' 

 being favorites, and the reckless joking that circulates among adventurers who make light of ill- 

 luck and turn reverses into ridicule."* 



The heavy surf about Heard's Island and the rocky shores make the place very dangerous to 

 vessels, and many disasters have occurred there. Against the perpendicular cliff's at the north- 

 westerly end of the island the schooner Frank was dashed to pieces. The crew was rescued by 

 the noble efforts of one of their number, who with great difficulty climbed the rough cliffs and 

 helped his comrades off. In 1860 the schooner Exile was driven ashore at Whisky Bay. The 

 schooner R. B. Sawyer was lost at Stoney Beach, and the schooner Mary Powell was wrecked at a 

 great flat iceberg south of Fairchild's Beach. On a reef of rocks near the long sandy point at the 

 southerly end of the island the Alfred, of Fairhaven, and the R. B. Coleman were driven ashore 

 and wrecked. 



Capt. Alfred Turner was at Heard's Island in February, 1863, in the schooner Pacific. No 

 other vessels were there at the time. Three men were left on board as ship-keepers while the crew 

 were ashore hunting elephants. The anchor chains parted in a gale at night. The foresail was 

 set but they could not succeed in getting the vessel oft 1 shore, so they drove her on a sandy beach, 

 and in two hours she went to pieces. The men jumped in the surf and swam ashore. Some 

 provisions drifted ashore, and these, added to what had been landed for the hunters, sufficed to 

 keep the entire crew alive till the following October, when another sealing vessel came to the 

 island and rescued them. During their residence there the men kept at work killing elephants and 

 trying out the blubber, so that they managed to accummulate considerable oil. 



The experience of the crew of the bark Trinity in 1881, mentioned on a preceding page, was 

 similar that of the Pacific's crew. 



* SCAMMON : Marine Mammalia, pp. 123, 113. 



