454 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



country has allowed penguins to be killed by the million 

 every year for Commerce and a farthing's worth of blubber. 



We never killed unless it was necessary, and what we 

 had to kill was used to the utmost both for food and for 

 the scientific work in hand. The first Emperor penguin 

 we ever saw at Cape Evans was captured after an exciting 

 chase outside the hut in the middle of a blizzard. He kept 

 us busy for days : the zoologist got a museum skin, showing 

 some variation from the usual coloration, a skeleton, and 

 some useful observation on the digestive glands : the para- 

 sitologist got a new tape-worm : we all had a change of diet. 

 Many a pheasant has died for less. 



There were plenty of Weddell seal round us this winter, 

 but they kept out of the wind and in the water for the most 

 part. The sea is the warm place of the Antarctic, for the 

 temperature never falls below about 29 Fahr., and a seal 

 which has been lying out on the ice in a minus thirty tem- 

 perature, and perhaps some wind, must feel, as he slips into 

 the sea, much the same sensations as occur to us when we 

 walk out of a cold English winter day into a heated conser- 

 vatory. On the other hand, a seaman went out into North 

 Bay to bathe from a boat, in the full sun of a mid-summer 

 day, and he was out almost as soon as he was in. One of 

 the most beautiful sights of this winter was to see the seals, 

 outlined in phosphorescent light, swimming and hunting 

 in the dark water. 



We had lectures, but not as many as during the pre- 

 vious winter when they became rather excessive : and we 

 included outside subjects. We read in many a polar book 

 of the depressions and trials of the long polar night; 

 but thanks to gramophones, pianolas, variety of food, and 

 some study of the needs both of mind and body, we suf- 

 fered very little from the first year's months of darkness. 

 There is quite a store of novelty in living in the dark : 

 most of us I think thoroughly enjoyed it. But a second 

 winter, with some of your best friends dead, and others in 

 great difficulties, perhaps dying, when all is unknown and 

 every one is sledged to a standstill, and blizzards blow all 

 day and all night, is a ghastly experience. This year there 



