464 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



Minimax, and they left nothing to be desired: indeed, all 

 they left were the acid stains on the material touched. 



From such grim considerations it is a pleasure to turn 

 to the out-of-door life we now led. Emperor penguins 

 began to visit us in companies up to forty in number: 

 probably they were birds whose maternal or paternal in- 

 stincts had been thwarted at Cape Crozier and had now 

 taken to a vagrant life. They suffered, I am afraid, from 

 the loose dogs, and on one occasion Debenham was out on 

 the sea-ice with a team of those dogs of ours which were 

 useless for serious sledging. He had taken them in hand 

 and formed a team which was very creditable to him, if not 

 to themselves. On this occasion he had managed with 

 great difficulty to restrain them from joining a company of 

 Emperors. The dogs were frantic, the Emperors undis- 

 turbed. Unable to go himself, one dog called Little Ginger 

 unselfishly bit through the harness which restrained two 

 of his companions, and Debenham, helplessly holding the 

 straining sledge, could only witness the slaughter which 

 followed. 



The first skua gull arrived on October 24, and we 

 knew they would soon breed on any level gravel or rock 

 free from snow ; and we should see the Antarctic petrels 

 again, and perhaps a rare snowy petrel ; and the first 

 whales would be finding their way into McMurdo Sound. 

 Also the Weddells, the common coastal seals of the Ant- 

 arctic, were now, in the beginning of October, leaving the 

 open water and lying out on the ice. They were nearly all 

 females, and getting ready to give birth to their young. 



The Weddell seal is black on top, and splashed with silver 

 in other places. He measures up to 10 feet from nose to tail, 

 eats fish, is corpulent and hulking. He sometimes carries 

 four inches of blubber. On the ice he is one of the most 

 sluggish of God's creatures, he sleeps continually, digests 

 huge meals, and grunts, gurgles, pipes, trills and whistles in 

 the most engaging way. In the sea he is transformed into 

 one of the most elastic and lithe of beasts, catching his fish 

 and swallowing them whole. As you stand over his blow- 

 hole his head appears, and he snorts at you with surprise 



