FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA 15 
“We collected, as well as our birds and eggs, some 
spiders, very large grasshoppers, wood-lice, cockchafers, 
with big and small centipedes. In fact, the place teemed 
with insect life. I should add that their names are given 
rather from the general appearance of the animals than 
from their true scientific classes. 
“We had a big and fast scramble down, and about half 
way, when we could watch the sea breaking on the rocks 
far below, we saw that there was a bigger swell running. 
It was getting late, and we made our way down as fast as 
we could—denting our guns as we slipped on the rocks. 
“The lower we got the bigger the sea which had risen 
in our absence appeared to be. No doubt it was the swell of 
a big disturbance far away, and when we reached the débris 
slope where we had landed, flanked by big cliffs, we found 
everybody gathered there and the boats lying off—it being 
quite impossible for them to get near the shore. 
“They had just got a life-line ashore on a buoy. Bowers 
went out on to the rocks and secured it. We put our guns 
and specimens into a pile, out of reach, as we thought, of 
any possible sea. But just afterwards two very large waves 
took us—we were hauling in the rope, and must have 
been a good thirty feet above the base of the wave. It hit 
us hard and knocked us all over the place, and wetted the 
guns and specimens above us through and through. 
“¢ We then stowed all gear and specimens well out of the 
reach of the seas, and then went out through the surf one 
by one, passing ourselves out on the line. It was ticklish 
work, but Hooper was the only one who really had a bad 
time. He did not get far enough out among the rocks 
which fringed the steep slope from which he started as a 
wave began to roll back. The next wave caught him and 
crashed him back, and he let go of the line. He was under 
quite a long time, and as the waves washed back all that 
we could do was to try and get the line to him. Luckily 
he succeeded in finding the slack of the line and got out. 
“¢ When we first got down to the shore and things were 
looking nasty, Wilson sat down on the top of a rock and 
ate a biscuit in the coolest possible manner. It was an 
