64 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
much hesitation judging the width of the narrow gap, to 
give a little standing jump across as would a child, and 
running on the faster to make up for its delay. Again, 
coming to a wider lead of water necessitating a plunge, our 
inquisitive visitor would be lost for a moment, to reappear 
like a jack-in-the-box on a nearer floe, where wagging his 
tail, he immediately resumed his race towards the ship. 
Being now but a hundred yards or so from us he pokes his 
head constantly forward on this side and on that, to try and 
make out something of the new strange sight, crying aloud 
to his friends in his amazement, and exhibiting the most 
amusing indecision between his desire for further investi- 
gation and doubt as to the wisdom and propriety of closer 
contact with so huge a beast.’ ? 
They areextraordinarily like children, these little people 
of the Antarctic world, either like children, or like old men, 
full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their 
black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts—and rather portly 
withal. We used to sing to them, as they to us, and you 
might often see “‘a group of explorers on the poop, singing 
‘She has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and 
she shall have music wherever she goes,’ and so on at 
the top of their voices to an admiring group of Adélie 
penguins.” 2 
Meares used to sing to them what he called ‘God 
save, and declared that it would always send them head- 
long into the water. He sang flat: perhaps that-was why. 
Two or more penguins will combine to push a third in 
front of them against a skua gull, which is one of their 
enemies, for he eats their eggs or their young if he gets the 
chance. They will refuse to dive off an ice-foot until they 
have persuaded one of their companions to take the first 
jump, for fear of the sea-leopard which may be waiting in 
the water below, ready to seize them and play with them 
much as a cat will play with a mouse. As Levick describes 
in his book about the penguins at Cape Adare: “At the 
place where they most often went in, a long terrace of ice 
1 Wilson, Discovery Natural History Report, vol. ii. part ii. p. 38. 
2 Wilson’s Journal. 
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