SCOrrS last expedition [January 
The further history of young Blackie was chronicled 
by the Sledge Poet : 
* Lo ! A miracle hath happened,' said returning Skua- While, 
* Here's our nest just full of chicken, full of howling appetite.' 
Said Skua-White unto his mate, ' For fear this should become a habit 
We 'd better eat our egg — ^Besides, you may be very sure ke*d grab it.' 
So little Blackie reigned supreme 
Until one day wlien he was fed 
By the kind and humane leader, 
Foster father, foster feeder, 
On rich and tasty lumps of blubber 
His httle tummy stretched like rubber. 
Stretched too much . . . and now he's dead. 
The skuas are the most quarrelsome birds I know. 
They would fight for hours over the carcase of a freshly 
killed seal before they realised there was enough food for 
ten times as many skuas — and by this time the flesh would 
be frozen so hard they could make no impression on it. 
The penguins have their own peculiar propensities, while 
the seals used to amaze us by their callousness. The day 
after we reached Cape Roberts we killed a large seal and 
cut it up while another twenty yards away watched us 
quite casually and did not budge for hours. 
There was nothing much to do on the cape. It was 
triangular in shape, and about half a mile long. It rose 
about 50 feet above the sea ice. The broad base of the 
triangle was covered with snow which gradually merged 
into the Piedmont Glacier. There was no ice wall here, so 
that the glacier was presumably stagnant at this corner. 
The great granite tors of the cape were all flattened, 
showing that they had been planed off by a former exten- 
sion of the ice sheet. Debenham spent some time making 
a detailed plane table survey. I fixed several theodolite 
