FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 39 
in with unknown animals, has a great fascination. At 
present we are surrounded with bird-life. Mollies are in 
hundreds wheeling and dipping round our stern — perhaps 
the oil-bags we have had hanging over to windward to 
break the seas has attracted them, or possibly it is the 
relationship that exists between them and our sailors. 
Mollies were once sailors : this is not generally known. 
Our men ct know them, and can tell you who they once 
were. Here is a very tame one that comes so close that 
we could almost touch it as it passes. We know it quite 
well now by the expression in its dark eye and by 
certain marks on the feathers. In the body, the men 
say, he was John Jack, an old Arctic sailor lost in the 
West Ice. 
There are, besides, Mother Carey's chickens, or stormy 
petrels; they keep by themselves, a little aloof, following 
in our wake behind the Mollies, dipping the points of 
their dainty black tjpaks into the seething water, patting 
the surface of the waves with their delicate black feet, 
picking up invisible food. They are very gentle little 
birds, rather like swifts, black, with a white patch just 
above their tail, and have a peculiar moth-like flight. 
They look like flakes of soot driven about in a windy 
sky. 
The Dutchman's troubles were a jest to ours. On the 
strength of the comparatively quiet weather we had a clean 
table-cloth to-night ; but just as the stew was put down a 
heavy sea caught the Balazna and sent us and the stew 
all over the cabin. Poor Nicholas ! I did feel sorry for 
him. He has felt the parting with his family very much, 
