FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 149 
The most striking of the birds is the Molly Mauk — a 
powerful bird, somewhat like our great blackback, but 
many times larger. The old bird has a white head and 
body and black wing-covers, a black beak, and a dusky 
mark over its eye that gives it a keen, hawklike expression. 
Then there are usually four or five albatross within sight, 
in different stages of plumage, besides Cape pigeons and 
other petrels and sea-birds, the names of which I do not 
know, as, unfortunately, owing to my hurried exodus from 
Edinburgh, I was unable to bring books on bird life in 
the South Seas ; we have in consequence to give our bird 
companions names that would scarcely be recognised by 
scientists at home. 
Whilst sitting at tea to-night, trifling with salt junk 
and ship biscuits, and clinging to the legs of the table, we 
got on to the well-worn subject of the comparative merits 
of solid bullets versus shells for big game shooting. As 
an instance in point, »I quoted a Ceylon yarn about Mr. 
, who brought down an elephant with a single ball, 
dead as he thought, but found it was very much the 
reverse of dead when he began to cut it up. There 
were details about this story which raised it high in 
the ranks of tall stories. But the story is not yet written 
that our mate could not cap with ease, and down he 
came on the top of this one with a yarn that would make 
the readers of The Field shudder. 
'Hoots, that's naething/ he said. 'I ken a man Tod, 
Wullie Tod, yell hae heard tell o' him, Spectioneer 
o' the Arctic. I seed him mysel' pit aucht-an-twenty o' 
they expanseeve bullits intill a white she-bear an' it nane 
