FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 255 
troubles their appetites have quite gone. This lady had 
some fresh teeth-marks about her neck and shoulders. 
The next seal lay in the middle of a flat pan of snow- 
ice. On to this ice we jumped, into the blaze of white 
light that fairly dazed us, the seal's soul went out at a 
bullet-hole and his skin was off before he stopped jumping. 
It was a new kind to us — what Allan called a fresh- 
water seal, for the reason of its resemblance to a seal in 
the Arctic of that name. It was shorter than the first by 
two feet, with a thicker body, and had more blubber. Its 
skin was dappled, with a red brown and yellow-ochre 
colour along its sides, with dark umber and grey hairs on 
its back. Its head was short and cat-like. There was a 
large supply of fish inside it, resembling something between 
a small whiting and a gurnard. Here is a drawing that 
I made of one less digested than the others. The smell 
of these fish was strong ! Just as we had pulled his skin 
into the boat, another seal, a huge fellow of the black 
kind, put his head above water about a hundred yards 
off, and, either attracted by the fish or bent on revenge, 
came down on us, diving and bouncing half out of 
the water, making a wake like a penny steamer. Two 
dives brought him within fifty yards of the boat. The 
