FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 267 
I can hear the mate's clock in his cabin ticking the 
seconds ; the sound must travel up the taut shrouds 
and backstays. On deck, two or three men are saunter- 
ing up and down, their hands deep in their pockets, 
and high above me I see the bottom of the crow's- 
nest, and over its edge the telescope, ever on the 
watch for seals. I think we have killed about seventy- 
five seals to-night ; but the great black whale we came 
for has not yet put in an appearance. Finners there 
are in any number — they all show the annoying fin on 
their backs, and none of them lie on the water's surface 
after the manner of the right whale. 
A number of grampus were seen to-day ; and we think 
that they are perhaps keeping the right whales far inside 
the ice, as they do in the north, where the whales will rather 
drown under the floes than venture into the neighbour- 
hood of their deadly enemy. 
A school of these sea pirates came swimming down on 
us from the northwards, their gaff-topsails, as Jack calls 
their dorsal fins, showing high above the water. Whales 
and penguins fled before them, the penguins leaping 
like shoals of mackerel, and 
the finners blowing along 
in great fright. TjrW*% M^M? The penguins 
got on to the first ice they 
met, for safety, and toddled 
into the cen- tre as fast as 
their little legs would carry them. Two of the finners 
passed under us ; one put his black back out of water 
under our counter — I could have dropped on his back — 
