Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/923

Rh One sees first a small dark hump appear and then immediately a jet of grey fog squirted upwards fifteen to eighteen feet, gradually spreading as it rises vertically into the frosty air. I have been nearly in these blows once or twice and had the moisture in my face with a sickening smell of shrimpy oil. Then the bump elongates and up rolls an immense blue-grey or blackish grey round back with a faint ridge along the top, on which presently appears a small hook-like dorsal fin, and then the whole sinks and disappears. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

Note 5, p. 32.—December 18. Watered ship at a tumbled floe. Sea ice when pressed up into large hummocks gradually loses all its salt. Even when sea water freezes it squeezes out the great bulk of its salt as a solid, but the sea water gets into it by soaking again, and yet when held out of the water, as it is in a hummock, the salt all drains out and the melted ice is blue and quite good for drinking, engines, &c. [Dr. Wilson's Journal]

Note 6, p. 47.—It may be added that in contradistinction to the nicknames of Skipper conferred upon Evans, and Mate on Campbell, Scott himself was known among the afterguard as The Owner.

Note 7, p. 51.—(Penguins.) They have lost none of their attractiveness, and are most comical and interesting; as curious as ever, they will always come up at a trot when we sing to them, and you may often see a group of explorers on the poop singing ‘For she's got bells on her fingers and rings on her toes, elephants to ride upon wherever she goes,’ and so on at the top of their voices to an admiring group of Adélie penguins. Meares is the greatest attraction; he has a full voice which is musical but always very flat. He declares that ‘God save the King’ will always send them to the water, and certainly it is often successful. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

Note 8, p. 84.—We were to examine the possibilities of landing, but the swell was so heavy in its break among the floating blocks of ice along the actual beach and ice foot that a landing was out of the question. We should have broken up the boat and have all been in the water together. But I assure you it was tantalising to me, for there about 6 feet above us on a small dirty piece of the old bay ice about ten feet square one living Emperor penguin chick was standing disconsolately stranded, and close by stood one faithful old Emperor parent asleep. This young Emperor was still in the down, a most interesting fact in the bird's life history at which we had rightly guessed, but which no one had actually observed before. It was in a stage never yet seen or collected, for the wings we ready quite clean of down and feathered as in the adult, also a line down the breast is shed of down, and part of the head. This bird would have been a treasure to me, but we could not risk life for it, so it had to remain