Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/217

464 Minimax, and they left nothing to be desired: indeed, all they left were the acid stains on the material touched.

From such grim considerations it is a pleasure to turn to the out-of-door life we now led. Emperor penguins began to visit us in companies up to forty in number: probably they were birds whose maternal or paternal instincts had been thwarted at Cape Crozier and had now taken to a vagrant life. They suffered, I am afraid, from the loose dogs, and on one occasion Debenham was out on the sea-ice with a team of those dogs of ours which were useless for serious sledging. He had taken them in hand and formed a team which was very creditable to him, if not to themselves. On this occasion he had managed with great difficulty to restrain them from joining a company of Emperors. The dogs were frantic, the Emperors undisturbed. Unable to go himself, one dog called Little Ginger unselfishly bit through the harness which restrained two of his companions, and Debenham, helplessly holding the straining sledge, could only witness the slaughter which followed.

The first skua gull arrived on October 24, and we knew they would soon breed on any level gravel or rock free from snow; and we should see the Antarctic petrels again, and perhaps a rare snowy petrel; and the first whales would be finding their way into McMurdo Sound. Also the Weddells, the common coastal seals of the Antarctic, were now, in the beginning of October, leaving the open water and lying out on the ice. They were nearly all females, and getting ready to give birth to their young.

The Weddell seal is black on top, and splashed with silver in other places. He measures up to 10 feet from nose to tail, eats fish, is corpulent and hulking. He sometimes carries four inches of blubber. On the ice he is one of the most sluggish of God's creatures, he sleeps continually, digests huge meals, and grunts, gurgles, pipes, trills and whistles in the most engaging way. In the sea he is transformed into one of the most elastic and lithe of beasts, catching his fish and swallowing them whole. As you stand over his blow-hole his head appears, and he snorts at you with surprise