Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/219

466 another three months' journey seemed bad enough, and to leave our comfortable Winter Quarters three weeks before we started on that journey was an additional irritation. We ran down in surface drift: it was thick to the south, the wind bit our faces and hands; we could see nothing by the time we got in, and the snow was falling heavily. The stable was full of beastly snow, the hut was cold and cheerless, and there was no blubber for the stove. And if we had only taken the ship and gone home when the period for which we had joined was passed, we might have been in London for the last six months!

But then the snow stopped, the wind went down, and the mountain tops appeared in all their glorious beauty. We were in the middle of a perfect summer afternoon, with a warm sun beating on the rocks as we walked round to Pram Point. There were many seals here already, and it was clear that the place would form a jolly nursery this year, for there must have been a lot of movement on the Barrier and the sea-ice was seamed with pressure ridges up to twenty feet in height. The hollows were buckled until the sea water came up and formed frozen ponds which would thaw later into lovely baths. Sheltered from the wind the children could chase their ridiculous tails to their hearts' content: their mothers would lie and sleep, awakening every now and then to scratch themselves with their long finger-nails. Not quite yet, but they were not far away: Lappy, one of our dogs who always looked more like a spaniel than anything else, heard one under the ice and started to burrow down to him!

Nearly three weeks later I paid several more visits to this delightful place. It was thick with seals, big seals and little seals, hairy seals and woolly seals: every day added appreciably to the number of babies, and to the baaings and bleatings which made the place sound like a great sheepfold. In every case where I approached, the mothers opened their mouths and bellowed at me to keep away, but they did not come for me though I actually stroked one baby. Often when the mother bellowed the little one would also open his mouth, producing just the ghost of a bellow: