sight of the penguins, our first meal of seal meat, or that first big
berg along which we coasted close in order that London might see it on
the film. Hardly had we reached the thick pack, which prevailed after the
suburbs had been passed, when we saw the little Adélie penguins hurrying
to meet us. Great Scott, they seemed to say, what's this, and soon we
could hear the cry which we shall never forget. "Aark, aark," they said,
and full of wonder and curiosity, and perhaps a little out of breath,
they stopped every now and then to express their feelings, "and to gaze
and cry in wonder to their companions; now walking along the edge of a
floe in search of a narrow spot to jump and so avoid the water, and with
head down and much hesitation judging the width of the narrow gap, to
give a little standing jump across as would a child, and running on the
faster to make up for its delay. Again, coming to a wider lead of water
necessitating a plunge, our inquisitive visitor would be lost for a
moment, to reappear like a jack-in-the-box on a nearer floe, where
wagging his tail, he immediately resumed his race towards the ship. Being
now but a hundred yards or so from us he pokes his head constantly
forward on this side and on that, to try and make out something of the
new strange sight, crying aloud to his friends in his amazement, and
exhibiting the most amusing indecision between his desire for further
investigation and doubt as to the wisdom and propriety of closer contact
with so huge a beast."[57]

They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the
Antarctic world, either like children, or like old men, full of their own
importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white
shirt-fronts--and rather portly withal. We used to sing to them, as they
to us, and you might often see "a group of explorers on the poop, singing
'She has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and she shall have
music wherever she goes,' and so on at the top of their voices to an