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The latter became poor towards the end of the afternoon. We have not risen much to-day, and the plain seems to be flattening out. Irregularities are best seen by sastrugi. A skua gull visited us on the march this afternoon it was evidently curious, kept alighting on the snow ahead, and fluttering a few yards as we approached.
There was nothing else on the face of the lonely waters except himself and a flock, or fleet, I should say, of razorbills and guillemots, very far away, who alternately showed all white breasts, and vanished as they dived and rose all together like white-faced, disappearing targets, and one gull, who wheeled and wheeled in the middle distance, with one eye on the divers and one on the skua, as if, gull-like, waiting on a chance from either.
How many sleeping birds, wounded, tired, or unalert, die at his hands, or, rather, his teeth, in the course of a year would amaze anybody if known, and the shell-fish he relieves of life are legion. The hard, horny carapace of a retreating crab scraped, in the dead silence, against the rock-bowlder on which the skua sat.
Ten minutes later the skua was calmly and safely asleep upon the top of a frowning black stack of rock, untroubled, I think, even by dreams of the terrible things he had gone through.
They couldn't reach him as he was perched on a block, but when they got quite close the skua, who up to that time had appeared quite unconcerned, flapped away a few yards and settled close on the other side of the group of penguins. The latter turned and repeated their former tactics until the skua finally flapped away altogether.
It was a foul thing to do, a horrible, blundering, clumsy murder, done slowly; but even so, it was all over before, with a scream that rang like the battle-cry of a Highland chief, and set the murderous heads up in wild alarm, the skua came shooting, twisting, turning, diving, and darting right into the heart of the crowd.
During the rest of the day they watched the penguins and the skua gulls which were nesting around them; and before supper they took soap and towels down to a rill of thaw-water that ran within a few yards of their tent, and washed in the warm sunlight. 'Then, Scott says, 'we had a dish of fried penguin's liver with seal kidneys; eaten straight out of the frying-pan, this was simply delicious.
"He-oh!" pealed down the clear, ringing bugle-cry from above, and a shadow floated upon the reflections a-dance on the surface in the little bay in the little inlet floated and hung, so that it exactly covered the skua like a funeral pall; floated, and hung, and came down.
We are told of the Skua, that pirate of the seas, that he swoops down upon the fishing birds, at the moment when they rise from the water with a capture. With a blow of the beak delivered in the pit of the stomach he makes them give up their prey, which is caught by the robber in mid-air. The despoiled bird at least gets off with nothing worse than a contusion at the base of the throat.
No wonder I enjoyed their society. Nor did the men in the lower camp suffer any privation. Wisting showed himself to be possessed of eminent talents as cook for the day. His special dish was penguins and skua gulls in cream sauce. It was served under the name of ptarmigan, of which it really reminded one.
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