Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

elephant seal, which have anything to recommend them except to a scientist or a
sealer. Like most young animals they are wholly charming - with large brown,
wondering - and watering - eyes, and immaculate silvery-grey coats. They like to lie
in the fresh-water streams - occasionally having mock battles, when they try to
imitate the big bulls, and raising up their bodies on their fore-flippers they thump
each other on the neck and half-heartedly bite. They do this if one approaches them,
looking back along their backs at you and barking in their frantic way. One of them
did a double backward somersault when I tickled his ribs!
In the evening returning from the fo'c'sle, my steps were sometimes a little
unsteady and clambering over the blubber heaped on the decks, was difficult,
particularly if there was a swell. The sealers used to ask me down for a drink after
the day's work was over - often it was puro (absolute alcohol) thinly disguised with
fernet branca, or aquavit. It was very interesting to see them at play as well as at work.
We had games of cards with continuous rollicking commentaries in Spanish - Polish -
Norwegian - English and it was great fun. Spending most of their day up to the waist
in bloody seawater and handling oily blubber and so on, they made a special point of
being very clean when work was over. One of them, Pilat, was just like Chico Marx
and I had to smile every time I saw him, when he smiled back shyly. Another was a
former Polish University Professor.
But to see them landing on a beach, they looked like a bunch of pirates. They had
a quaint way of shouting to the seals. "Oh huh! lobo, scapage scapay, oh ho ho! look out
lobo ehuh!" and so on. Then to a cry of arriba all leaped out of the pram, brandishing
their long blubber hooks, knives like small swords and with lengths of rope swathed
round their torsos, and crying lobo querido (dear seal) proceeded to kill all they could
find!
That day, after spending the night at anchor in King Haakon Bay, we worked the
beaches in the bay. I walked what seemed like 20 miles in thigh boots, much of it
along rocky ledges and was more tired than usual. It was a very interesting coast.
Waterfalls spilled over glaciers and steep rock cliffs, but dissolved in spray before
they reached the ground, causing rainbows to form when the sun was shining. The
ship was now loaded with blubber, on deck as well as in the hold. To get into the
wardroom aft, it was necessary to climb over it and as it was slippery ‘rubbery’, stuff
this was very tricky. In the saloon, or wardroom, where we sat around on leather
upholstered settees, one saw above if one raised one's head, the skylight, blotted out
by the deck cargo of bloody rafts of blubber. Then I had to negotiate it again to get to
my supper!
We got back to Grytviken on 20 November after an interesting trip and I was
feeling very fit after all those days in the open, so found it rather cramping to have to
sit in my study and type out long reports. Probably few would read them, at any rate
not in the Falkland Islands! For a day or two we were kept rather busy storing the
new provision and so on which were to last the base for another year. I say we, but as
I had to finish my reports, I told the others what to do and could stroll away from my
typewriter, from time to time and see them all working away.
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